A Quiet Christmas

Those of us who grew up in Singapore where Christmas is synonymous with the Orchard Road light-up can be forgiven to think that York's city centre is lit with lights a few folds grander and brighter, with snow falling and revellers singing and dancing the night away.

Especially here in York, where is the Archbishop is the second highest ranking cleric after the Archbishop of Canterbury, one would imagine Christmas to be a grand, bright, merry occasion. The reality is that Christmas in York seems rather dull, when measured against Orchard Road's unrestrained profit making Christmas.

Firstly, Christmas lighting in the city centre is not as elaborate or bright as those in Orchard road where big shopping centres compete with each other to put up the greatest and the brightest to attract customers.

Secondly, in Singapore, Christmas is an end-of-the-year excuse for busy friends to gather for a binge. Here in York, as you may have guessed, Christmas is a traditional family affair where people spend their Christmas at home, much like CNY back in Singapore. As such, it turns utterly quiet on Christmas and Boxing Day as all shops and places of interest are closed. The whole country shuts down, even the trains and buses are not running, so if you don't have a car, you are basically much stuck and isolated at home.

On the campus itself, all of the UK students have gone home, and most overseas students are spending the vacation outside York. A Christmas party to be held by the university's chaplins has been called off, presumbly due to poor response. So the whole place is very very quiet.

York is well known for its Christmas market though. In the run-up to Christmas, there is an open air market held at the city centre everyday, which attracts a lot of visitors, making the city centre as crowded as Tampines Mall (ok, it still can't beat the Orchard Road crowd). However, as a tourist, I find Vienna's Christmas markets more interesting. For one, the weather there is colder and the more numerous markets are located against a backdrop of classical buildings. Also, the atmosphere and the goods there are more like our stereotype of Christmas: snow, candles, christmas deco, nutcracker dolls, hot wines etc. Here in York, the stuff sold at the Christmas markets are more down-to-earth: sausages, candy, poultry, clothes etc stuff that families, not tourists, would need. But to be fair, downtown Vienna is made for tourist whereas York is a small, traditional city that needs to cater to its residents needs.

So it turns out that Christmas here is a rather subdued affair. However, the upside is that it is still an authentic, religious and sincere. All of the many churches here hold services from Christmas Eve through to Christmas Day. I could hear the church bells tolling as I was walking on the campus grounds on Christmas Eve. I kinda sympathized with the Christians in Singapore, where Christmas has mostly lost its religious significance among those who celebrated it. I would think that a true Christian would appreciate Christmas here more than in Singapore.

Vienna

map of vienna
Perhaps the biggest talking point about this trip is that the trip was cut short by a week from 10 days to 4 days. What can I say? As this is a public blog, I will not go into details the reasons for shortening the trip, but let's just say that I am happy to get an extra week to study for my exams.

So it is four days in Vienna. We stayed in a Youth Hostel in the centre of the city, surrounded by buildings of old style architecture. Unlike the capital cities in many other parts of the world, Vienna has managed to retain the look and feel of its heritage. If you imagine the buildings in the whole of CBD area all look like National Museum, Raffles Hotel or the MITA building (but in pastel colours), that is how Vienna feels like. In the city centre, there are no modern buildings that look out of place with the historical buildings.

Weather wise, it was probably below zero most of the time. Even though it didn't snow during the time we were there, we can see snow on roof tops, grass lawns and back of lorries. So at least we know the temperature weren't warm enough to melt any snow that fell before we arrived.

The people of Vienna are cold and not very polite. Perhaps it is because they are a proud people with a very rich and glorious past. Austria produced many musicians (Schubert, Mozart), and scientists, among them numerous Nobel prize winners. The royal family of Austria was arguably the most powerful royal family Europe has ever seen, ruling from Spain to Serbia, and even briefly in Mexico. Having mentioned that though, we have a fellow Austrian student(Lea, she is actually of Brazilian origin) who invited us to stay at her Austrian boyfriend's(Reinhard) house. They were most hospitable and Reinhard also came to welcome us at the airport(with beer!) and showed us around the city.

Reinhard's apartment is in the city centre in a traditional Viennese building. The layout is very similar to what I saw in Vietnam last year, when a student in the MFA-IAI course invited me to his place. A typical apartment building consist of four blocks surrounding a court yard, with the corridor on each level facing the court yard. There are no lifts, so you climb up a spiral stairway up to the apartment. When you enter the apartment unit, you come into the kitchen first. The living room is across the kitchen directly opposite the entrance. There is another room to the left of the kitchen, and a bathroom on the right. The toilet is outside the apartment along the corridor.

Besides walking around the city with Reinhard, we also visited the Museum of Fine Arts, attended the "Nutcracker" ballet at the Vienna Opera House and visited the Schönbrunn Palace. The photos are in the photo album, so I will save the effort to describe what we saw there.

Vienna definitely deserved more than the 3 full days I spent there. There are just so many churches, museums, palaces and performances to visit and attend. I probably should also join Aki on to Salsburg, but I supposed the freezing cold, the long and late nights, and the thought of the coming exams got the better of me. I flew back on the fifth day, one day after the other Singaporean traveling companion suddenly decided to go back to UK. I also got to admit that my zest for travelling has diminished a lot over the years, as those of you who know me are already aware that I don't travel often ever since I started teaching in TP.

Perhaps when the weather turns warmer and the days longer, my enthusiasm for travelling will return. But I don't think I'll travel far again before winter's over. The room in the hostel is right now too warm and cosy for me to venture out.

British weather - take 2

It was raining for almost the whole of last two weeks. The rain has stopped, and we have got fair weather, but it has turned much colder. The daily temperature has been hovering around freezing for a few days now, and the lakes are starting to freeze.

It seems that the clouds act as a insulator to prevent heat from escaping, so when it rains here, the temperature is actually milder than when the sun is out. The opposite effect of what we have in Singapore where rainy days are cooler than sunny days.

The cold weather sets us up nicely for the trip to Austria, where the daily temperature now is about the same as what we are experiencing these few days. Cool!

Ducks walking on the ice, instead of swimming in the lake

Newcastle

Map of Newcastle
So, the busy weekends continue with a visit to Newcastle last Saturday. This one is organised by the Overseas Students Association, with the subsidised coach ticket costing GBP4. I was with three other students, all doing Linguistics, presumably one reason they went for the trip is to experience the Newcastle accent. A staff manning the Information Centre at the railway station had a strong accent that sounded not far from Scottish, but we don't know if that is the Newcastle accent.

The weather was wet and cold, the start of a cold spell to hit the eastern UK that has continued since. We didn't visit many places because it was just a day trip, and the coach journey already ate up 2 hours per way. But rather than bore you to death with the description of the places we visited, I'll leave it to you to look at the photos that I took.

One noteworthy incident though. Unknowingly, we took our lunch at a Chinese restaurant that was just opposite the Newcastle United football stadium. We happened to leave the restaurant 10 minutes before the start of that Saturday's game, and bumped right into the fans streaming into the stadium. The passion of the fans were evident. Despite the rain, they were singing loudly, shouting cheers and ignoring the traffic, and it was quite intimidating to watch them. And there were so many of them streaming incessantly up the street that we wonder where they came from. Singapore has tried to build up grassroot support for the S League, but I really don't think we will ever get to this stage. It is just not in our culture to be so fanatic over a football team.

Picture showing Newcastle United's fans streaming into the stadium, which is the structure in the background behind the Chinese arch.

Scarborough

Map of Scarborough
I have not been updating this blog recently, have I? Well, firstly because I have been busy on weekends, the last being a visit to Scarborough. It is a seaside town, so the beach is the main attraction here. The British students were most excited whenever the sea came into view.

However, as this trip was organized by the Birdwatcher and Naturalist Society, our main purpose of this visit is the Sealife Centre. It is not a bad place at all (see the photo album). I especially like the way the tanks are build. They have a lot of glass area, so you can really peer into what's going on within the tank. If you look at some of the photos I have taken, it looks like I took the photo in the tank, right? Too bad my camera is really quite low-end so the quality didn't turn out too good.

Some of the display area also have background music to accompany the movement of the marine life. For example, "space-like" music (any one can comment on the proper genre name of this?) accompanied the jelly fish area, plus with some clever lighting, you get a feeling that the jelly fish are like floating around in space as you are viewing them.

Scarborough itself doesn't have much other attractions. Besides the beach, there is a castle ruin on the ridge separating the North and South bay area. It'll probably be more alive in summer, and more interesting to visit then.

In case you are wondering, there were only 5 of us who made the trip: me and 4 other British students. Yes, the Birdwatcher and Naturalist Society is a small one (ok, bigger than 5 as not all members turn up), and trips like this are more of an outing of like-minded people than a formally organized event. It is easy to form a society here in the university. Get another person who share the same interest, and both of you can register as a society. So, the smaller clubs like the BNS are quite informal, and events are casual and adhoc.

Secondly, I have been studying hard lately, yes, really. We are now deep into "Block 3" of the autumn semester. My exams for "Block 3" will be held in the first week of next semester, and since I will be spending most of the vacation in Austria, I am working hard now to make sure I understood all the materials. Then I won't have to panic when I get back from Austria after Christmas.

So, I will be in Austria, not UK, during the Christmas period. And I'm be coming back in the midst of a big shut down as everyone goes on holiday from Christmas till New Year. I've got to work out how I'm going to get food for that week. But that's a blog for another time, another day. Till then, here's wishing everyone a happy holiday season!