Reporting from Leeds

I've broken out of the Netherlands once again, this time to Leeds, England. I'm visiting the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research and making use of the University's very large library. It's nice to be surrounded by so many books written in English. The Centre is located in a lovely little coach house and there's computers and a lounge and other grad students working on gender. Other pluses of the trip are the rolling hills and the English undergrads, who are much more like Madison undergrads than the Dutch students. They're funny.

I am still amazed by how small England is, especially when you consider how they tried to take over the world (and were pretty successful at it for a long time). As you can see on this map, Leeds is towards the north end of the country, but it's only a two hour drive from London, which is at the south end. Basically, imagine England is Rhode Island. The imperialism! The great literature! And also London. The language domination. Princess Diana. Hugh Grant. Sweeney Todd. Mary Poppins. The Sex Pistols. America. All of it, coming out of little old Rhode Island.

On Saturday I head up to Dublin, to consume more pints and figure out what makes that country tick.
Germany = philosophy and intellectual history.
England = imperialism and capitalism.
Ireland = ??? (Joyce and Guinness?)