2001. May 17. - Birmingham, Manchester with Warren & Adam
The pictures were made by LaLa. The thumbnails were generated by IrfanView.
If you want to, I can send you the original, 1152x864 size pictures in email (about 300KB/picture).
The pictures were made by LaLa. The thumbnails were generated by IrfanView.
If you want to, I can send you the original, 1152x864 size pictures in email (about 300KB/picture).
In the morning, it was of course, Warren, who woke up first (I hate mornings!). He went out to have breakfast, where he saw Chris talk to Rob and Tony. Martin was probably already on his way back to the US for the E3 convention. Warren and I walked over to Hotel Ibis to meet Adam and Peter (and Per and Mr. Gamebase64 and his girlfriend).
With Warren, Adam and Peter we walked over to the train station, where we found some snack eatery. I finally had something to eat there, and we had a nice, relaxed, human conversation with each other. An HVSC mini-meeting! It was fun, I just wish it lasted a lot longer!...
Then we said a painful goodbye to Peter, and the 3 of us walked to the train station, where despite Warren's plan, there was no train at all to Manchester! So, we hopped on one headed to Liverpool, and in Crewe we changed over to a train headed to Manchester, which luckily arrived just when we arrived to the platform in Crewe. Perfectly timed!
After the train rides (during which we also talked a lot), we arrived to rainy Manchester and to our hotel. Again, a very nice hotel for a relatively decent price. Not much time to rest - Warren brought us to the old Ocean dungeon, then to the new one (now Infogrames, but still bearing an Ocean logo!), and showed us the ancient Roman ruins. We, of course, went to Vinyl Exchange, too...
Then we walked over to a store next to Tesco to buy Axe (here called Lynx!) for my brother. I spent quite some money on them! Then we had a bus ride to Warren's house. Suburbia is very nice all over England, although the townhouses, of course, are relatively small, space is crammed, but it's all very nicely kept up, tidy and overall, pleasant to the eye. Warren's room is very, very small, I can understand why he didn't want any of us to stay there. His sister speaks real Mancurian - there was not a single word from her that I understood!...
Warren's room is too small for a room. I can see why he wants a house to himself. It was also chock-full of CDs, C64 tapes, a hi-fi system, a TV, a PC, a C64 and a VCR. Plus a bed, of course...
Besides talking, we also played some games. First, it was Warren and Adam playing Skate or Die, then we played World Games (I sucked at it big time). At around 11pm, we took a bus back to our hotel, and Warren was very nice to lead us all the way back there.
While London felt like an oversized Budapest to me, Manchester felt like an oversized Miskolc. Not just because it's the same industrial type of town, but also because its downtown area that looked similar to that of Miskolc. Even though Manchester has 3-4 million inhabitants instead of 200,000...
Back at the hotel Adam and I had a nice conversation with each other while I tried to get online with my laptop. Finally, after 30 min I got connected and downloaded my emails. Adam was patiently waiting for me, and he didn't seem to mind. But I am sure I kept him up...
BTW, the buses are interesting in England. You pay the fare to the bus driver, just like on long-distance Volan buses in Hungary, but there's only one door up front! The request stops are very smart. The tram in Manchester even had a billboard type display to tell the passengers where the next station is! Mass transportation is absolutely superb all over England!
But the bathrooms in the hotels were weird. The shower has a separate knob for both water strength and its temperature. The tap is actually two taps, one running hot water only, the other running cold water only! It's impossible to get a decent temperature water out of them without plugging up the sink and let it mix there. Very annoying. But hey, it's much better than the alternative (which is not having any!)...
