Yesterday, I went on a relatively short-notice day trip to Birmingham. What in Birmingham is so important that eight students would throw together plans at the last minute? CHOCOLATE. The Cadbury factory, to be specific.
Now, in America, the presence of Cadbury is rather minimal, basically limited to creme-filled eggs at Easter time. But here, Cadbury is a big deal. They're like Hershey. They produce all different kinds of tasty chocolate products, and everyone loves them.
Highlights of the Cadbury experience:
- Finally finding the front entrance, after walking about ten miles. This place was big. (Okay, not ten miles. But it was still difficult.)
- Three hours of self-guided tour. It sounds lengthy, but it didn't seem like all that long, perhaps because of the...
- ...no less than four chocolate bars, calmly handed to us at intervals during the tour. Score!
- Cute little scenes set up to explain how Cortes brought chocolate to Europe after viciously exterminating the Aztecs.
- A cartoon chart depicting the value of cacao to the Aztecs: 2 beans = pumpkin, 10 beans = dead rabbit, 100 beans = human slave.
- Over-dramatic acting in the informational videos. So good!
- Being winnowed and roasted (the benches shook and there were heat lamps). Yeah. The exhibit was supposed to teach us about the process of making chocolate, but I just kept picturing myself being torn apart, ground, pressed, and separated. Ew.
- Old TV commercials.
- Conveyor belts.
- A ride through the land of animatronic anthropomorphic cocoa beans. If you think that sounds creepy, you should have been there. It was.
In addition to visiting Cadbury World, we also walked around downtown Birmingham. I was impressed by how pretty a lot of the streets were. We checked out a record shop and a comic book shop, where I resisted the temptation to purchase piles of CDs and fan paraphernalia. Dinner in the Balti quarter was quite good; it included a "family size" naan, which was about as big as the table. The ride home was unexpectedly exciting, because after running through the station and finding ourselves standing outside the toilet on an overcrowded train, we were suddenly able to sit all together in first class.
Overall, fabulous.
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