Bloggo Settimo: Because you asked, a blog especially for thee, dear Beth P!

In a time during which I should be focused on my seminar for the fall, I am instead getting myself mired even deeper on the best way to spend fall break. If you have read my last post you’ll see that I am wrestling between a trip to Slovakia/Croatia and one to Italy. I have just added a third possibility. Scandinavia.

It all began a few weeks ago, when to my delight Grethe Boe, an excellent alum (excuse me, Beth, ANOTHER excellent alum) who lives in Oslo got in touch with me after many years. We are trying to decide upon when to see each other, and where. Should Grethe come to London, should Jack journey to Norway? Jack of course has been longing to go to Norway for decades, so he has been researching inexpensive ways of doing it. It’s a bit tricky as Grethe is a busy woman. She has some time in early September, and I have been trying to squeeze a trip into what is for me a busy time and probably an important time to be in London (it’s the beginning of a semester, after all), rather than galavanting through gorgeous (gorges?) fjords while pondering the plays of Ibsen and glorying in the music of Grieg.

If I head to Norway I’d like to visit Bergen as well as Oslo, and I would like a good look at the countryside. There is a one-day trip called Norway in a Nutshell that Rick Steves and other travel guides recommend, but it’s a 22 hour trip from Oslo, exhausting even for me, and I suspect that while I could see Bergen I would JUST see it, and be pushed forward quickly towards the next destination. So, hard as I try to work out a four or five day trip I’m wondering if I shouldn’t take more time, and add Stockholm (another excellent alum, Maria Sylwan, lives there) and/or Copenhagen – no alums there, but it’s, well, “wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, friendly old girl of a town…”

I had actually planned a trip through Scandinavia for spring of 2006, during my last sabbatical, but my mother was in the late stages of pancreatic cancer, and it was fairly clear to me that I should be at her side. After all, Scandinavia could wait. And it was going to wait until the end of my current sabbatic leave, in the form of a glorious month-long journey north, culminating at the solstice in some beautiful place or other in the far north, for a glimpse of the midnight sun. Then I began adding up the costs of such a trip. Even for a frugal traveller like myself, the most budget friendly version of the trip was beyond the budget of Dottore Gianni. I also discovered that in order to get retirement checks coming in on time, to get medicare started etc, I really needed to be back in the U.S. by mid-May. So much for my grand northern tour.

But I might be able to make a version of it work over fall break. The flights are so ridiculously inexpensive that I could fly to one of the three focal points (Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen) and then fly between them. I can fly from Gatwick to Oslo in mid-October for £12.99 on Ryanair! But would attempting that in 10-12 days also be pushing it?

What shall the good doctor do? Shall he search for his roots? Return to bella Italia? Or head towards Scandinavia? Or will he muck it up even further by coming up with yet another plan for fall break? Stay tuned, and you may just find out!

Bloggo Terzo: Heading to the U.K. and a Preview of a Highland Fling

It’s been quite a summer on several fronts (medical issues, sorting out retirement, social security, medicare, etc), but I’ll focus in this post on getting Jack to the U.K. Britain has recently changed its visa requirements, causing a scramble of activity from ICLC, particularly Bill Sheasgreen and Claire Mokrauer-Madden, to get Dottore Gianni a Tier 2 Work Visa for a full year in the U.K. They started work well before the summer, and their request was denied twice before finally being accepted. Then we had to make sure that my end of the deal, the application for the visa, the appendix to the application, biometrics, proof of pay from Ithaca College for the last 12 months etc etc etc (I COULD go on) was in order. And processed in time to get me to London before the fall semester began.

I was moderately frantic through the whole process, calmed a good bit by Claire’s and Bill’s confidence (seeming confidence?). I was introduced to SKYPE during the process in a 90 minute chat with Claire. It wasn’t a complete skype success because I could see her but she could not see me, but the substance of the chat was more than worth it, as we went through, line by line, the application and the appendix (appendix FIVE but who other than I is counting? So now I do skype! No more details (certainly not my skype name!) from the process. Suffice to say that on Monday 20 August I was informed that I now had a U.K. entry permit and on Tuesday t21 August I received my passport with the all-important page containing the visa in it. That seems like some time ago, though last time I checked today is Wednesday 22 August! WHEW!

Later in the day I was finally able to purchase my round-trip flight to London. I leave the U.S. on 27 July and return on 7 May 2012. I have been partially packed ever since graduation – in other words I am keyed up about my last year in academe, my full year based in London and traveling to several other places during my residence there.  As the blog is primarily a travel journal, in the weeks leading up to my flight from the U.S. (there’s a double meaning in that!) I’ll describe some of the places I intend to visit. And if you care to comment, please make suggestions as to what I should do in these places (I have a lot of good ideas but am always open to more), what other places I should attempt to visit, and any other thoughts you have for the good professor.

As I noted in my introduction to the blog, I have already completely booked a “highland fling.” I did a day trip to the Highlands with one of my favorite alums, Jessica Martenson, a few years ago, and it was fun, but a bit of an exhausting race to see how many sights we could see in 12 hours.

But this time I'm giving it a week. Let me tell you a bit about it. I leave London (after I’ve got there of course, heh heh) on 11 August and train to Glasgow. I’ve never been to Glasgow, even though it’s only an hour from Edinburgh, a place I’ve been many times as many of you know, some from direct experience. I was convinced that in all my trips with students to Edinburgh, if I chose to spend an afternoon in nearby Glasgow, that would be just the afternoon on which a student would break a leg (and I don’t mean that in its theatrical sense) falling down Arthur’s Seat. That has happened, but not on my watch fortunately!

So I’ll spend the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th there, staying in a hotel named Rennie Mackintosh City Hotel, designed by and named for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, famed Scottish architect, engineer and designer, who specialized in Art Nouveau.

I’m also taking a day train trip from Glasgow to Oban, from what I understand one that abounds in scenic views, to lunch on excellent fish (Oban is known as the seafood capital of Scotland) and to wash it down with a tasting at the Oban Distillery, home to a fine single malt Scotch!

From Glasgow I head to Inverness in the highlands, which I will also investigate, and from which I will take two other day trips: one to the Isle of Skye, the other to the Orkney Isles where I’ll see places like Skara Brae inhabited as early as 3200 B.C.!

From Inverness I head down on 18 August to Dundee on the sea, primarily because it’s close to Edinburgh, but also to nose around another interesting Scottish town. Then on 19 August I arrive in Edinburgh in time to meet the students at Waverley Station, on my last excursion to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Of course I’ll provide a more detailed account after I’ve finished, but…that’s Hrkach’s Highland Fling!