First email

This is the first email sent out on the 12th of december before I decided to use a blog. Some minor corrections have been made.

Greetings,

I have now been away for more than two weeks, and I'm sure I'm not missed. I arrived first in London and enjoyed a week of constant walking around. I have noticed that because of the smog during the day, and good lighting during the night, the easiest way to tell if it is day or not is too look for shadows (they aren't around during the day). The pedestrians are remarkably well behaved in London, I think this is a direct result of the drivers' behaviour. Almost everything is much more expensive here, though surprisingly, chocolate is cheaper, I have no idea why.

After finishing with London, I caught a train up to Birmingham to meet some friends. After that a subsequent train trips I have concluded that England is made entirely of swamp and is about to sink. Birmingham is just a smaller Melbourne. Next I travelled to York, which was great. It was first build by the Romans as their stronghold of the area. Later Vikings came up patched up the roman walls. Later still the Normans came, decided what was there would do for foundation, and build enormous walls and a castle. The city hasn't changed much since then, there is a wonderful lack of neon signs, and amazingly light traffic in the city center (people tend to treat the roads as walkways, with the occasional annoying car).

After York, I headed further north to Edinburgh. Scotland has nice hills and seems to have rivers instead of just swamp. Edinburgh itself is very grey, and looked rather uninviting when I first arrived. I soon found lots of great parks, walkways and shiny lights that made me change my opinion. The people are very agreeable in Edinburgh, unless you happen to be English.

I have yet to see any snow, I am constantly being told how lucky I am to have such warm weather, it was almost a blizzard just last week. Everywhere there are choirs signing carols, shiny Christmas lights and church bells ringing at random times (you'd /think/ it would be on the hour).

Now I am back in London, with a plane ticket to Frankfurt in the morning. Europe awaits.

Nathan

PS: Pass this on to anyone who is interested (and send me their address).