Hello, England!

"So we are always courageous; even though we know that while we ware at home in the body we are away from the Lord--for we walk by faith, not by sight." --2 Corinthians 5:6-7, from the Blessing for One Going on Pilgrimage

"The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection." --My passport

An original title for this post, I know. ;) But I'm in England, as of yesterday! It was a long trip to get here--I left the US at 2 pm on Friday and arrived in Sheffield at a little after 2 pm the next day...and there's an eight-hour time change, not in the favour of the one who's traveling. In other words, it had been about twenty-eight hours since I'd slept by the time I went to sleep again. I took two flights--stopping in Frankfurt, where it struck me as ironic that I, an American citizen, was flying to England on a German airline from Germany. Not bad--just ironic. A reminder that I (thankfully) live in the year 2024 instead of 1940, which is, all too often, when my brain resides.

Because I actually flew to Europe and then back (West) to England, we flew over Scotland in the dark on the way to Frankfurt. Seeing the coast lights of the islands, and then Dunbarton, and then Glasgow in the dark, I definitely teared up. 

Fly the plane, Maddie. I'm afraid there are going to be a lot of Code Name Verity references from here on out, because I started rereading it on the plane (again with the German airline flight from Germany irony) AND I love it so much I'd probably reference it even if I hadn't just reread it. (And you wonder why my brain resides in 1940 or thereabouts.) I finished the reread this morning because it was 4:30 AM and my body was like "time to get up" because it's hopelessly confused. And then I ended up freaking out and texting my poor friend (who also just read it) at close to midnight her time being like "OAKWAY! DO YOU REMEMBER OAKWAY?" Because apparently Oakway, which is important in the book, is a thinly veiled reference to the airfield which is now the Manchester Airport, which is where I landed. 

I'm basically living in a book at this point, pretty much.

But I digress massively because I was still telling you about the trip, and I hadn't gotten to Manchester yet, in my rather wandering narrative. The Frankfurt airport was unique and amusing in that firstly we disembarked directly onto the tarmac like in the (pre-2001) movies, and secondly that the signage to get to the inter-terminal trams was in rhyming couplets both in English and auf Deutsch. I speak enough (bad) German that I could have asked for coffee on the plane but didn't and then regretted it because I hate feeling like an American tourist. I'd rather feel like an American traveller, but that Chesterton quote will have to wait for another day. And I am, after all, not a tourist. I live here now...and for the next three months.

(If you noticed the two lls in 'traveller' and also the extra 'u' in 'favour' above, that's because I switched my spellcheck to British English. Mostly because I prefer the two lls in 'traveller', if we're being honest.)

While on the plane from Frankfurt to Oakway (I'm not going to get over that any time soon), I ended up sitting next to the loveliest British couple who reminded me of my paternal grandparents, and who bought me a cup of coffee when I realized I'd left my wallet in my bag that was stowed far enough away that it would have been a pain to get it. I appreciated that coffee. I'm pretty sure that's all that kept me awake on the train to Sheffield. (I only had three cups of coffee the whole trip, and two of them were tiny, on my first flight. Surprisingly good, though.)

At the checkpoint into Britain--which, if you're British, American, European, or a few other nationalities, merely means scanning your passport on a digital scanner--it occurred to me to look at my passport more than just to get the number off of it or decry the fact that in the photo I look like I've just been tortured by not being allowed to sleep for 28 hours (oh wait...) and I found the inscription in the front of it very striking. We think of passports as just the-things-we-need-to-travel-to-foreign-countries but the reason it's such a hassle to apply for one is that it's actually the Secretary of State's pass for you to go to other ports. I had a moment of feeling like a diplomat before I decided that was a bit egotistic. I settled on feeling like a Citizen of the United States which feels decidedly different in a foreign country than at home. 

The train system was 'dead simple', and I caught the trains I needed with about ten minutes to spare each time (yes, I took two trains...and then a bus, whereon I messed up buying the fare I wanted but figured it out in the end, and then sat on the upper deck) and because the train from Manchester to Sheffield goes through the Peak District, I got a sneak preview of the English countryside...and it was absolutely beautiful. Take everything you've seen in the movies and then believe all of it, at least for the countryside, and then add the kind of mountains you'd see on the East Coast (but minus the trees). The stacked-stone walls, the hedgerows, the narrow, winding country roads, the subdivided fields, the 'allotments', and the sheep. There were, truly, so many sheep, and I honestly cannot wait until lambing season starts because I'm pretty sure I, of all people, will somehow manage to wangle access to pet some lambs. The brick buildings and 'back gardens' of Manchester also delighted me--despite the fact that it's quite a modern city, it's still very English, to my eye at least. (Please excuse the very blurry phone photos. They're of the Peak District, as I'm sure you can tell.)

My first impression of Sheffield (on the bus through the city centre) was not quite the same as Manchester (which was "what a British city") but more of "what a European city". It's full of limestone, closely packed streets, hedges, narrow sidewalks, and American chain stores on the ground floor of much older buildings--it reminds me a little of Prague or Krakow. And it's hilly...possibly even more so than where I'm from. I'm living in a nice little flat with five other roommates (we each have our own room but share a living space) at the top of one of the ring hills around the downtown and am quite satisfied with the arrangement. Save for the bathroom, which has already caused me a certain amount of woe, from the fact that it's essentially a shower with a toilet in it (the whole floor and walls are tile, and drained, and there's no separation between the shower and the toilet besides the curtain) to the fact that it didn't come with toilet paper. A fun surprise, but I used the subsequent trip to the store to also pick up some digestive biscuits so all's well that ends well I guess. But the view from my window out over Sheffield makes up for that.

The night before I left, I went to evening Mass with my mom, and our pastor gave me a travel blessing. Here's how that conversation went:

Him: "Are you going on pilgrimage?"
Me: "Um..."
Him: "Okay, we're doing the blessing for One Going on Pilgrimage."
And he wasn't wrong. I will be going on pilgrimage probably for Holy Week and then again later...and I'm going to Oxford at some point in the next few weeks, which basically counts as a pilgrimage. (He knows all of these things, which is why he decided to do that blessing.) But one of the things about the blessing is that it talks about how while one will bring away blessings and graces from one's pilgrimage, one also needs to think about what one will bring to the community of believers in the place to which one is going. I haven't met the community of believers here yet--I'm writing this on Sunday morning, and Mass isn't until this evening, if I go to the Catholic student centre on campus, which is my plan. But I'm still pondering what it is that I'll be bringing to the community here. And I may not even figure it out until I've been there. 

Because I woke so early this morning, I've been writing this post to pass the time until it's light enough to go out and explore Sheffield, but it's dawn now and the doves are clucking and cooing outside my window, so it's time for me to sign off for this morning, get dressed, and take stock of things. I've decided that at least for now I'm not going to stick to a strict Friday posting schedule (although I do plan to post on Friday) because if I have a post ready on Sunday morning, why not post it? Plus, the time change makes it all a bit silly. (Well, to be more accurate, I'm going to post this as soon as I can get the pictures to load, because currently they aren't. (It took until 3:30 pm, but that was because I was doing Other Adventury Things, the tale of which will have to wait for another day.))

I'll leave you with the promise of better photos for the next post, and this Ed Sheeran song, which I listened to with my siblings the night before I left, and which felt like the right 'theme song' for my trip. It made a lot more sense when I realized it was written by a Brit...I was introduced to it via the Home Free version, which is also quite good but absolutely makes it sound like a very American country song. Except that we don't have any castles. So I thought it was metaphorical, but no, I'm pretty sure it's talking about an actual castle, because Britain is Built Different, as the kids say. It amuses me that the same song can be a nostalgic British song and a nostalgic American country song. 

What's your favourite show set in the British countryside? Have you read Code Name Verity, and if so please tell me you got my references? What's the farthest you've ever been from home?