Ladies and gentlemen I present to you: Leeds (not much different from Manchester)

Saturday morning 6:30 (too early to actually do anything that makes only the tiniest bit of sense). For the first time since I don't know how long I got up immediately after the first time my alarm went off. Today was the day that I was finally going to travel out of Manchester for a change; me and my American friends were going to visit the lovely Leeds.
Saturday morning 7:20 (too early to have leave your bed even if you have to go potty really badly). We all coincidentally met in the bus. Seeing as how our normal busses (U.K. North etc.) don't run this early in the morning (I can't blame them really), we had to take a stagecoach. We went to Picadilly gardens and from there we walked to the coach station.
Saturday morning 8:05 (too early to be riding the bus really, but hey...we were going to Leeds). Seeing as how we were all still somewhere in between a state of sleep and being awake the conversation mainly concerned lame remarks which must've annoyed the other passengers really badly.
Saturday morning 9:25 (still morning? Yes I know...)There we were, standing at the coach station of Leeds. It did not look much different from the one in Manchester. We had to wait for some friends of the American girl, who are currently studying in Leeds. They were going to show us around this day. Personal tourguides, aren't we important?
They arrived after a few minutes and we took off ready to take in the sights of a city we had never seen before, or had we? After visiting a outdoor market, which did not seem very different from the ones I know in Amsterdam, we went to an indoor market. The building had lovely architecture(see pictures), but honestly that was all there was too it really.
We went outside again and started walking. We had no clue where we were going, but we had our personal tourguides so we just followed where they were going. Meanwhile we all took lots of pictures, even our tourguides who I assumed must've been here for about a month already. We crossed a bridge over a river (something Manchester has too, only I haven't seen it yet) and then we walked some more, and some more and some more.
We walked towards a building, and hey, it really seemed like we were going to go inside. It turned out to be the Museum of Royal Armery, interesting! Oh well, admission for most of the museums in England is free so what the hey!
After looking at a bunch of old armours, which was actually quite impressive to see, the museum got more and more modern up onto the point were I was looking at things I assumed the army nowadays must use.
That was something I did not really want to be looking at.
The one highlight of this museum: a picture of a painting entitled 'Throwing Excalibur back into the lake'; King Arthur was sitting beside the lake while his 'precious' excalibur was being thrown back into the lake. The expression on his face was priceless. I imagine he said something like: 'Oh darn, they just had to go and throw my sword back into the lake'
I wasn't the only one who wasn't really into the rest of this museum. We went to sit down for a while and let those who were intruiged look around. Thankfully it didn't take very long before we were ready to leave.
After another long walk, meanwhile taking more pictures, we came back in the city centre. Now we were hungry, lunch it was. We went inside a building, I don't exactly know what to call it. It was bigger, I think than a pub, and it wasn't a restaurant either. We had to wait for a while to get a table. But we got one and we could finally sit down to eat lunch, which we had to order at the bar(a pub after all?) Most of us had the 'burger and beer' deal (£4) but I ate fishcakes. I didn't really feel like alcohol and I'm not that fond of meat either, I was clearly still the only European in our company.
When our bellies were full we took off once more to walk around the city centre for a bit. We walked, how exciting! We also took some more pictures, surprise! And guess what, we also did a tiny bit of shopping!
Not expected; we visited another museum. This time it was modern art, yay! One room was filled with older paintings though, they were allright. Another exhibition was put together to show that painting is still very much alive as an art! It was very nice. Another exhibition concerened three dimensional art and a last one was a little bit of everything. Clearly this was more my kind of thing, because I kept the others waiting!
After we left the museum we walked right into a group of Muslims demonstrating in front of the town hall. We took a couple of pictures of the building, but we didn't really feel like sticking around. I aspecially felt uncomfortable, not that I felt threatened. It's just kind of strange to be standing right next to people demonstrating when you're no part of it and you don't exactly know what they are demonstrating about.
So we walked around some more. Or more precisely we went to see the University. Little did we know it involved another long walk. We Manchester students always take the bus, we're not used to walking everywhere.
We arrived at campus. One could say it looked nicer than Manchester Uni, one could it did not. It didn't really make a difference. It was about 16:30 we had been on our feet for a good couple of hours, we pretty much just wanted to sit down again.
We went to the students union, which by all means did look much nicer than our student union.
Finally sitting down again, with some nice hot drinks. We all kind of collapsed and agreed that maybe we shouldn't have got such an early bus.
When it was time to go out for some dinner we took off once more. First we walked to a pub, but they had stopped serving food already and there were no tables free anyway. The next pub had also stopped serving food, another had no tables free again. At last we found one that did still serve food and was able to sit the seven of us down. Again we had to order food at the bar, and so we did (exciting huh?).
After we had eaten my lady American friend came back from the restroom anouncing that this pub, like another one in Manchester, also had a vending machine which sold vibrators. I actually had not yet seen the one in Manchester, I needed to use the restroom and so I was desperately instructed to go and take some pictures for the guys(see pictures).
Saturday evening 20:10 (too late to still be in Leeds). We made our way back to the coach station, because we didn't want to hang around in the pub anymore. Instead we hung around at the coach station waiting for our 21:00 bus to leave. Pooped out we all just sat there hardly saying anything at all. But we all knew that even though our day had been a little bit too long and even though it wasn't much different from Manchester(main difference I noticed; the boys were cuter), we were happy to have visited Leeds.
P.s.Almost forgot to add that me and one of my American friends acted political! We signed a petition to close Guantanomo bay. He bought a poster saying Bush is the biggest terrorist of all and I bought a socialist newspaper! Oh yeah!

What have I been up to?

It's been a while since I've written anything. That's because I haven't been up to anyhting special. And maybe if I tell you what I have been up to, you'll think to yourself that you do find that special. But that's not the point here. "What is the point here Fleur?" Well, the point is that even though you guys back home might find any news of me special (I'm so touched really, I love you all!), well to me things here have started to become pretty normal.
Walking to the University, or taking the bus. Walking to Owens park computer cluster, or taking the bus. Grocerie shopping, cooking my food. Going to the pub, going to a club (or rather ending up not going).
And I don't mean to say I'm stuck in a rut, by no means. I'm absolutely perfectly happy doing my thing here in Manchester with my new friends. Just as happy as I was in Amsterdam doing my thing over there with my Amsterdam friends.
It's strange really how before I was leaving manchester seemed so far away and so different from Amsterdam. And now that I've been here for a month I've come to realise it was not.
Probably this has a lot to with the fact that the English language is not strange to me at all. I find it in fact quite normal to be hearing and speaking English all day long (even though yes, admittedly(I hate it) you can hear I'm no native speaker).
Last night however I found out that I am still dreaming in Dutch. I was talking to my mom about how much weight I had lost since I came to England (this in fact is not only a dream, it is real; I have lost 3 kilo's in Manchester(no clue how many pounds that is, sorry!)).
I also think that the normality(can I even use that word here?) of being in Manchester has a lot to with, and this is going to sound a bit sappy, my closest friends here. See even though I have only met them a couple of weeks ago I really feel like I have known them all my life( there, I said it...now put away that bucket and throw out those tissues, it was really sweet of me to say that!).
But obviously most of all, and this is going to make you laugh even louder, it has a lot to do with; me! Yes, me! It sounds really self involved I know. But what I mean to say is that people constantly compare things to themself. And when I compare being in Manchester with being in Amsterdam, with the things I was used to, well it's not that different. And also people have a different ability to adapt, one person can adapt himself better to new surroundings than another. And I don't mean to say that I have this amazing ability to adapt, not at all because I actually just told you that things are not that different over here.
So I guess manchester was already close to me, all the time.

Happy f-ing Valentines Mr. Magic busdriver!!

I'm going to try and write about Valentines day without sounding bitter. Without caring about the fact that I never once in my life received a card (at least not a sincere one) and the fact that I never been on a date on valentines day.
I started the day thinking I was just going to try and 'spread' the love. Smiling at people and just being generally happy trying to effect people with it. It worked, shortly, when I smiled at an old lady crossing the street and she smiled back at me. This took me by surprise a little bit, because so far I have not had any response when trying to smile friendly to the people on the street. Generally I think, people here just avoid I contact at all. Not that in Holland everybody says hello to random persons walking by. But still people just seem to be a tad more distance.
The passed without any special happenings. Except for one of my American sending me a happy valentines text. It's sweet, I really appreciate it. But it doens't count because he doesn't like girls.
Admittedly I didn't really expect anything to happen. But still you know this crazy girly/romantic side is always aware of the fact that it is bloody valentines day. It's stupid I know, because there's nothing to it.
Okay time out I'm starting to sound bitter again.
It was a day like any other, just a plain old tuesday. On which I happened to have tickets to go and see Isobell Campbell together with my British mate. I had been looking forward to this ever since I bought the tickets! Amazing, seeign Isobell campbell, oh wait I guess I should update everybody who doens't know who she is. Isobell Campbell used to be a member of Belle and Sebastian, she has an amazingly sweet voice.
And so I left the house to hop on the bus to picadilly gardens (downtown bus station). I had yet to buy a weekly ticket so the first bus to come was pretty much going to be the lucky company to have me as a customer for the next week. It was a magic bus, and no I don't mean it was a magical bus, it was the bus company called 'magic bus'. I got on it and asked the driver if I could get 'a weekly ticket, please'. The reply was not as I expected; 'How much do you want?', the busdriver snapped at me. 'A two pound pass please', I told him. Apparantly the magic bus had several kind of passes, and apparantly the busdriver got very agitated because I didn't specify enough. I apolagized for my ignorance and told him that I didn't know that a weekly ticket could entail several kinds of passes. It was not enough; he showed me the stack of different kinds of passes to point out what I had already come to understand. 'I'm sorry, didn't know that' I told him 'How many times do you want me to apolagize?', it was me who was getting agitated at this point. It was Valentines day, where is the love? He gave me my pass, I went to find a seat. Happy f-ing Valentines day, I muttered underneath my breath.
Great, now the f-ing busdriver had spoiled my mood. I was actually quite happy considering the circumstances, but it had dissapeared like a candybar in the hands of a child. Yes that's right the busdriver had swallowed my mood whole, like a big grumpy monster.
Luckily, I didn't linger on it. I decided I'd let him sit and rot in his pile of anger. I had a nice prospective; Isobell Campbell. And how right was I looking forward too it. Not only were both of the supporting bands really good (The Superkings and Jenniferever), but Isobell Campbell was the bright light on a dark Valentines day (sounding bitter, I know). Her gig was just amazing, I wouldn't have wanted to miss it for the world. Not even if the hottest guy had come up to me and asked me out for the night. Okay it would've been a difficult and very stupid decission, but hey I guess I love music more (it's sad I know, but at least it's not bitter :P).

If you like curry

Let me tell you something about my new neighbourhood: Rusholme. It's located right underneath the are where all the University buildings ar at. Right through the middle runs Wilmslow Road; The throbbing Indian vein of Rusholme, also known as Curry Mile.
It's not hard to see how it got that name; Wilmslow Road is mainly occupied with curry houses; Indian restaurants. That, little food markets and you typical 'a-thousand-and-one-things-to-buy' stores but people mainly go here to buy phonecards, nothing more.
Wilmslow Road is part of one of the busiest roads in Manchester. In the morning the traffic is so jammed with vehicles going towards city centre that it is faster to walk to the University. In the afternoons it's the other way around. So either way, if the weather is good it's best to walk to the University, it's good exercise as well!
Right at the end of curry mile there's a grocery store called Kwik Save. Somewhere behind the Kwik Save is where I live. I obviously won't go into any further details because I don't want all the random people that read my blog to show up at my door(not that I really think there's random people reading my blog. If you are random, and you are reading this PLEASE post a comment!)
The house blocks surrouding the house where I live with my housemates all pretty much look the same; same colour of bricks, same shape (two stories high) and they all look kind of new. Kind of new? Yes, see compared to some other houses I've seen here in Manchester, they look new. But there is something about them that makes them look 'lived'. Wether it's the chipped paint on the woodwork or the holes in the street surroudning them, or maybe it's all the garbage people dispose in their yards, I don't know.
Our yard however is quite clean. But then again it only consists of small grey rocks. The yard of the people living opposite of us however is a whole other story. It does not contain any garbage (at least not that I can see) but it does contain junk. The whole of their backyard is filled with things that I would be ashamed of having to sell in a yard sale. From old pots and pans to an entire army of little action figures, it's worth to take a look at.
I have not yet dared to take any pictures of it though. I'm afraid that I'll be caught red handed in the act. Just to think of what my neighbours will do with me gives me nightmares. 'But what makes you think your neighbours are such dodgy people Fleur?', you ask me? Well that is another story about the neighbourhood I live in.
It's not as scary as it sounds though (I picture my parents reading this and jumping onto the next plain to Manchester to come and pick me up!). It's just the people who seem to live around here don't really look as if they can be trusted.
I mean, it was already clear that it was not some kind of fancy pancy neighbourhood. The people who live there are well, I don't want to use the word poor here, but they're not really rich either. So naturally in this social class (I guess I can speak of social classes seeing as how I am in england), there's gonna be some dodgy people(I guess).
All in all I can really compare it to lving in 'De Transvaalbuurt' in Amsterdam. I'm not afraid to walk through it at night, things can happen to you anywhere. Yes, there's dodgy people, but unless you start to socialize with them I think you'll be pretty much ok. It's better than living in the Halls of residence (University accomodation), but I'll say something aboiut those another time!

What to do when you're bored

Okay sorry, no post that has anything directly to do with Manchester but I had to post this!
I was visiting cuteoverload.com because I have another 30 minutes to go before my lecture starts, when I found the section 'Cats in sinks'. It's a marvelous page with a button that says: "Show me another cat in a sink", how can you not click it over and over again?? Anyway, I had to post this perticular picture:

And now, go quick and visit cuteoverload and click yourself silly with cats in sinks!!

Acting touristy with womans intuition, and four socks!

I finally behaved like a tourist for a day. The weather was sunny and bright, so I decided to walk around town and flash my camera about.
I was already getting into the clicking mood only five minutes after I had left the house. This was no good for me still being confused which way to look when I cross the street. I resorted to foloowing other people across, after first of course having looked at the traffic myself (which means just turning my head random ways; left right, left right...I don't know!).
When I arrived in the city centre I decided not to look at my map. I would instead let my camera guide me; I'd walk wherever I wanted to take pictures. If I would happen to get myself lost I could look at my map anyway.
And so I walked and snapped and walked an snapped. It got me to a square I had never been before. There were three statues on it, one was a bit higher up on some sort of mausoleum thing. There were two guys stanidng in front of it; one of them was a bit higher up on the steps of the mausoleum thing, the other was a bit further away taking the picture of his friend. Brilliant, I thought and without them noticing me I took their picture.
I took a few pictures of the mausoleum thing myself. When I turned around I saw the same two guys, now taking random pictures of eachother. Again, without them having a clue of being photographed I took their picture one more time.
What genuine fun I was having walking about and taking pictures of all these beautiful buildings. I turned corner after corner not caring where I was going and even less whether I was going to get lost. Heck, I even wanted to get lost. And so I turned another corner. Wait a second I thought, I have been here before. Oh crap, I've been going around in circles. Call it womans intuition, call it sheer stupidity, I was not going to get lost this way.
But I didn't want to hurt my head thinking either, having to think about going left or right and which way I had turned the corner before and before etc. So I resorted to keep on going the way I was going; in circles. It would eventually make my route sort of like a flower pattern, I guess. Sounds like womans intuition after all!
The flower pattern brought me to a cathedral! After taking a picture for a fellow 'tourist'; a girl wanted to be photogrpahed in fornt of the cathedral, I went inside.
I got a brochure from a woman who was not just yet too old to be doing volunteer work for the church. She asked me whether I was English. 'No', I told her. She asked me where I was from. 'Holland', I said smiling. ' Ah yes, I think we went through there', she replied.
I must've looked slightly puzzled. This was exactly when I thought that she was on her way to be too old to provide people with information. She was ever so sweet though so I let her finish her story.
She told me 'they' went through 'there'(Holland) when 'they' went to Sweden. 'Aah' I said, 'Yes' that sounds logical. Now she abruptly bagen talking about the church again telling me how it was the widest one in europe. Her tone of voice sounded an alarmingly lot like she was going to be talking for a long time. I smiled, and thought to myself how funny it was that I had got myself stuck with an old lady chatting about a cathedral. So much for womans intuition.
Luckily she let me go soon enough. I walked around the cathedral on my own, amazed by the beauty of everything; the coloured glass, the sculptures, the woodwork, it was all gorgeous! I tried really hard to imagine what it must mean for a religious person to come to a church, but I failed.
After having left the church my womans intuition led me to the area with the shops. Or was it the big 'Arndales Shopping Centre' sign that anyone with bad sight could read from miles off? Either way, I wanted to go home again and from this area I knew how to get to the bus platform.
But not before my womanly urges led me into primark (a cheap department store). I found two cute tops (£4 and £6) and got in line to try them on. 'Two' I said to the uy handling the 'how-may-items-have-you-got' thingies. 'Three, four, five and that makes six' he said and handed me a thingy saying '6' and four socks!!! Completely puzzled I found my way to a fitting room. I didn't bother to ask, but I am very keen to find out whether this is their usual policy.
I bought the £6 top and took the bus home. Acting all touristy had gotten me very hungry and womans intuition only alows stops to eat a clementine you know ;)

Shouting Thai lady, and drunk British people

Last night has to be the stranged night I have had over here so far.
It all started when we went out for dinner (we: me, my American friends and an italian girl; funny how over here you always seem to end up going out with such a random mixture of people). We wanted to go to this one perticular restuarant. After looking at the menu outside we decided that we would indeed be eating here. Alas, we were wrong. When we went inside and tried to find a table to seat 6 people we were told that this perticular place stops serving food at seven. I realise you now want a few seconds to recover from what you've just heard, I myself was that taken aback as well!
So we went to look for another restaurant. We found one, went inside and found that they were still serving dinner. However, there was no table for us. So we were on our way once more.
Then we came along a Thai restaurant. We peered inside to see whether there was still space for us six. We doubted it but when we opened the door one of the waiters almost stormed right upon us. And we had hardly asked if they could seat us when tables were already being put together and we could finally sit down.
After looking at our menu's for a while a Thai lady came to take our order, or shout at us. I'm not really sure which one it was supposed to be. It seemed like she was reprimanding us, for her not understanding English that well.
We ordered drinks, and food, because otherwise the lady would go to another big table and take their orders first. So we thought, we better order food as well. Before she really loses her head.
After we had eaten and payed we were on our way to a certain bar where we were meeting other people. But first the girls dropped of their coats, because that is the British style. Actually British style is dropping of a few more items of clothing than just your coat. But hey, we are only new to this coutnry, we need some time to settle in.
When we came to the bar, we met the other people and almost immediately after that we left again. Not becasue we didn't like the other people, but we wanted to go somwhere else. Apart from the fact that it was already pretty crowded in there, there was also a live band playing and they were not only loud, but very bad!
We went to the bar across the street. This was the complete opposite, it was really quiet (as in few people) and the music was well, commercialistic (to put it nicely!). Nothing much was going on in this bar except for these two British girls that were there. Or better this one girl that was absolutely pissed. She was so drunk that half of her face seemed to be paralized and she kept saying things that made absolutely no sense at all. Supposedly we were going to a house party with her. Luckily this did not seem to be the plan, otherwise my story would've ended here. No way was I going anywhere with a dodgy girl like that.
Instead we were going to a house party somewhere else. But it turned out to be a couple of freshmen (19 yr olds) in a dorm room playing loud music and video games. Not exactly y idea of a party, no. The only fun I had there was singing along with a couple of songs. The alcohol that I had drank that night had already worn of. And so I was to face the horror of all this in full reality. It came down to one thing: I felt really really old.
I stuck around for much too long when I dragged two of my American friends out of there. The guy was going to get Kebab and Chips first and after that we were going home.
So my strange night was over you think? Well, the strangest has yet to come.
Me and the American girl were waiting outside of the Kebab place, which seemed to be more crowded than during the day. A guy came appearing ou of nowhere, which must've been really hard to do because he was absolutely beyond drunk. He interuppted our conversation and asked us where we were from. 'Guess', I said. He started with me, being absolutely convinced I was from Danmark. 'No' I told him, but close. Germany was his next guess. 'Very close' I told him. The next guesses involved almost every country in Europe, except for Holland. It didn't matter, because when I told him that I was from Holland he said; 'No, you're from Danmark. Come on, you know you are'.
Next He tried to guess where the American girl was from. This, I thought must be easier. I was wrong. The guy started out this time with guessing all countries in Europe. After that he named some Asian countries. Even when I gave him clues like; 'A big country' (Russia), 'Overseas/ocean' (several European countries again), 'A stupid president' (Berlusconi, Chiraq etc.), it took him a while to get to Bush. And it took a little longer than expected to link Bush to the States. Hurrah, he had guessed.
Oh well, my night was quite normal after that. Except for the fact that my feet were killing me because I had been walking up and down everywhere in my heels. My beautiful new, second hand heels that I have bought like a week ago. You can admire them on top of this post!

Pictures of my room!

As promised here are some pictures of what my new room looks like. I personally am very very satisfied with it. I love it almost as much as my old room back in Amsterdam Oost! SO without further ado I hereby present Fleur's new habitat:

A short update

Time to update.
I realise I have not posted in a couple of days. But I have no idea how many people read my blog and how often. So I don't know who is out there pining to read some news about Fleur. You can of course always send me an email if you've got the addres. I guess that is really the best way to keep updated, because I try to send a message back almost immediately after I have read one.
I have been to the Belle and Sebastian concert on monday. It was probably the best gig I have ever been to. I was kind of sad to be there alone, but hearing them play was so overwhelming. Thankfully they did not play all new songs but also loads of old ones. You now how you can't have it all when a band has like five albums out. But (and this is for the fans) they played songs like 'me and the major', 'the state that I am in' and 'La pastie de la bourgeoisie'. The best of it all was when they played ' The loneliness of a middle distance runner', it was so beautiful, there are no words for it, I cried a little. I did really, there I was 23 years old, crying at a gig over a song.
No more tears now though. Not much has changed in my student situation. It is still unclear in which department I am in exactly. And now I've been told to try and contact the different teachers of the classes I want to take to ask whether I they'll allow me to take their class. I could become an Erasmus coordinator myself after having been here! That would be an interesting new future career move ;)
I met some more Dutch people yesterday. Did I actually mention the first Dutch person already? She was at the orientation days. But yesterday I was at this market thing buying some posters for my room (which reminds me, I still need to post pictures of it). Suddenly I heard a girl speak and somewhere in the back of my mind a switch got activated. It took me a few more seconds of listening to figure out that there was three people standing next to me speaking Dutch. It was funny how strange it felt to be speaking Dutch in this English environment. But they were not that interesting (all studying buisness or something like that). I hope they'll never read this though, don't think they'll appreciate me calling them not interesting.