I'm traveling to Denmark alone...

and I'm as nervous as I am excited: I've never been anywhere by myself where English is not the primary language spoken. But Rika, who is my awesome, wonderful artist friend from Camp---and who visited me last year---is having an art show opening on June 19th in Denmark which will be really cool to attend, and anyway it's about the only time my free-time matches up with her schedule, so I splurged on a ticket (I could have gotten a much cheaper one, but because of time limitations and my desire to avoid as many complicated transfers as possible, I paid extra to take a direct flight from Birmingham airport [distance and significance-wise, Wolverhampton is to Birmingham as Everett is to Seattle]) and found a hostel and will cross my fingers that I won't get hopelessly taken for a ride.

 Rika and Rusty Shackleford, February 2009

As many closely-concentrarted Starbucks as I'd find at home.

Bull Ring, Birmingham [Thursday]

Initially, I had no desire to visit the Bull Ring (I did not come here to see the malls) but as you can see on Wikipedia, there is some neato architecture in the area, so I figured I might as well. It's pretty bizarre to see so many beautiful, old buildings situated *right* in the middle of commercial districts devoted to materialism. For example, here is the Church of Saint Martin, visible between the east and west wings of the mall, and with the Bull Ring public market (not seen) immediately behind it:

The mall/shopping parts are CRAZY! I am *not* exaggerating when I say there are like, five different H&M stores scattered throughout the mall and the side streets. I--of course--enjoyed checking out all the jewelry. And I really got a kick out of the first floor of this department store, Selfridges, which has a layout that is a little tricky to describe so I won't, and which sold fun, trendy food, and knick-knacks and housewares. In a candy section, there was a Bull Ring bull made of jelly-bellies!

Being a factory worker during the Industrial Revolution would have SUCKED!!!

Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham  [Thursday]

Today I visited the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. It's all fancy, expensive metal & gem jewelry, so I didn't buy anything (that's more Christel's scene) or even visit any shops; I visited the area because of the museum! The guided tour was awesome!: the museum is in the front rooms of an old jewelry company, and the tour goes through the back factory areas which are *exactly* as they were left in 1981 when company paid off the workers and shut the doors. But it's pretty trippy to see, because since the owners and employees were super old-school and set in their ways, they hadn't done much to adapt with changing manufacturing or business technologies, so the workshop looks like something from the early 20th century, and the office (which I don't have pictures of) looks as if nothing had been changed since the 1940s.

I wish this was a better photo, but you can still kind of see the workshop exhaust fan's corroded blades from sulfuric acid fumes (part of the metal working process).