Greg Wesson's Esoteric Globe

I am in Cardiff in Wales. I ventured down for the weekend from Birmingham, mostly because it looked close on the map, though I have since found out that the train from London to Cardiff is quicker than the train from Birmingham to Cardiff.

Last night I wound up having a few pints in a bar called Cuba. In the bar there was a band playing called Honey Fungus, an acoustic duo from Wales. One of the songs they broke into was Hotel California. I smiled, because back in 2002 I was in another place called Cuba listening to that exact same song.

Sometimes songs that you hear when you travel are bound to end up sticking in your head and always reminding you of that place.

Sometimes it is because you hear the song when you are there. For example, Two Princes by The Spin Doctors reminds me of Shawnee, Pennsylvania. I went there when I was in university for a our spring break with a bunch of friends. We were at the bottom of the ski hill (yes, there is skiing in Pennsylvania, but it's not great) getting ready to head up the hill for the day. A radio was playing from the lodge. The song Two Princes came on. At the end of the song, the DJ came on and said, "man, I love that song. I wish I could hear it again. Hey, wait a minute! I'm the DJ. I can play it again." And then he proceeded to play the song a second time. It was so bizarre that me and my friends all started laughing, and now whenever I hear that song, I am back at the bottom of the ski hill in Pennsylvania.

The Ketchup Song by Las Ketchup reminds me of Chile. I was on the Navimag ferry between Pto. Montt and Pto. Natales in Chile. One night a couple of Australian girls tried to teach me to dance the Ketchup dance to the Ketchup Song in the bar / disco of the ferry.

I had similar experiences with The Soca Boys' "Follow the Leader" during my trip to Mexico in 2001, Wonderwall during a trip to Whistler 1997, or Let's Get It Started by the Black Eyed Peas for Costa Rica 2004.

Other times, it's because of lines in the song. When I was in China, I remember humming Beautiful Day by U2 a lot to myself, mostly because it contains the lines "See the world in green and blue, see China right in front of you."

I spent a year working in New Jersey just outside of New York City. There is a ton of references to New Jersey in the song "Tweeter and the Monkey Man," originally by The Travelling Wilburys. The song is a tribute to New Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen. For me, though, the version I best like of the song is by the Canadian punk band The Headstones. Two lines in the song really stuck with me.

Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den

I spent a weekend in Jersey City. Like much of New Jersey close to Manhattan, it's one of those places that has two sides - the nice side of condos, restaurants and bars along the water and close to the transit hubs into the city, and the dirty, grungy side further away from the Hudson River. I took a walk through both sides of the town, and I could see more than a few places that probably had illegal gambling games going on in the back rooms.

The other lines from the song that really struck me were the lines:

I guess I'll go to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done

If you've spent any time in Florida away from the tourist traps, you'll find a lot of people from other places, people who seem like they just burnt out on life and somehow wound up in Florida, working lazily at menial jobs, just making enough cash to get some booze and hit the beach. Some days I really felt like joining them.

Hotel California, originally by The Eagles, actually reminds me of a few places I've been. California, obviously, when I would often find myself humming the song to myself. It also reminds me of a few actual hotels I've seen - one in Costa Rica and one in Canada. Whenever I see a hotel called "Hotel California," I can't help but start singing the song. The lines "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave," has always stopped me from actually checking in to a place that shares the song's name, though.

In 2002 I travelled down to Cuba for a beach holiday. Myself and some friends were staying at a resort, but we wanted to get out and see Cuba so we often wandered away from the hotel. One day we took some of the bikes from the hotel and pedalled into the town of Varadero. We pedalled around, and wound up grabbing lunch at a little beach-shack restaurant. Myself and my friends were the only non-Cubans in the place.

There was a trio of musicians called "Trio Amanecer" that was wandering from table to table entertaining the guests. They played mostly Cuban music, but when they got to our table and saw that we were definitely not native Cubans (I am white and I was with 3 Asian guys) they decided to play some foreign music, so they played Hotel California. The singer didn't speak English, so he was phonetically singing the song. Generally he did pretty well, but there were some things he messed up. After the song, I bought one of the trios CDs, which included Hotel California.

So that's what I was thinking about, standing in a bar in Cardiff, Wales. I was thinking about Cuba, and chicken grilled over an open fire, an ice cold cola and three Cubans playing an American song for a bunch of Canadians.

The weather this week is amazing. It’s sunny and in the mid-20s Celsius. Shockingly, this is the first week of Wimbledon, which most Brits swear to me is a sure indication that it is going to rain. I went to Wimbledon last year, and it didn’t rain on me either, though, so perhaps it is just the strange obsession that British people seem to have with claiming English weather is always cold and rainy every summer, even while the sun is shining and people are wearing shorts and sunscreen.

The sunny weather is not only a windfall for Wimbledon’s little lawn tennis contest, but it also comes the same week the Birmingham is hosting their first ever International Food Fair. The food fair, sponsored by a local radio station, offers “visitors a culinary tour of the world right in the heart of the city,” according to the Birmingham City Council’s website. There are over 60 stalls offering cooked food, market stalls and drinks from England and abroad. There is a small stage which hosts local artists to entertain the crowds.

Monarch, the tour company, also created a beach nearby. A little touch of the Costa del Sol, right here in Birmingham, about as far from any beach as you can get in the UK.

Tuesday evening myself and a few coworkers went to the fair to try Hogan’s Cider. Hogan’s is one of the more local of the international offerings, being as they are from Warwickshire, just 40 minutes down the road from Birmingham.

When the weather is warm and sunny, a cool apple cider is always an excellent drink choice. The cider from Hogan’s was very good, sweet with a touch of tartness without being acidic. I’ve often found with cider that the acid means that after a couple I can’t drink anymore for fear of developing heartburn, but not with the Hogan’s. Many a pint was consumed by our little band of drinkers.

To line the stomach a little bit, I went a touch more international than Warwickshire, and got a nice German bratwurst.

Today I wandered down for lunch, and ended up grabbing a couple of burgers from the “Meats of the World” stand. The name alone was enough to attract me, given my love of both Meat and The World, but it was the menu that really drew me in.

I started with a Springbok burger. The springbok is a South African antelope known for its jumping abilities, used both to attract a mate and to make hasty escapes from danger. The springbok is the national animal of South Africa, and the nickname of the South African national rugby team. The British and Irish Lions, the national Rugby team of the UK, is currently down in South Africa taking on the rugby Springboks, so I figured that eating a springbok burger would some how indicate support for my adopted nation’s rugby players.

The springbok is also the symbol of the Royal Canadian Dragoons from Petawawa, Ontario. During the Second Boer War in the late 1800s/early 1900s, The Dragoons were camped in a field. A Boer force attempted to launch a sneak-attack on the Canadians, but the Boers’ movements startled the nearby springboks. The leaping antelopes raised the concern of the Canadian commander, who ordered his forces to the ready. The Canadians, alert and ready for the attack, were able to defeat the Boers, and thus they adopted the springbok as their mascot.

So not only am I supporting the Irish and British Lions rugby team of England, but also supporting the Canadian forces. Supporting both the country of my birth and the country where I live. Sweet.

Back to the burger, the springbok was quite lean and dense, drier and less greasy than a burger made from cows. It was very tasty.

Having made the culinary journey to Africa, I decided to stay in the southern hemisphere and have an Australian offering next, a kangaroo burger. I don’t really have an interesting coincidence or analogy to offer here, other than the fact that England is playing Australia in The Ashes in July and August. The Ashes is a cricket match played every two years between the two countries. The Aussies’ don’t call their cricket team the kangaroos, but we can consider my consumption of the burger some sort of support for the English cricket team, I think.

Kangaroo was tangier and slightly greasier than the springbok, but still leaner, drier and less greasy than a cow burger.

I sat and ate my burgers in the glorious sunshine of Victoria Square. Victoria Square is usually a pretty square surrounded by imposing Victorian buildings, but with the food stalls and beer tent the square had been transformed into a lively piazza, like the restaurant lined squares of an Italian village, giving an international flair to Birmingham’s international fair.

As I ate my springbok sitting on the side of the square’s fountain, I could almost imagine myself sitting on the banks of the Vaal River, eating a springbok burger while watching live springboks hop across the landscape. Chowing down on my kanga-burger, I pictured lunching at Uluru and munching down on a kanga-burger in the hot, Australian sun.

After eating my burgers in the glorious sunshine, I headed away from the square, each step taking me away from the fantasy global food village and into work-a-day reality. I may not have really gotten away to Australia or South Africa, but at least I got a quick lunch-time international culinary trip.

Man, is it bright out there!

On Sunday morning, a bunch of smelly hippies and modern-day neo-druids will be dancing and drumming around Stonehenge while the sun rises at a little before quarter to five in the morning. Stonehenge, the mysterious stone circle in the English countryside is usually surrounded by ropes to keep the hordes of shutter-bug Japanese and loud Italian bus tourists from approaching the stones. On the summer solstice, as well as the equinoxes, English Heritage allows visitors to approach and touch the stones. The summer solstice is one of the most popular times to visit the monument, as the stones are aligned in such a way as the sun rises and sets between pairs of the massive stones.

The hippies will have to get up very early to see the sunrise, and will have a spend a long, long day at the stones in the middle of the countryside if they want to see the sunset. Sunday is the day with the most daylight this year, and it is a long day here in the United Kingdom.

When I was down in the southern USA, I used to tell people about how long the days lasted in the summer in Toronto. I would say, “I remember when I was a kid staying out until 10 o’clock at night, being able to play in the late summer sun.”

As with many childhood memories, it wasn’t entirely accurate. By 10 o’clock at night the sun would have set close to an hour earlier, even on the longest day of the year. That day, the summer solstice, falls on June 21 this year, which is this Sunday. As the days have gotten longer and longer over the past month, I have been reminded how much longer the days are here in the UK.

I will be lying in bed when the sun rises on Sunday morning at 4:43 in the morning while the hippies are drumming. I’ll go about my day, doing whatever I choose to do on my Sunday off. Most likely I will have already be home and be watching TV by the time the sun dips below the horizon at 9:21 in the evening. The solstice in London will see a total of 16 hours, 38 minutes and 23 seconds of daylight.

Toronto will see the sunset less than 20 minutes earlier (adjusted, of course, for time zones) at 9:03 in the evening. Sunrise in Toronto, though, is much later than London at 5:36 in the morning, giving my old home 15 hours, 26 minutes and 45 seconds of daylight.

What many people fail to realise, and I will admit to being one of them before moving over here, is how much farther north Europe is than North America. New York City is at 40 degrees 45 minutes north. Toronto is a little further north at 43 degrees, 38 minutes north. The centre of Calgary, Alberta, Canada is 51 degrees, 03 minutes north.

The centre of London, near Westminster where Big Ben is, is further north than all of those at 51 degrees, 30 minutes north. Rome is further north than New York City, which shares a similar latitude to places like Naples, Italy; Madrid, Spain and Isola Asinara on the island of Sardinia. I was at a similar latitude to Toronto when I was down in Nice, Monaco and San Remo, Italy recently, all which are around 43 degrees, 40 minutes north.

Obviously Nice has much milder winters than Toronto, and New York City does not quite have as mild a winter as Naples. New York and Toronto, conversely, have more humid, hot summers than their European counterparts. The most widely accepted explanation of these differences is due to the moderating effect the gulf stream has on the European weather, though like most attempts to explain the climate of this strange rock floating through space, there is disagreement on with a number of competing theories.

The places that Europe really considers north are places like Oslo and Stockholm, both of which are almost at 60 degrees north. Oslo will be a really bright place this Sunday, when the sun rises at 3:54 in the morning and doesn’t set again until 10:44, giving 18 hours, 50 minutes and 35 seconds of daylight. Now that’s a long day!

Walking into the office this morning, I got the usual greeting from one of my co-workers who had already made it into the office.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, good,” I reply. “You alright?”

“Yeah, ta,” she said.

I’ve gotten into the groove now, but when I first arrived in the UK, this question and its variations confused me. These variations include “Are you alright?” “alright?” or “alright, mate?”

This question is used as a greeting here, much as North Americans would use “how are you?” For a North American first getting over here to the UK though, the question “are you alright?” sounds more dire than a friendly greeting.

In North America, “are you alright?” is what you say to someone who looks like they aren’t alright. It is a question saved for those who look deathly ill with the plague or have a two-inch cooper pipe sticking out of their chest. After bouncing off the hood of a speeding car, it is the kind of thing someone says to you as you lie on the pavement, your legs bent at angles not normally possible with our god-given joints. “Dear God, are you alright?” they will say, before screaming into the crowd, “is anyone a doctor? Someone call 911!”

The first time I was asked the question, it was a very different experience than my smooth greeting this morning. It was up in Sheffield, and one of the client staff said asked me as I first arrived at the office in the morning. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Yes, fine. Why, don’t I look alright?” I responded. I figured if someone was asking if I was alright, then I must look sick.

The poor girl looked confused. Basically, she had said hello to me, and I was challenging why she said hello. “Umm, no, you look fine,” she mumbled. For the rest of the morning she stared intently at her computer, only occasionally glancing over my way nervously, they way one might keep an eye on the serial killer sitting next to you.

I’ve gotten used to the question now, and don’t worry that I must look sickly each time it is posed to me. That’s good, because it has just been announced that the Swine Flu cannot be contained in Birmingham where I am working now, and that the health services here are now moving into the mitigation phase of they pandemic plan. If I was still interpreting the question “are you alright?” as meaning I looked ill, I would spend all my time up here figuring that the Swine Flu had gripped me.

I recently took place in a contest to win a diamond worth £5,000. I have no real love of diamonds, but do like money, so had I won I planned to sell the diamond and buy twenty pound notes, or if the pound keeps going the way it does, maybe some fifty euro notes. The nice thing about money is that you can exchange it for stuff, like beer, food and Dr. Scholl's odour eating insoles.

Anyway, the diamond hunt was put on by the Leadenhall Market, which is a market that dates back to the 14th century. Today they still do the market thing Monday to Friday, but augment the income by holding events and being the host to a number of high end shops.

The diamond hunt was a virtual one right up until the end when the actual diamond hunt went out into the streets. The winner found it at the Monument to the great fire in London. The virtual part of the hunt was set up as a crossword. Each day a London based clue was posted, and you had to decipher the clue to figure out what part of London they were talking about.

Some of them I knew, but mostly I had to hunt around on the internet to find the answer. For example, I learned that every May there is a car treasure hunt called the The Miglia Quadrato that ends in Finsbury Circus. One of the clues also had me looking up from London Bridge to notice the clock topped with a golden owl on the corner of King William Street. I've probably walked by that building dozen of times without noticing the golden hooter perched atop the clock.

In a lot of cases, after finding the virtual answer I went out to see the actual location. It was an interesting way to get to see places in London I might not have seen otherwise.

Treasure hunts of a less virtual type of very popular here in London. I've already mentioned the Miglia Quadrato, which is a car treasure hunt. Some other examples include a number of discovery walks and Shoot Experience which offers photo-based treasure hunts. Londonist, a local blog, has a whole category for treasure hunts coming up. Even more cutting edge is geocaching, which uses GPS enabled mobile phones to search around a location.

I must admit, until I did the Leadenhall Diamond hunt, I probably would have dismissed the treasure hunt idea as being a little childish and geeky. Now that I have done the Leadenhall Market diamond hunt, I'm starting to think that a flesh-and-blood treasure hunt would be both a good way to learn about a location, its history, get some good exercise and have a good time.

I'm heading off to Cardiff in a few weekends. Maybe I should download a hunt to see the learn more about the Welsh town. Doctor Who and Torchwood is filmed there. Maybe they have a geeky, sci-fi themed one!