Day 133, 19 May: Traveling with 'Hunger Games'

Norfolk Terrace, UEA, Norwich, Day 133. Traveling with Hunger Games  

The night was awful. Really awful.

Phase 1: realized my body isn’t adjusted to a ten o’clock bedtime. Stayed up reading.

Phase 2: fell asleep by 1…then a strong Spanish accent keeps going on and on at 3am. I hear a chorus of ‘shut up’’s in the room. Realized I wasn’t dreaming.

Phase 3: Windows were open to air out the 30-person room (and most of the beds were filled). Heard drunken singing and talking from the street. Guy below me closed windows. If there was a smell, I didn’t notice anymore.

Last Look at Edinburgh (and the Hostel) In the Morning

 And to bed. Until 8am. That was four hours of solid sleeping. Luckily, I managed to do well all the same and after a decent breakfast of Scottish oatmeal, toast with jelly, and orange juice, I bore the cold all the way to the Waverley train station situated between Old and New Town in Edinburgh. A glimmer of possibility had arisen this morning that maybe I should go inside Edinburgh Castle, but I waved it away. No offense, but I had seen many castles and having to face the cold (which makes me shiver even with four layers on) for a long time just wasn’t desirable. I felt the first symptoms of a cold today.

            After the initial disorientation, I was on the train at Waverley (I thought of Sir Walter Scott and really, somehow literature appears everywhere on these trips) Train Station and was off.

            The entire time, both the train to Peterborough and transfer train to Norwich, I never slept. I read. At the first hostel, there was a book swap area and one book caught my eye: The Hunger Games. Yes. I traded Jane Austen’s Emma for it. On the train, after finishing the last forty pages of Stephen King’s Different Seasons, I read The Hunger Games. I found it eerie looking at the ad in front of me which said ‘Watch the Games!’ (meaning the Olympics but still).

            Once I made my way to the door of my flat, the first face that greeted me wasn’t human. It was a dog. Gemma’s dog was there for a day and it made for a nice greeting too. Then I saw Gemma, Marie (she heard my voice from the ‘laundry drying’ room), Alvin and Dan. I talked to Matt later in the kitchen about Edinburgh and how it felt like being in Harry Potter, in a way (J. K. Rowling actually wrote her books at the Elephant Café in Edinburgh, but I didn’t see it). Later in the kitchen, in comes Alvin and Dan, fresh from the pub and teeming with excitement that went down in the Champions League Final (football game) between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. Chelsea won and wherever Vinnie was in Edinburgh (he went up today), I knew he was just loving it. After that, I settled down for the night and read more Hunger Games.