The Lion in Spring

Ahem.  I now present to you Shakespeare's Eighteenth Sonnet as it would have been written if he was a realist. 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
I've never seen one.  It's bloody cold here.
I've heard of something called a temperate climate.
Can we move there?
It's bloody windy all the time,
And when it rains, it's pretty miserable.
And summer lasts maybe a week long.
Sometimes, the sun comes out.
Having never seen it, we are terrified.
But your eternal summer shall not fade.
Whatever the hell a summer is.
And Death probably can't kill you,
'Cause he'll be terrified of our constant bronchitis.
Good thing they have sex indoors, right?
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

It's snowing in London town. 

And the people are running about in mad chaos as though the sky were falling. 

Okay, not quite.  But it's a typical heavy snow back west in Denver that has completely crippled London here.  It'd be almost amusing if it weren't for the fact that I too am crippled and many of the Londoners are now quite limited in how far they can travel with the tube system completely paralyzed.  However, to their credit.. the sky has dumped great heaping mounds of snow over the last two days.  The neighbor kids built not snowmen, but an igloo.  A full four bedroom, two bath, two and a half story igloo.  And frankly, in the credit slump, that's going to work out very well for them.

I however, have stayed in, happy to have a break from the frequent rush-about lifestyle of London.  Especially having braved Camden on a weekend.  Cor blimey, it's a mess over there.  But I have a new coat with which to trounce the winter air.  Promise I'll write about Bruges eventually.  Too much to do, not enough time.  Ciao 'till later.

What a week.  In the span of seven days, the world has upended itself almost completely.  I came to London because, well, I felt it was the proper time and place for me to be here.  Ten thousand days in the fire, right?  Well, ten thousand days is right, because there I stood in the midst of at least twenty awesome people who joined me to celebrate my birthday for no other reason than it was a hell of a lot of fun.  Easily the most memorable birthday ever.  I'm home, I'm celebrating my birthday in the country of my birth, and despite the balmy weather, somewhere the sun is shining.  Cue those damned little Disney bluebirds, y'all.

I've been in Europe now for roughly two weeks.  And it doesn't seem like two weeks at all.  It seems like a lifetime; and so far, it's been a life long in the coming.  I have everything I've ever wanted except for one thing.  Granted, that one thing never seems to get here quick enough when it's gone.. and never stays long enough when it's here.  But it's spring.  And we just brought in the bluebirds.  And I'm sure there's a Cupid about somewhere.  It's London, damnit.  The little bastards hide in every corner.

So I'll be sure to fulfill my promise to spill the beans on Bruges here in a while.  The city where Heaven and the Apocalype met in the same garden, guarded by a pair of angels.  Eden, perhaps.  But in the mean time, here is what rattles in the back of my head with every step I take.  Stop giggling, those of you who know it's source.

Hello from London!  Oi, it's been a hell of a week.  In roughly a week, I've gone through three different countries, two different immigration terminals, traveled by plane, train, and coach bus and spoken at least three different languages.  Some of them were spoken with a level of awfulness that's truly impressive. 

The plane landed in Paris a week ago yesterday, arriving early at about 8:00am.  That day, we all pretty much stumbled about the city like zombified lemmings.  However, rather than running towards brains, we were running from trains.  The Metro system is terrifying.  I can only imagine it being something akin to a subway back home, but the train system goes everywhere!  The stations themselves curl in on themselves and wind up and over into infinite labyrinthian trials of train, track, and people.  However, like any good test subjects, we did manage after a bit of wandering to find the cheese.  

Most spent the day sleeping -- whether they wanted to or not.  Jetlag seemed to hit us all like a silent creeper and even when nightfall came, many were far too tired to do much of anything.  However, that night we did take a lovely little tour boat down the Seine and the world instantly popped out like a children's book.  There was Notre Dame sitting gloriously in the distance, and the Eiffel as we approached her feet lit up like Van Gogh's Starry Night.  It was a warm welcome, and a little serendipitous the timing of the Eiffel.  It certainly felt as though we were in the right place.  As the tour wound down, a few had fallen asleep -- and I had all but given up on snapping photos and instead resorted to copius amounts of video footage.  From there, we made our way up the Seine and to a tiny little cafe for a reminder of the only bit of French I'd known from home -- a Croque Monsieur.  It began a tradition for me that's still holding true today -- every meal in Europe is better than the last.

The next evening -- the Catacombs.  Words cannot describe the beauty of the Catacombs.  While they are indeed a terrifying place that is a reminder of the ultimate end of all of those who live and breathe, it was immensely beautiful to see such care given to those nameless thousands who lurked below.  Placed with such care to line them up just so, setting the skulls into them with precision in rows, even in many places building crosses to honor the dead and eternally sanctify their last resting place.  So very rarely is it that people show such respect for the dead these days, replaced instead by the living's terror and dread for the world that comes. 

We saw Moulin Rouge and crossed over as we headed for the single most scenic point in all of Paris.  From there, you could see the whole city, gleaming proudly as though it were well aware of exactly how unique and special it was.  It was hellishly cold.  Dismally.  The kind of cold that cuts straight through to your bones.  And yet, I doubt many of us cared for more than a moment or two.  We ended the evening with a fantastic three course meal that consisted of french onion soup, turkey breast cordon bleu, and chocolate mousse and then scampered off to join the rest of our milleau for wine at the local tavern.  All in all, it was a beautiful night and one that made it easy to say goodnight and farewell to Paris. 

That's the end of days one and two of last week.  Given the length of this post, I'll wait and blorp out another bit about the fantastic, wonderful, awesome little city of Bruges.