Back into Blogging

Deepest apologies for my month-long blogging sabbatical... December proved to be a bit busier than I had expected. Ironically, my most amazing European stories are those that I've haven't even written yet. Needless to say, I have a ton of catching up to do!

Before anyone gets too confused with where I have been for the past month and where I am now, let me bring you up to speed with my latest travel happenings.

Oh dear, where should I start...

I last left off with stories from my whirlwind weekend in Munich, Germany... which now brings me to a short day trip in Windsor, England.

Merely three days after returning from Germany, Bill and I met up with several other exchange students and our international adviser, Christina Ehlers, for a field trip to Windsor Castle located approximately one hour from the University of Surrey. As the largest inhabited castle in Europe, Windsor Castle is a treat for people of all types (e.g. history buffs, art fanatics, people who just love big buildings, etc.), which made it a perfect destination for our internationally diverse student group.

Starting with a quick walk around the outside of the castle before dusk, we snapped pictures of the sturdy stone walls before beginning our tour of the interior. Having toured nearly every major palace in Europe, I quickly saw the similarities between Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. With ornate gold leaf walls and elegant furniture, Windsor Castle is distinctly British. Originally built in 1070, Windsor has undergone several renovations since its earliest wooden beams were commissioned by William the Conqueror. Though many of the stone foundations presently remain, the castle has been understandably outfitted with all of the modern necessities. (Honestly, does anyone expect the queen to live in the Middle Ages??)

Our tour of Windsor Castle began with an exhibit of Queen Mary's doll house. Queen Mary's cousin, Princess Marie Louise, commissioned a doll house to be built as a present to her aunt. Working with one of the area's top architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Princess Marie requested that the house be built and furnished with only miniature functional items. As you can probably imagine, this project quickly became one of the most extravagant of its time. Famous artists and various craftsmen contributed miniature paintings, furniture, and gadgets for the doll house. Even readable books where typed and bound at one-twelfth their normal size in order to fit on the bookshelves of the house. The doll house was also equipped with modern plumbing and electricity. While marveling at the creativity and ingenuity of the miniature palace, one outrageous thought popped into my head, "I wonder if they can shrink me down to a twelfth of my normal size to check out the wine collection in the cellar..."

Moving from the doll house exhibit, I stepped into a small royal art gallery to view a few pieces of Her Majesty's collection. Though not as large as most art museums, I was incredibly impressed with the plethora of notebook sketches scribbled by Leonardo DaVinci. Besides being an avid fan of the master painter, Da Vinci was much more than a mere artist. In his notebook sketches, his mind seemed to flit from thought to thought much like a child with ADD. In one corner, he may have sketched out facial expressions for the Virgin Mary in his painting "Virgin of the Rocks". While another corner will have schematics for his latest Rube Goldberg invention, and the margins have notes on human anatomy. It's virtually impossible to decipher what Da Vinci was thinking on a particular day because no notebook page seems to follow a specific theme. Looking back, I guess this is probably the best example of "creative thinking".

As much as I despise restoration and redecoration of historic homes and buildings (it destroys the historical integrity of the building), I must admit that there are exceptions and some events at Windsor Castle provide an understandable excuse to re-do a few of the queen's chambers. In 1992, a fire ravaged through the queen's private rooms and quickly spread throughout the castle. After fifteen hours of dousing the castle walls with water, the dying flames revealed nine completely destroyed rooms and over 100 other rooms damaged by the fire. Of course, like any other monarchy, the royal family was determined to refurbish their home to its original grandeur. General public dislike for the British monarchy, however, required them to be a bit creative with funding for the reconstruction project. Though it might sound odd to us Americans, the British have no great love for kings and queens -- particularly the Windsors. The biggest complaint is that they aren't even British. (Yes, it's true. The royal family has a primarily German heritage.) The second biggest complaint is that they are expensive for taxpayers to support. (Would you be willing to give money to an already wealthy family so that they can wine and dine with world leaders?) Facing a large amount of opposition, the royal family needed a way to fund the rebuilding of Windsor castle without using tax dollars. So what would any other European do to raise a bit of fast cash? Open a tourist attraction! Yes indeed, Queen Elizabeth opened the state rooms of Buckingham Palace to tourists and used the admission fees to rebuild her weekend home in Windsor. Though the royal family is taking blatant advantage of unsuspecting tourists, the reconstruction of Windsor Castle took only 5 years to complete and the damaged rooms look as good as new.

Upon leaving our audio-guided tour of the castle, we stepped outside just in time to catch the slightly ceremonial "changing of the guard" on the castle grounds. Though I truly doubt that anyone would be dumb enough to raid the queen's favorite weekend hideaway, I'm sure it's probably good to ensure security nonetheless. With this in mind, have you ever heard the phrase, "Some men are just compensating for something"? This was our exact reaction while watching the guards march from one end of the courtyard to the other. The changing of the guard happens something like this:

Three guards march in perfect synchronization from the guardhouse to their posts along the castle gate. One guard shouts commands while the other two follow silently to the castle gate.

The irony of this situation was that the two silent guards were of average height while the "commanding" guard was the loudest, most annoying shrimp that I've ever seen in my life. Reaching only 5 foot 5 inches in height, he shouted louder and louder as we rolled to the ground laughing at his tiny size. To make matters worse, we pushed Bill (who is well over 6 feet tall) to the forefront of the group so that we could snap a picture of the tiny commander next to a much larger giant. ;)

Noticing our great amusement over the ceremonial guards, an older guardsman approached our group and laughingly asked, "Are there by any chance a few Americans in this group?" Not quite knowing where he was heading with his question, we reluctantly admitted to hailing from the U.S. of A. "Are any of you from Boston?" he asked. Thankfully, we could honestly shake our heads and breath of sigh of relief. "It always amazes me," he continued, "how schools in your country can teach American history when the U.S. is slightly over 200 years old. To us, that is practically current news! So as you can imagine, we've hardly forgotten a little "tea party" in Boston that occurred just a few centuries ago. Now that you've lived in the United Kingdom, I would like to ask you one question. Why would you waste such great tea?" (After becoming a complete tea addict while in England, I must admit that he has a good point...)

After a few hours at the castle, the rest of our evening in Windsor was a nice relaxing chance to browse through the picturesque town and spend some time with our international friends. Though Christina (our adviser) is technically a German citizen, she has lived in England long enough to point us to the best tea and chocolate shops in the southern U.K. Stepping into a shop entitled "Whittards of Chelsea", I was surrounded by some of the best gourmet teas and hot chocolate mixes that I had yet to find in England. Splurging a bit on English breakfast tea and coconut hot chocolate mix, I made myself a promise to visit the company's store in Guildford to stock up on teabags before flying back to the States.

As night began to fall and people became anxious to get back to campus to start studying for exams, we loaded back into the bus and headed back to Guildford. Though Windsor was a only a short trip, it was a great chance to see one last British town before taking off on a three-week tour of Paris, Belgium, and Rome. I had a great time and am incredibly thankful to Christina Ehlers for putting together this incredibly fun field trip!