Imagine Yourself in the 12th or 13th century

[Exarch]

let's say you find a flux capacitor, install it into your delorean but it breaks when ur in the 12th or 13th century (up to you).

Now you have to give up all hope of ever returning to the present, since there's nothing short of a lightning bolt that can get u back, and u dont know when there will ever be one, in fact, i'm going to say the time machine has been flattened into a pancake by a landslide and you've just got what you're wearing right this very moment, so
where would you go from there? which city/settlement?
what would you do, by way of profession?

food for thought:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18564...-us-about.html

EDIT: if someone feels this ought to be in the thema, then by all means move it there.

[Poach]

It seems I would either be burned at the stake for being unfathomably bizzare, die of starvation from being unable to communicate with anyone to get a job or buy food, or die from said food because of the impurities in the food that I'm not used to.

[Exarch]

It seems I would either be burned at the stake for being unfathomably bizzare, die of starvation from being unable to communicate with anyone to get a job or buy food, or die from said food because of the impurities in the food that I'm not used to.

i'd imagine u could sort of get used to it, the way ppl can get used to living in india is they boil all the water they use,
so where would you be 'getting burned at the stake' and what sort of 'bizarre' are we talking? remember ur not in 17th century salem?

as for myself, i'd try and make my way to Constantinople and see about setting myself up as a merchant, or i might float to north italy and try to find patronage with my knowledge of the sciences, might even try to find service with the holy roman emperor

[hellheaven1987]

as for myself, i'd try and make my way to Constantinople and see about setting myself up as a merchant, or i might float to north italy and try to find patronage with my knowledge of the sciences, might even try to find service with the holy roman emperor

You probably would die in first week because you cannot speak either Greek or German.

I would just stay in China as doctor or so on, since I can at least speak Chinese.

[Exarch]

You probably would die in first week because you cannot speak either Greek or German.

i'm a fast learner, especially when there's german pussy at stake, and i know some German and even less latin, so i could even pretend to be a diplomat from the east

I would just stay in China as doctor or so on, since I can at least speak Chinese.

not bad, do u know traditional chinese medicine?
and would u say song dynasty or yuan dynasty mandarin is similar to contemporary mandarin?

[hellheaven1987]

i'm a fast learner, especially when there's german pussy at stake, and i know some German and even less latin, so i could even pretend to be a diplomat from the east

Sure, although I doubt they actually care a poor ambassador that had no gift.

You can pretend as a Moor in England, however.

not bad, do u know traditional chinese medicine?
and would u say song dynasty or yuan dynasty mandarin is similar to contemporary mandarin?

I know some traditional medicine, largely because my mom has some knowledge about it. Besides, I also major in biological science so I do have certain amount of medical knowledge.

Song and Yuan Dynasty Mandarin is very similar in speaking as modern Mandarin (modern Mandarin, in fact, was developed during Yuan Dynasty). The tricky part, however, is the writing. Fortunately unlike most common Chinese students I can read ancient Chinese text well enough.

[alhoon]

It seems I would either be burned at the stake for being unfathomably bizzare, die of starvation from being unable to communicate with anyone to get a job or buy food, or die from said food because of the impurities in the food that I'm not used to.

^ That. They didn't have food to spare or poorhouses then. You just died.
Even if I managed to communicate, there's not many places a 30years old engineers, with back problems that gets tired after 2 hours walk could work.
Even if I managed to get a job in order to get food, I would be sick with gastroenteritis after 3 days and dead after 15 days. That means that I would drink boiled water BTW. Not enough time to adjust my immunity system.
If I managed to survive the first days, then I would make other people sick with my 21st century bacteria.

as for myself, i'd try and make my way to Constantinople and see about setting myself up as a merchant, or i might float to north italy and try to find patronage with my knowledge of the sciences, might even try to find service with the holy roman emperor

^
In case I wasn't dead and managed to survive, I would go to Constantinople and work as a clerk or something since I would barely understand the language and I know more math than most of them.
As an engineer I could find work in public works.

Oh, and I would invent gunpowder.

lol, nah, they'd know straight away from my drinking and whoring that i'm not muslim

Dead within days then for you.
In many places in Europe it was considered bad to have a bath because the "baptism may go away". At best you could end up with a woman (obviously with missing teeth and hair everywhere) that was washing off her sweat once a month in a barrel (no soap obviously). If you're really lucky she wouldn't even have remains of her period blood there.

[Exarch]

^ That. They didn't have food to spare or poorhouses then. You just died.
Even if I managed to communicate, there's not many places a 30years old engineers, with back problems that gets tired after 2 hours walk could work.
Even if I managed to get a job in order to get food, I would be sick with gastroenteritis after 3 days and dead after 15 days. That means that I would drink boiled water BTW. Not enough time to adjust my immunity system.
If I managed to survive the first days, then I would make other people sick with my 21st century bacteria.




^
In case I wasn't dead and managed to survive, I would go to Constantinople and work as a clerk or something since I would barely understand the language and I know more math than most of them.
As an engineer I could find work in public works.

Oh, and I would invent gunpowder.

u could even train some of their siege engineers, ppl who've had to live with natives pick up the language rather quickly, and it might be a good idea to at least write down the recipe for greek fire, for posterity

Dead within days then for you.
In many places in Europe it was considered bad to have a bath because the "baptism may go away". At best you could end up with a woman (obviously with missing teeth and hair everywhere) that was washing off her sweat once a month in a barrel (no soap obviously). If you're really lucky she wouldn't even have remains of her period blood there.

but there were bathhouses, and they were used even before the Bubonic plague and ppl thinking the plague was spread via water, ugh menstraul blood matted amongst the pubes.

Bathing did not fall out of fashion in Europe until shortly after the Renaissance, replaced by the heavy use of sweat-bathing and perfume, as it was thought in Europe that water could carry disease into the body through the skin. (Water, in fact, does carry disease, but more often if it is drunk than if one bathes in it; and water only carries disease if it is contaminated by pathogens.) Medieval church authorities believed that public bathing created an environment open to immorality and disease. Roman Catholic Church officials even banned public bathing in an unsuccessful effort to halt syphilis epidemics from sweeping Europe.[42] Modern sanitation was not widely adopted until the 19th and 20th centuries. According to medieval historian Lynn Thorndike, people in Medieval Europe probably bathed more than people did in the 19th century.[43]

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene...Ancient_Europe
heck i'd be considered an old man over there, lol, and taller than all of them.
if worse comes to worse, i'd spend my days in the islamic caliphates; they were reputed for their relative cleanliness

[René Artois]

I have some Medieval money so i'd be okay! Either that or i'd, you know, get a job.

[Sire Brenshar]

Wow... I'm the King of the world and the Pope!

[clandestino]

Well if you would be in Europe it would be best to knock on some monastery's doors pretending that you are some sworn-to-silence friar that got lost and hope that they will let you in... and that you won't get sodomized...

[René Artois]

Dung shoveller. or witchhunter.

[Exarch]

Dung shoveller. or witchhunter.

guess u have to start somewhere...

[Stavroforos]

I'd stay away from anywhere in Northern Europe because people there have always been a tad bit crazy. Probably find myself offering some sort of modern technology or knowledge to a king or emperor.

[Dr. Croccer]

Language wouldn't be that hard in the Netherlands, Middle Dutch is quite close to modern Dutch with archaic, German-like grammar. My weird accent and manner of speaking can be explained by the myrad of different dialects back then.

[Manco]

Language wouldn't be that hard in the Netherlands, Middle Dutch is quite close to modern Dutch with archaic, German-like grammar. My weird accent and manner of speaking can be explained by the myrad of different dialects back then.

If I don't die immediately from some disease, pretty much the same.

A few weeks of hearing Middle Dutch actually spoken should be enough to adapt and make myself more than understandable.
Lack of any skill would be more of a problem, though I can read and write (which again isn't all that difficult in Middle Dutch, especially since there was no codified spelling system) which should be marketable.

[Dr. Croccer]

If I don't die immediately from some disease, pretty much the same.

A few weeks of hearing Middle Dutch actually spoken should be enough to adapt and make myself more than understandable.
Lack of any skill would be more of a problem, though I can read and write (which again isn't all that difficult in Middle Dutch, especially since there was no codified spelling system) which should be marketable.

Basically. The large number of dialects and non-standardised writing would make us considerably more believable.

[Exarch]

not bad,
perhaps u might be able to understand olde engrish

[Gatsby]

I would have died if i was born anytime before 1948 (the introduction of the NHS), I contracted gangrene in a badly infected ear when I was a few months old and it came very close to spreading to my brain.

[Dr. Croccer]

not bad,
perhaps u might be able to understand olde engrish

The Frosian guy is easy to understand, he just speaks a Dutch dialect and his accent isn't that strong. Old English doesn't sound very Saxon though. If Izzard went a bit further back into time he would be more intelligble.