The Counterfeit Brit
8/18/08
I work with Aussies. The surfer sort. Naturally, up here on the
This little
Bravely, I set out for the
cliff-top slipway headed for the beach. As we reached the cliff's edge, we saw
it was low tide. Really, really low tide. Dogs were
chasing tennis balls where boats usually float. Not that that made any
difference to me; I just wanted to play in the water on a sunny day.
We left our flip-flops on a
rock and headed for the next town, where we'd get in and swim back. Yes, the
next town. These Aussies don't just stick their feet in the water, bob in the
waves, and settle for a sunburn like the prototypical
pale, lumpy Brit vacationer family. These Aussies travel, via flutter kick.
Today it was to be Cromer to Overstrand: two miles, and this was no
We walked on the beach. Then
we walked some more. They brought a rugby ball and let me try to throw it,
American football-style (result: ineffective). We kept walking, and I grew more
and more nervous for the swim, knowing that each step I took farther from home,
the harder I'd have to work to get back. And the breeze off the sea was growing
rather chilly.
We reached the jumping-in
spot, which is really a gross exaggeration of how we entered the water. We
waded. And waded, and waded, and waded, until the rocky bottom was far enough
underfoot so as not to bloody our noses. And it was there, friends, about
waist-deep off the coast of
But unlike silly Jack, who
froze himself to a table, I thought I'd at least give hypothermia a fight by
swimming. (Plus there were no handsome Victorian furnishings available for
clinging.) So the saga began, if very, very slowly. "They usually do this
in 45 minutes?" I thought, convinced my colleagues had grown fins and were simply swimming slowly for my sake. 40 minutes, 20 numb
fingers and toes, a third of the way, and my very first litre of swallowed sea
water into the swim, they informed me the current was pushing us backward.
Lovely, me thought. This explained why the lighthouse
was still where it had been fifteen minutes ago.
And so we swam, and swam, and swam,
until, while treading water for a moment to rest, I scraped my knee in sand and
stood up. This would be the end of our swim; the shallow water stretched out
into the sea for another hundred yards. We walked the rest, digging our feet
into the sand, cutting them on the rocks and trudging against the current,
simply to say that we made it.
Well, we made it. I haven't got
enough oomph in my arms to lift this laptop, my mouth still feels like I've
just eaten six salted pretzels, I'll never get the sand out of my ears, and my
hair (two washes later) still smells like imitation crab meat. Probably I'll
sleep here in this chair tonight because my legs refuse to climb the 17 stairs
to my bed, but, hey, I made it. And I might try it again someday.
The Counterfeit Brit
8/26/2008
Right now, there are gypsies living 50 yards from my bedroom. I watched
them paint their house today.
Yep, true. Thanks to a break in Brit summer camp and the coolest (albeit only)
Hungarian coworker/tour guide/translator/chauffeur/travel agent I’ve ever had,
I’ve made myself a stowaway on her trip home, and aside from living next to
gypsies, I’ve been treated like “herceg no,” a princess.
If you didn’t know I was going to
They. Freaked. Out.
English custom is to shake hands and pretend to be posh. American custom is
to shake hands and decide whether or not to memorize the name of the person
you’ve just met. Hungarian custom, as far as I can tell, is to hug, kiss
cheeks, clap, squeal, smile, give you chocolate, ask
to adopt you, take sixteen photos of you with airplane hair, and speak back to
you as quickly as possible in a language you’ve never heard before. (By the
way, the Hungarian for chocolate sounds like
“chocolate,” which is handy.)
A forty minute car ride southwest of
We arrived home to Albertirsa, a town of 13,000, and after two hours’
drive, five hours in an airport, and three hours’ flight on easyJet,
whose slogan is “no pretzels, just flying,” I was hungry, and when Serena
asked, I told her so.
This is apparently a Hungarian woman’s ideal situation.
Her mother, whom I now call “Anyu,” (“Mom”), waved a
magic pot holder and thus appeared what Nebraskan women call a casserole. It
was miraculously steaming hot, and it wasn’t a sausage, was never a potato, and
it did not necessitate the use of ketchup. After seven weeks of British summer
camp food,
We finally dragged our full bellies and baggage home to Serena’s house.
Compared to my cubby hole under the stairs in the house at the summer camp,
hers is a villa: high ceilings, wood floors, French doors, lush garden,
handmade rattan furniture, and not a portrait of vermin in sight. The entire
living room is the color of an overripe banana, however, and we quickly made
plans to change that.
A thunderstorm broke, so, unable to sleep, we spent two hours enriching my
sparse Hungarian while the Nebraska-esque weather
finished its temper tantrum. The last thing I remember from last night is
wondering, without a decent answer, if I ever imagined I’d sleep sprawled
facedown like a starfish two doors from house-painting gypsies.
The Counterfeit Brit goes to
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 4:54am
I’ve come to understand that foreign travel, no matter how wonderful, will
never go smoothly, and in the end, the best that can be hoped for is that you
and all your valuables sleep under a roof, with bonus points if it’s the same
one.
Because tourist season in
I left the house at a quarter-to-six to catch the sleepy quarter-to-seven train
which would go to another train which would go to another train which would go
to the airport. Usually the walk to the station takes an hour, but due perhaps
to a lack of sleep, I found myself running behind, and was thus privileged with
a jog at sunrise, and thus spent the rest of the day spent marinating in my own
goo. Oh, the mornings for my deodorant stick to break across the bathroom
floor.
When it was time to change trains, I’ve learned my best bet is to ask the
kindly older conductor-types which train to get on. (Note: It helps if you
sound slightly pathetic.) Strategy proved a good ‘un,
and I made it to the airport on time. Sort of. I
didn’t throw any elbows, but I did “Pardon me” my way down the super-cool
moving walkways to get to my gate.
Another note: When you’re running through the corridors of London Stansted, you will be glad you packed lightly. I’ve got one
purse. That’s it. Yes, really, Mom. It’s a big one, mind, but still o-n-e
purse. My allotted airport Ziploc bag of soap, two tops, a
pair of trousers that double as pajamas, a scarf, assorted underthings,
and my laptop. A microfiber cloth is my “towel.” Zero extra shoes,
jewelry, or belts. Let’s just hope I don’t accidentally meet Colin Farrell,
because I anticipate smelling and looking mighty funny by the time I get home.
I got a window seat on the flight, and the clouds broke up, showing me
The sentimental moment ended with the bumpkin English couple next to me
squabbling about airplane hot chocolate is better than airplane cappuccino. I
wanted to tell them to just order tea and shut it like proper Brits. (I get
cranky when I’m the only one without caffeine.)
We landed on time, and I stood in the Non-European Union line at border control
for a half hour. I had a nice chat with the immigration officer (as chats with
immigration officers usually go, as they are world-renowned for their senses of
humor on the topics of controlled substances and foot and mouth disease),
during which I promised I was only staying until Friday sir, yes sir, just
being a tourist sir, thank you sir. In a heartrending display of emotion, he
then wished me an enjoyable stay. Aw.
Outside, the sun was actually shining, and I quickly found a bus to the city
centre. Not just any bus, though – a double-decker one (green of course), and I
got the front seat on the top deck! We rode past groups of Catholic
schoolchildren in uniform, the old
My hostel is right on the River Liffey, and I’m in
the penthouse. I share the room with seven strangers; for $15 a night, you can’t
demand privacy AND having all your valuables (they’re in a locker downstairs.)
As a double bonus, my top bunk is up against a wall of windows overlooking the
river and the roofs of
The Counterfeit Brit
9/16/2008
Last you heard from me, I was in
When the sun broke through the rain Tuesday, I decided to try to find actual
Irish accents and stories, a virtual impossibility in the center of tourist
Most trains allow passengers to sit facing the front of the train or the rear,
and I found myself across from a silver-haired and
actually-Irish-but-not-from-Dublin gentleman for the thirty-minute trip. We
struck up a chat, and, delighted by his animated eyes and lilting voice, I
asked about Ireland (“home”), tourism (“the industry of the country now”) and
the industrialization of Dublin: “We dawn’t get
enough sun in ‘er innywey;
we dawn’t need skyscrapers to block out what we do
get now.”
He hopped off the train one stop before me, but not without wishing me safe
travels, especially since I’m a young lass and alone and all, and wasn’t his
daughter like me once? I headed on, smiling, to Bray, a seaside village, hoping
to find more of the endearing, local atmosphere known everywhere as Irish.
I met more tourists. Swathes of them, but instead of the photo-snapping hordes
of tour bus groups from
Sweating a bit in my new purchase (which wouldn’t fit in my bag and was bulky
to carry) I headed back to the hostel, with hopes of finding a friend to
accompany me out to
We found music all right. Authentic Kentucky bluegrass in the second floor of a
pub which, for reasons we felt better not knowing, smelled like jet fuel. We
didn’t buy Guinness (partly because it would have set us back $7 and partly
because I limit myself to one chemical influence at a time, and the jet fuel
was rather heady.) Had we not had an absurdly ironic chat about how horribly
touristy
Deciding we really couldn’t afford to stay out, we went back to the hostel and
chatted about teaching with Mindy and
On Wednesday and Thursday, I exhausted myself with the sights, especially
everything having slightly to do with writing.
After three days of exorbitantly-priced cranberry and cheese sandwiches, I was
limited to free-admission attractions only, mostly art museums, parks, and
churches. By Thursday, I had seen every piece of free art in
Darn.
I guess I’ll just have to go back someday. When I’m earning a
salary.
The Counterfeit Brit
9/29/2008
Today, I became one of them.
Sort of. Definitely I haven't made any positive contribution to the
community yet, unless you count saying "bless you" to the sneezer on
the subway. Twice. (Call me Samaritan. Good Samaritan.) See, I'm kind of homeless and completely
jobless at the moment, but I'm also doing a fairly good job about not panicking
on either front. Honestly and completely superficially, I'm a bit more
concerned that all the clothes I've brought are brown or blue (friendly colors
for little foreign kids at summer camp) and
Not that I haven't launched myself faithfully, even wearing
earth tones, into the job/house hunt. I started in the neighborhood my hostel's in – south of ritzy
And here's where my résumé fails me. My only food service
experience is two years in Esch's deli wrapping
cantaloupe, I don't know the difference between a cabernet sauvignon and a
merlot, and "Likes coffee a lot" isn't quite the same as "Can
build a venti skim macchiato with foam in
five-point-eight seconds."
So when I walked into The Java Bean to enquire about the
barista position advertised in their super-giant front windows, the manager
seemed a bit surprised at my experience teaching English and cleaning cars and
altogether blasé at my lack of barista-ing.
"So do you have any experience with coffee at
all?"
Apparently "I drink lots of it and am a quick
learner" is not the right answer. I got a "We'll call you," and
decided to remain hopeful, but keep looking. I bought a cup of their joe out of curiosity, and it was
the tastiest the
In the likely event that they don't, I scouted the rest of
This was a decision point. How desperate for a job am I,
really? Desperate enough to smell like old chips for minimum
wage? I could probably have this job soon; small businesses have loose
application processes. In the face of indecision, I did what my mother would
do. I gave it the sniff test. Stuck my nose in and inhaled.
Now, I'm no princess. But it smelled like a five-day job:
I'm not going back there unless I'm still jobless in five days.
It was starting to get dark, and businesses were closing,
so I opted for window shopping for "work wanted" signs in Notting Hill. I found a "Waiter/Waitress Required" sign in a Turkish café called "Manbara," and handed my résumé to two friendly chefs.
No, the manager was not in, and I picture him tossing my English-teacher résumé
out with the leftover salad tomorrow morning.
Just as my barista/shopgirl
dreams were sliding down the Tube, a tiny advertisement in a shop window spoke
hello. "Sales Assistant Wanted – Experience in Hairstyling Useful but not Required." Inside, rows and rows of Styrofoam heads
with fake hair stared across the room at each other. A wig
shop.
Perfect. I lived in my mother's beauty shop for seventeen
years. I can spot a bad perm from a hundred yards, and a bad color job from
two. I don't know how to put that on my résumé, but I'm going in that shop
tomorrow, whether I'm in earth tones or not.
The Counterfeit
Brit
10/07/2008
This summer, I went paragliding
300 meters above
That was nothing compared to the
flying-by-the-seat-of-my trousers I've done in
You may have laughed last week,
but I was facing homelessness and joblessness in a city that has thirteen times
more people than my entire state in the middle of a worldwide credit crisis and
housing market crash and with no plane ticket home, nor job nor car when I got
there. What to do?
I went looking. I scoured the
streets of Notting Hill for shop jobs and left my
résumé (here called a CV) in every single one with a "Hiring" sign in
the window (minus the greaserie that failed the sniff
test). I applied in a Turkish restaurant, four hotels, four paper stores, a wig
shop and seven coffee shops. A shop selling blenders was hiring, so I wandered
in and had a look around. In a move that had become routine, I smiled and
handed over my CV. I got an on-the-spot interview.
Yes!
The owner, Mark, led me to an
office under the stairs and we sat in folding chairs. (Classy.)
He asked a few questions, I gave
a few answers. I told him I'd worked in a grocery about the same size as his
store, and, though my CV says I'm a teacher, I know all about inventory,
customer service, product handling, shelving and store care. He liked me. I
could tell. This was good.
But then he said, "Are you
a teacher? When will you go back to teaching?"
"Well, um, actually..."
This was the time to tell him I have to leave in December because my visa's up.
I braced myself and broke the news.
Apparently this broke the deal.
No way was he going to hire me, only to have me ditch him right before
Christmas, the busiest time for retailers.
Because Mark and I had
established a pretty solid relationship in two minutes, I decided to exploit
his business-y mind for a minute, and asked question that had me on the brink
of panic all week.
"Is anybody in retail going
to hire me?"
He winced. He didn't have to say
no. I nodded, apologized for taking his time (because Brits apologize for
everything), thanked him for his help, and left the blender store. On my way
out, he called, "Do you want your CV back?" Ouch.
The wig shop hadn't called. Neither
had any of the 234 agencies I'd visited or employers I'd e-mailed. I got six
"Nice try, honey" e-mails in four days from staffers and hirers, and
I was starting to panic.
For those of you thinking about
moving to
I wanted to cry. I wanted my mum, er,
mom. I wanted my American accent back, and to drive my own car on the right,
and to have a job and a place to live. I almost even wanted to pay taxes.
And that's when Capita Education
Staffing appeared in front of me. Well, on the right of me, but since I've been
scouring shop windows all week, I couldn't miss it. "We want
teachers!" it said in the window, sweet as a light-up Valentine's card
with "BE MINE" in pink glitter singing that "Ooh I Want
You" song from 1998.
I waited for
Teaching. Duhh. And the pay is three
times what a shopgirl makes. I have an interview
tomorrow morning, and I've contacted three more teaching agencies, just in
case. Whew.
I'd have rather gone
paragliding.
The
Counterfeit Brit
10/14/2008
I moved to
I'd been trying to plan my
move to
On Tuesday morning, I went
to my visa agency for help in both the "I'm Homeless in two days"
category. They have a wall of postings, and I scoured it. My eye stopped on a
green card, a house looking for one female to occupy a room in a family home
north of Kings Cross Station. It was at the top of my limit, price-wise, and I
wasn't sure about moving into a family situation, but homeless Americans can't
be choosy. I rang the number on the card, and the woman and I arranged a
viewing for later that afternoon. I got directions and went early to survey the
'hood. It's still in London (zone 2), about a fifteen-minute Underground ride
to Holborn, but just out of the reach of tourists and
their extortion-level shop prices. It was no
I found the house easily
("easily" defined as "asking for directions fewer than 17
times"), a red-brick Victorian rowhouse.
When I buzzed the buzzer, a
smart-looking woman answered and shook my hand, and I quickly found that this
house was NOT the typical Victorian inside. Someone fun clearly lived here:
contemporary paintings, violins propped in armchairs, a bright orange chaise,
and bookshelves enough for
At the event, which
disappointed, with 50 potential tenants for 4 landlords (though I cared little
as I got a free glass of wine), I found an Aussie with rent 25% less than the
house in
In the mean time, Katrine in trendy Hammersmith found me on easyroommate.com.
She e-mailed photos of her flat: a gorgeous place to live, in an unbelievable
location. She was ready for me to move in right away,
and right within my price range.
She also wanted me to send
800 pounds to
My "scam, Kerri,
scam!" light went off, and I told "Katrine"
she'd almost had me. Also I said I would be forwarding her e-mail to
appropriate easyroommate personnel. (I didn't, but
hiding behind my e-mail address makes me brave.)
So it was the cheap house,
then. It wasn't easy to find (28 instances of "sorry, but where am
I?"), and it was a 90-minute wander to a Tube station (I've heard it's 20
if you know where you're going). The neighborhood was beautiful, though, and
the house even more so– massive living spaces and windows.
"My room" had a double bed, wood floors and stained glass in the
door. I was sold. I arranged to move in on Saturday, and took a bus to stay
with a sweet friend in nearby
Friday, they phoned. The
room would not be available for two weeks. Also, I would need a massive down
payment, and the monthly bills totaled more than the Finsbury
room. Engage panic mode.
I phoned the woman with the
orange chaise and violins. I apologized for the short notice and, in a trick
only owning a small business could teach me, I promised to pay in cash. I moved
in on Sunday, and they treated me to a beautiful dinner and continue to make me
laugh. The girls let me help with their homework, and there's even a guitar to
play. I'm home at last.
The Counterfeit
Brit
10/21/2008
You wouldn’t
think it, but there is a difference between “employed” and “working.” The key
difference between the two is that the latter produces income.
And here I am, somewhere uncomfortably between the two because my lovely
staffing agency hasn’t filed my paperwork yet. Urgh. I’m not impoverished,
but cautious, which has been my basic budget since I moved away from the “Pleeeease, Dad?” financial plan years ago. I’m used to
“shoestring,” and it’s especially fun in
1. “Just looking.” Walking is free, and the best way to meet a city is simply
to look at it. Study how Londoners drive (certifiable insanity required), what
people are carrying, what they’re reading, and you will see and hear and smell
how
2. Cheap-but-incredible theatre. I celebrated my employment with a ticket to
see Kenneth Branagh (of modern Shakespeare fame)
perform in Tom Stoppard’s version of “Ivanov.” It was magical, and Kenneth actually gazed at me
during the second scene. Not because I’m beautiful, but because I was propped
against the back wall in an electric green dress right underneath the EXIT
sign. See,
3. Only in
4. The bus. Yes, I love the expediency of the Tube, but it doesn’t fit a
shoestring budget. The latest mayor of
5. Public libraries. They have books, and I like books. Especially
British ones. If you want to take one (or nine) home, all you need is
some type of snail mail with your name on it to prove you live nearby. Most
have free computers and internet access, as well as DVD and CD rental. Added
bonus: sitting in a public library for an hour is chicken soup for your faith
in literacy and English education.
6. Charity shops. These are like
7. Torture-chamber shopping. If you absolutely MUST engage in consumerism, go
in, run your fingers through the fabric, touch the buttons, frustrate the staff
by trying on every pair of shoes in the department, but “accidentally” leave
all your money at home. Torture, perhaps, but financially savvy.
And when a tourist asks you for directions on
The Counterfeit Brit
11/04/2008
I'm in
To get to my part of town, you'll have to take the
Underground from the airport. Probably you'll smell funny when you arrive after
an overnight flight from the States, so you won't care how the people squished
in your train car smell.
When you come up from the Underground,
find the place where all the buses are parked, but I'd recommend you walk past
them. (If you come out the wrong exit, just keep making left turns. You'll get
there eventually. Then take a left at the car detailing business (yes, I
considered applying there), past the yellow plywood building selling fried chicken
and the bar with live music on Thursdays. You'll start to smell the fishmonger
four stores away, and walk past the cheap furniture places and barbers, the
tiny, florescent-lit foreign grocers and magazine vendors. It's about a mile to
my house, and to get there, you'll see the following:
-12 dry-cleaners that also sell cheap luggage
-four a pound-an-hour computer
labs that also sell phone cards and donuts
-24 places to buy fresh fruit and vegetables from someone
who doesn't speak English but makes sure to say "hello," anyway
-two Tesco franchises (corporate
grocery stores where computer scanners say "Hello. Pleasescanyouritems," in the
cheesiest of Brit accents.)
-a vegetarian Indian restaurant I'm dying to try
-a grocery store that sells 4969 varieties of halloumi cheese, canned goods that have labels in Turkish,
and the best fresh bread around
-three charity stores that sell
cheap books and excellent Halloween costume materials. They also send proceeds
directly to people in my borough. Cool.
-one book shop
-one library (They know me there.)
-33582 places to buy kebabs and falafel
-234 beverage facilities, selling pints and/or cuppas
-one fish-and-chips shop and
-6,000 Victorian rowhouses – drab
brick of course, save one that's bright yellow, and whose owners I'd duly like
to meet. Like most of "old"
If you fancy a trek, continue up my street to huff and puff
up the hill. It's worth it. From the top, you can see the City skyline through
the quickly-falling autumn leaves, a view highly recommended early in the
morning or at sunset. The view also means property gets more expensive, and the
average income of the populace gets bigger.
Thus, when you pop over the hill, you'll find yourself in
an area akin to a British version of
So are Americans. Do come visit.
It's nice here.
The Counterfeit Brit
11/10/2008
Last Saturday, I rolled out of bed a little groggy, made
some instant coffee (to which I've begrudgingly adapted), and read my pre-game
reports for the Huskers' face-off with
Next, I hit an aerobics class across the street. I've never
liked exercising in front of people, and especially not in a room with mirrors
for walls, but four months of fried potatoes had settled on my rear. Desperate
times call for desperate measures, and these "measures" were
officially named "Sweating with Tina," and unofficially named
"Satan is Alive and Inhabiting the Taut Body of Your Aerobics
Instructor."
After a loooong stretch, some
whining, and a shower, I headed downtown to meet friends at an art museum for
the afternoon. Six of us - three Canadians, two Spaniards, and me – wandered
around the Tate Modern for three hours. (I love
A note about modern art: if you try to take it too
seriously, you'll annoy me.
A warning about me: In a museum of modern art, I'll
probably annoy you. I rename the pieces. Among my favorites: "I Egged My
P.E. Teacher's House Last Halloween," "Oops," and "Alf:
Self-portrait."
My friends were hungry, so we got Japanese noodles at a
restaurant next door to a pub that William Shakespeare was known to frequent,
and I sat across from a four-year-old
We hurried out of the restaurant to stand outside
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to "Remember, remember, the fifth of
November" with an enormous fireworks display. Guy Fawkes Day commemorates
annually the public burning execution of a Catholic revolutionary during Queen
Elizabeth's Protestant reign. Most neighborhoods celebrate
When the fireworks were over, the crowd's attention fell on
the dome of
The words continued as we joined the masses milling about
the narrow streets, looking for a pub or a Tube station, whichever we found
first. Lured perhaps by the poetry appearing on its dome, we wandered behind
We hopped on the Tube and went to