The Manchurian Candidate

Day 27

Well, today was to be my final full day in the UK. I got up, did the morning things and packed my bag. I still had a couple of hours until I had to make my way down to the train station, so I wandered to the nearby shopping centre, grabbed a coffee and a couple of sandwiches for breakfast, and picked up a few snacks for my train trip to Manchester.

When it was time to make tracks, I grabbed my bags, said my farewells to the hostel staff, and wandered through Nottingham to the train station.

When I arrived there I was approached by one of those guys that try to sign you up for donations to help a poor starving child in a country in Africa. I straight up told him that I was a travelling foreigner, and he thanked me for my honesty.

He then asked me why the hell I had travelled to Nottingham instead of any number of other places in the UK. We both had a chuckle, and then he let me keep on keeping on to my train platform.

I didn't have much of a wait at the train platform, only enough time to grab a blueberry muffin and eat it with a few minutes to spare.

The train trip was uneventful, and it allowed me to catch up on some other blog entries.

A couple of hours later I arrived in Manchester, which reminded me of a dirtier version of Melbourne. My hostel wasn't too far away from the train station, so I got there with a minimum of fuss.

The hostel was a tall building with 6 floors. There was a lift, although only staff could use it to take luggage upstairs, as they didn't have insurance for guests to use it.

I was a bit crestfallen when I was told that was on the top floor, but figured that I could probably use the exercise after all of the kebabs that I had eaten in Turkey.

I headed upstairs, got my bag sorted, and headed back down. I went for a wander to grab some dinner, and then stopped off at Tescos again to grab some drinks, before retiring to the common room to try to catch up on my blog entries. (The irony of that last sentence is not lost on me.)

One of the staff who worked there convinced me to join in on some drinking games that were being played, a rather interesting game where a person started counting, and then they could pick the direction of who would have to count the next number. You could change directions at any point, include actions that needed to be taken on a particular number, make rules, etc. It was a fun game, until two guys decided to pick on the guy in the middle, and they just kept swapping back and forth across him. He was already pissed by this stage, but kept on getting it wrong and had to take a drink, making him more and more pissed.

I think the guy running the game could see that this individual was going the right way to get proper messed up, and decided to call game off.

A couple of us that were still able to stand upright decided to head out for a few more drinks.

I got changed into one of the shirts that I had bought in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar. When I got downstairs, a Turkish lad that I had met threw his hands up in the air and told me that he hated those shirts and that they were a big tourist trap.

One of the locals that somebody knew told us about one particular club, so we went for a decent wander to get there. Fortunately it was open and we were able to get in pretty much straight away.

I felt quite a bit older than most of the people there, but still managed to get my groove on when one of the members of the group came across with a round of Jaegerbombs for everybody. I thought this was quite a generous offer, as there were about 12 people in our group. I shortly got dragged across to the bar by an Aussie girl, Alexandra, who was dead-set determined to lead me astray on my final night in England. She ordered a round of Jaegers for 5 of us, and I was quite surprised when she handed across a 5 pound note and got change!

Turns out the Jaegerbombs were only 80 pence each! That worked out to be $1.20 Australian. Now, since it is hard in Australia to a) find a place that will actually sell you Jaegerbombs, and b) if you do, find somewhere that won’t slug you $8 or more each, I decided to get stuck into them. I think I ended up having about 8 that night, and only spent about 10 pounds all up. Brilliant!

The hour was starting to get late by this time, so I said my goodbyes to all and told them I was heading back to get some sleep before an early night. Alexandra (the smart-arse) wished me good luck in getting to sleep after 8 shots with an energy drink in it as I headed out the door. I managed to stagger back successfully, found my bed about 2am, and tried to get some shut eye before my onwards journey to Paris.