Catch-up and release

Well, I haven't written here in about 15 days, so this will be a bloody long catch-up blog. I know everyone who reads this is just drooling over all the elaborate details I include of my travels, but you'll have to forgive me for sumarising my last 15 days or so as briefly as I can (although I'm quite shit at being brief). Geez, Idon't even know where to start. Well my last days in Hamburg were spent doing more sightseeing and getting to spend another day with Sandra. I visited the dowtown and the red light distrrict some more times, checked out the harbourfront some more, went to the spice museum, a really posh English Language cinema, the student-boho area, the biggest and oldest cemetary in Hamburg, and a bunch of other stuff that is apparently eluding my mind right now. Before leaving Hamburg Iswitched CS hosts for a night and spent a night at a man named Jörg's house. It was really amazingly fab to spend the night at his place, because he took me to a super posh spa where he had a pass and I went swimming and had a sauna and a steam. Sauna's are a huge part of German culture in the big cities, especially in Hamburg, so it was realy great to go. I felt very pampered and relaxed. Then afterwards we went back to his place and he´cooked me dinner and we had a bottle of gluwein. I really enjoyed spending so much time in Hamburg and getting to know the city. It is really unique in that it has 2 lakes in the middle of downtown, and a river. There are more canals in Hamburg than Venice, which makes for a really crazy city layout. In my frantic search for work I stopped only applying for work in Germany and began sending out resumes to everyone and their brother. I finally (FINALLY) found a job at a fancy litle Inn in Cobham, England. It's a small town South-West of London and the Inn is very historic (over 150 years old) and beautiful and had just lost of bunch of staff, so they were anxious to get me there right away and I booked a flight on the 8th from the Hamburg-Lubeck airport to the London Stansted Airport. The morning of my flight I woke up early to double-check all my luggage and then took a train to the Hamburg train station, then a train to the Lubeck train station. The thing about buying tickets from the cheap flight airlines is that you never fly from the major airports, and the "Hamburg Lubeck" airport was actually an airport outside of Lubeck, which is a town almost an hour outside of Hamburg. I had time to kill before my evening flight so I did a bit of sightseeing in Lubeck, which is a really adorable German town. At the Lubeck train station I had my last glass of German Gluwein then took a train to the airport.
I took a plane to the Stansted airport outside of London and went to the customs desk (like everyone) to get through border patrol to the UK. The guard at the patrol desk asked all the standard questions and I gave my usual answers ("where are you planning on going?" "oh well you know, just taveling around" "when do you plan on leaving" "I'm not sure yet, I'm just sort of adventuring around" etc).' I got worried when he started asking more and more questions, and then called over another customs officer to ask me questions as well. They eventually said that they needed to know more things and they asked me to wait to be interviewed by another customs officer. I tried not ot panick, but when they brought me into a "holding room" (aka: jail) where a customs security officer expained what would happen in my questioning. Over the next 5 hours I was detained, questioned, had my bags searched and some of my posessions temporarily confiscated, was fingerprinted, questioned, and made to wait in the holding room for a long time (aka: purgatory). The customs security officers were really nice and gave me tea and a sandwich, and the customs officers were pretty much Satan and questioned me about the most outlandishly invasive personal things, and made me feel more criminalised than I've ever felt in my life, including when I was doing things that were actually illegal! The worst thing was that this one walrus of a woman who kept questioning me would say over and over "you know, we're not trying to punish you for being young and impulsive, but..." and it took all of my willpower not to yell at her, "that's EXACTLY what you're punishing me for!" After 5 hours of detainment and questioning I was informed that I would be rejected from the border (on the grounds of not having prvided enough information about my travels and not having a return ticket home to guarantee I would be leaving the UK) and placed on a 6:30am flight back to Hamburg. Until the flight I was forced to stay in the holding room with the other rejectees. Around 2 am I crampedly curled up on the bench and tried to sleep a bit, but there was a South Afican man who was detained (I eventually found out) because he had forged his passport, and he kept yelling about the injustice of him being detained and fingerprinted and trying to argue his way out of there ALL NIGHT! At 6:30 I was put on the plane back to Hamburg via the Lubeck termnal and arrived there having no idea where to go or what to do. I took the bus back to Hamburg proper feeling dazed, tired, and thouroughly pissed off. My only comfort was the realisation that I did the exact opposite of the Beatles and was ejected from the UK to Hamburg instead of the other way around (only I wasn't arrested). I eventually made up my mind that the only way for me to stay in Europe for longer was to work, and I would get my shit in order and try again to get through the UK border so that I could work at the job that was lined up for me (by the way, by this time I had talked to the Assistant Manager at the Inn, Fiona, and told her what was going on so they knew not to expect me right away). I found an internet cafe and managed to book a flight to London (another 50 Euros wasted) but it wasn't until the next day, and after all this giant wasting of all my non-money I decided I couldn't afford to stay in a hostel for the night and would instead just stay awake (again) instead. I did some research into different flight companies that fly from Europe to Canada to find the cheapest possible flight home. You can only stay in Europe for 3 months out of 6 and the UK for 6 months out of 12 and both hose times simultaneously end around March 28th, so I looked for a ticket near then. I bought a return ticket to Canada from London (March 26th) for actually a pretty good deal, and then spent hours printing out banking information, tickets, emails from friends in the UK, and other such proof that I wouln't secretly immigrate to the UK and drain all their resources (or something). I spent the majority of the night in a Kebab restaurant chain-drinking coffee and writing delusional thoughts in my journal. The next morning I dragged my haggard carcass onto the bus to the airport, and when through all the motions of the flight again. At the UK border I presented my portfolio of documents suggesting that I am a lovely person and not a terrorist and this time I (FINALLY) got through. The airport was really crowded and I had to wait in line for over an hour for a bus to London holding my giant backpack on my back the whole time (groan, death), then I took a bus to the London train station, then a train to Cobham. The Cedar House Hotel sent a taxi to the train station to pick me up. The hotel was in chaos because they were holding a wedding (then dinner then dance) and had to people call in sick and were understaffed in the first place. Despite the fact that I hadn't slept in 3 days and was legally dead, I went to my room (small but nice) to shower and change, and then worked from 3 to about 10:30pm at which point I actually did die. Since then Ive been working at the restaurant at the Inn, getting to know and make friends with the other staff members, and explore the adorable town of Cobham where the Cedar House is. Some fun facts: The Cedar House Hotel was built in 1450 and is beautiful and old and very fancy. Cobham is a really precious old town that kind of reminds me of an historic, British, more adorable Gravenhurst. It is located in the Surrey County (South-West of London, near Kingston), which is famous for being the most posh county in England and has a very uppity native accent. The Cedar House Hotel has a small staff of really great people that I'm enjoying spending time with . My new friend here named Tytti is staying at the hotel too, and she's a gyminst! Cool! I've had 2 days off so far, and have spent them visiting London, seeing some sights, and hanging out with Nikki again (yay). When cruising around the Covenant Garden market area looking for used bookshops, I found the London China town! It was right smack dab in the middle of Chinese New Year's, so the place was all decked out in lanterns and streamers. I was really excited to walk around the place and eat in one of the really deceently-priced-considering-it's-London-Restaurants. I liked it so much that when I came back to London on my next day off with Tytti and Goshka (2 girls from the Cedar House) and two of Tytti's Finnish friends in town for the day, I took them to China Town so we could all have lunch there. London has FANTASTIC Chinese food! I also had dinner the first night with Nikki at an amazingly cheap and great Indian restaurant in the southern (aka:more ghetto) part of London. The restaurant is BYOB so we bought a bottle of wine to go with dinner, then pigged out on yummy curries and naan. I got to see Big Ben at night for the first time; it's so pretty all lit up and gothic looking. Basically I've done a lot of great London exploring on my days off, and on my days on I've spent time hanging around Cobham and reading one of the many books I purchased in London. I love that I don't have to worry about carrying everything on my back right now so I can buy as many books as I damnwell please. The most exciting bit of news, however, is that today I managed to get a Cobham library card so that I can come to the library (like right now for instance) and use their internet, and also borrow books. I've borrowed some books on England so I can read up about my surroundings and decide what I want to visit on my off days of adventuring. So, despite my harrowing peril at the UK border, I'm actually the most settled I've been this entire trip, and will be living and working in my cute little Inn, and still managing to adventure around as much as possible.