Manchester, United Kingdom
UK Return Part 1: Return trip across the pond
Joe and Lauren were waiting for us at the Manchester train station with coffee cups in hand. It was so surreal seeing them and feeling like no time had passed at all (I met them when I studied abroad in England 12 years ago). We took the railway down to my parents' hotel and dropped them off, and then took the rail back to their apartment. We had tea, exchanged gifts and then Carp and I promptly fell asleep in the guest room for the next few hours.
When we got up we ventured back downtown to see my mom at the pub connected to the inn they were staying at, and then headed to a vegan burger joint. Joe had to fast so he had to watch us eat and was a better sport about it than I probably would have been.
After dinner we headed to a pub and got drinks. This was were we really started to catch up on deeper things and got into politics (Joe and I met in a UK politics class 12 years ago!) Lauren and I had a great side conversation about anarchism and prison abolition, and then when Joe and Ben got back we all broke down our current leftist political positioning together. Later we moved on to another bar down the…
