A Boy's Trip across the Pond: Musings from the Night Bus

I’m not exactly sure where I’m writing this blog post from right now. It’s just after 3 a.m. and I’m on a night bus going from London to Edinburgh, Scotland. The bus left about four hours ago, so that should put us squarely in the middle of nowhere by now. There’s actually a nice view from the highway, which appears to be on some sort of hill, down into some sleepy towns with their orange bulbs of light off in the distance. Anyway, I was able to get about half an hour of sleep about an hour ago, and I’m hoping that after I’m finished writing I can nod off until the morning. I often take the night train to and from Chapel Hill, and I’ve learned that as long as you don’t expect to get more than four hours of sleep the ride really isn’t that bad. The same principle seems in play on this bus.

Tonight will actually mark the third time in third time in four nights that I’ll be up past 4 a.m.; I’ve fallen victim to the beck and call of my American interests. I took advantage of not having class until mid-afternoon on Wednesday to stay up and watch the State of the Union on Tuesday night. I’d planned to watch an online recording at a later date, but a couple friends convinced me that it would be fun to watch and keep up with the Twitterverse in real time. A couple thoughts on the speech: Agenda-wise, I was really excited about the universal preschool proposal, as well as the threat of executive action on climate change. I think we often underestimate how important early childhood education really is, and it’s a great place for government to step in and provide opportunities for all its citizens.

Wednesday night, of course, was the Duke game. Four out of the five of us in the flat stayed up for the game, which started at 2 a.m. our time. Though we lost, I had a lot of fun watching with my flatmates. We had this moment of Zen where, after twenty minutes of cricket and rugby commercials, we realized we were streaming an American basketball game on an Australian ESPN station while we were in England. As far as the game went, it was nice to see the Heels play well together, and I quite liked the small lineup. Hopefully we can use this game to start to turn the season around. I’m skeptical, but it could certainly happen.

Now, to a couple weeks ago! Two Saturdays ago, we went on a day hike to Box Hill in Surrey. It was an hour train ride south of London, and as you’ll see from the photos, it was absolutely stunning. We got there late morning, and as soon as we got to the trailhead we began this quick ascent to a hill overlooking one of the most picturesque English towns I’ve seen. The views only got better from that, and we ended up hiking until about 6 p.m. on an 8-mile loop. The hike was relatively strenuous—a lot of steep descents and quick ascents, but I luckily wore my boots and did fine. The views were well worth all of that walking—in one day we got to see quaint villages from hilltops, walk through a medieval village, overlook a picturesque vista at sunset, and go rolling down a hill. There were hardly any tourists, just ourselves, some of the locals, and nature. It was a great change of pace to get out and go hiking, especially on terrain like that. I think one of my biggest regrets of college is how little I’ve hiked and gotten out into nature. I love the Piedmont area, and we’re only a couple hours away from the Appalachians, but somehow I’ve only explored trails on very rare occasions. It’s amazing how busy we can make ourselves in college.

A week from Wednesday, I was able to go to the England-Brazil friendly soccer match at Wembley stadium with six people from my program. I found out about the match and purchased tickets in November, so I’d been looking forward to it for a while. It was a great time—Wembley is a dream of stadium, and I was able to see some of the best players in the world face each other. Even though we had nosebleed seats, the view of the pitch was great, and the match was an exciting 2-1 victory for England. I was lucky to sit next to a friend who knows a lot more about European soccer than I do, so he was able to help me recognize the players. Even though we sung “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” for about half of “God Save the Queen,” and my soccer discourse has substantial room for improvement, I felt like just another Londoner that night, supporting his national team play a match of soccer. Perhaps I’ll start calling it “football” one of these days.