Train Trip - Bristol, Sep. 8

Technically I'm not posting this on the correct day, so I'm cheating and pretending I posted this 2 days ago. Not a whole lot has happened over the last couple days, though I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write until now.

We decided to take a trip down to Bristol, primarily because a YouTube group my brother and I watch are based in Bristol. This group is called Yogscast, and their headquarters are called YogTowers. So we decided to take a day trip there to visit and have lunch. We took a train over there, which gave me a chance to experience how well the trains here work.

The tickets to Bristol were booked in advance through the website, so we could quickly pick them up at the station. Interestingly, the website allows you to reserve seats, but you can't select specific seats. Instead we got to choose whether we wanted window/aisle seats and table/airline seats, then seats got selected for us. So we ended up not having seats next to each other, which kind of defeats the point of reserving seats in the first place. Fortunately the train was pretty empty, so we could just sit wherever we wanted.

The train ride was pretty pleasant, it's a much nicer way to travel than a bus or plane. Busses are usually crowded, have less comfortable seats, loud, the busses get stuck in traffic, etc. Airplanes are very similar, except you also have to spend a couple hours in an airport before and after your flight. The train was quiet, spacious, quick, moderately comfortable seats, and it was great to see places passing by outside.

Once we got to Bristol, we were able to walk to YogTowers pretty easily, and took the obligatory awkward photo in front. Obviously we didn't try to go in, because that would be pretty invasive if every fan tried entering. Plus there's a pandemic going on.

There's a nice courtyard outside that we sat in for a little while as we looked around for lunch. This courtyard was away from traffic, and I really noticed how quiet it was. There's a small road running around the courtyard for cars to park, and there were a couple times when a car came through. The cars weren't driving quickly, but I was surprised by how loud a single car is compared to the near silence beforehand. I'm sure the noise was increased by the rough road surface and reflected by the surrounding buildings, but I'm still astounded by how much noise in a city is created by cars. I'll definitely be looking for quiet places during the rest of this trip, they're so nice to be in.

We found a cafe nearby to have lunch, and I noticed the fridge with drinks had orange Fanta available. But it didn't look like the Fanta I'm used to in the US, so I ordered it. Fanta in the US has a vibrant orange color to it, but this Fanta was more pale like normal orange juice. And that's exactly what it tasted like; fizzy orange juice! Fanta in the US has a clear artificial and sweet taste to it, whereas this tasted much more like the fruit. The bottle also had a funny shape on the bottom half, maybe it's where you're mean to hold it?

After lunch, my brother went to Bath, and I decided to head back since I'm not very interested in historic tourist attractions. Buying a ticket at the train station was really easy and not super expensive, about £10. This time I didn't have to deal with the awkward seat reservation system from before, I just didn't reserve a seat so I could sit wherever. The ride was very similar to the previous ride, so I don't have much else to add here. I'm definitely planning to travel by rail more in the future.

Another observation I've made is that a lot of major roads and motorways here have foliage grown on either side of the road. This helps dampen the noise pollution coming from the road, and keeps it hidden from those who don't want to see cars constantly outside their house (and prevents drivers from seeing into their homes). This is such a sensible thing to do, I'm surprised I haven't seen this technique used in other place until now.

Another big difference I've seen is how recycling is done here. For reference, in my experience in the US, trash is separated into recycle and non-recycle bins, and that's about it. I have seen dedicated compost bins occasionally, but it's pretty much just those 2 different bins. The non-recyclables go into a landfill, and the recyclables go... well... actually I don't know. It seems to depend a lot on where you live, but some places actually sort out the different materials, some places just export the recyclables to other countries, and some places just throw them into a landfill. Recycling in the US is a joke.

What I know about recycling in the UK only comes from my grandmother, so this may not be a general explanation for all of the UK. But the recyclable materials actually get sorted out into different bins rather than all being lumped together. This makes way more sense to me, since the person throwing out the trash can quickly determine which bin it goes into. Lumping all the materials into 1 bin is harder to sort, since things can get tangled up together, and someone seeing the trash for the first time has to spend time identifying what the material is.

On top of that, the recyclables have to be clean before they can go into the bin. In hindsight this sounds obvious, but I've never heard of anyone washing takeout boxes until now. Really gave me insight into how bad recycling is in the US, that's something else I'll be looking at in different countries.

One last thing to cover here: outlet adapters. We've all brought some obviously, but I found quite the spectacle the other day. Someone's laptop charger required a ground plug, but many adapters don't have a hole for the ground plug. The only adapter they had with a ground plug was a transformer, which had an EU plug on the other end. So another adapter was needed to connect the EU and UK plugs. On top of that, there was a USB power charger connected to the converter. So the chain of plugs goes UK (240V) -> EU (240V) -> US (120V) -> USB (5V). That gave me good giggle.