Just June

I haven't had much excitment since my misadventures coming home from London, and that suits me just fine. A number of special events and parties are already penciled into the agenda for the end of June and all through July (and one event already happened last weekend), so I appreciated the momentary lull. The first event I participated in was the kick-off for a campaign to raise awareness for endangered European carnivores (Did you know there are still wild animals living in Europe?). Magdeburg Zoo hosted a convention of sorts in honor of the campaign, with booths offering everything from carnivore crafts to information about energy conservation.

An event like this required the help of all the staff, so the question was where would the useless foreigners best be of service. I'm not sure who doled out the assignments, but somehow Shannon and I ended up running the face-painting booth. Neither of us had a clue how to make a kid look like a carnivore, herbivore or anything else, but that was the task. And of course, we had to speak German. It sounded like a fun challenge, but I was concerned a child might ask to be painted as a word I didn't know, or even worse, that I might misunderstand the vocabulary and say, painted the child to look like a frog when he asked for a racoon. Across Europe the whole carnivore event revolved around an attempt to acheive a place in the Guiness Book of World Records as having the largest teddybear picnic ever. We counted 519 teddybears. I have no idea what the previous record was, but regardless, that's a lot of bears.

The summer solstice was cloudy in Magdeburg, so the crowds were thinner than anticipated and I had plenty of time to explain to the children who wanted their face painted that Shannon and I usually spoke English, but were practicing our German. Even after the explanation, most children were fascinated to hear us speak--to each other in English and to them in German. They either gave mouth-agape stares, or furrowed their little brows in puzzlement. I discovered that children are very suggestible, so if I began by asking what they would like to be, but followed quickly with a list of animals that I knew how to paint, I avoided two problems. First, the children didn't ask me to transform them into words I didn't understand, and second, they didn't ask me to transform them into anything I couldn't paint because they never asked for anything I didn't offer. So, after a few hours passed, there were plenty of tigers, bears, kitty-cats, dogs, parrots, butterflies, and zebras running around the zoo (but no rhinos, elephants, reindeer or penguins because I didn't know how to do those). There was also one strange child who invented her own desgin; as per her request, I painted half her face blue with silver stripes. She was pleased, but I'm sure everyone else thought a misunderstanding had occurred somewhere. I have been asked to repeat this assignment at next month's kindergarten fund-raising function.

Another event of the season involved a camera crew from the local news station following the zookeepers around for some fluff story about elephant keepers. Because I am only a keeper for half the day and am not techinically one of the elephant handlers, this did not concern me. Or so I thought. When I stepped into our break room on the afternoon of the filming, I was introduced to Ortwin, a man with big hair and big personality. Upon hearing that I was an American, Otrwin said in German, "Ooohhh, she doesn't understand a damn thing then?" One of the keepers piped up and said that they actually had found the only American who spoke a second language and hired her. I clarified in my elementary German, "Just speak slowly and clearly please."

I sat through the meeting with the keepers and crew without saying anything, because there were so many people all talking over one another and using unfamiliar vocabulary that I couldn't follow much. Also, I gave up after a few minutes because the filming didn't have to do with me. What I gathered was that they had one segment left to shoot and that somehow a dog was involved. Ortwin had a sudden idea, pointed at me and announced: "We'll use her!" Oh joy.

So with very little knowledge of what was actually happening, I followed Ortwin and his cameramen outside, where there was more rapid discussion about dogs. "Doesn't she have something else to wear?" asked Ortwin, addressing the head keeper instead of me. They gave me the cameraman's jacket. "That's ridiculous. Take it off. Where's the dog?" Then I realized what I was supposed to do. The crew wanted footage of the elephants reacting to a canine. When the crowds are thin, the African elephant, Mwanna, flings sand from her exhibit at people who bring their dogs to the zoo (the policy on dogs at the zoo here is just that they should be leashed at all times, but no one warns them about getting pelted with sand at the elephant exhibit). I don't blame the crew for wanting to film this, but I did wonder why I had been chosen to play the part of the victim.

Our department also cares for the huskies, so it was simple to acquire a dog; we simply crossed the zoo, leashed one up and brought her to the enclosure. I took directions about where to walk and stand, and felt that it was a little absurd to be forcing myself to approach the elephants when I knew Eve the husky and I were going to get a trunk-ful of dirt in our faces. Eve didn't know what was coming until she saw Mwanna charging. Piff! Sand all over Eve and me. "Great! Now let's do it again!" exclaimed Ortwin. In all we shot three takes of this sand-to-the-face scene. I was none the worse for the wear, but I did apologize to poor Eve, who likely thinks I am the dumbest keeper ever.

I have still been spending a little time with the elephants as well; they are learning to play catch with a yellow rubber ball, mostly for their own edification. They also have a giant ball like the kind some fitness buffs use as a desk chair, which they kick like a soccer ball to make "goals" with the keepers sometimes.

All over the western world the trend in elephant keeping is moving toward "protected contact" which means that keepers and elephants never interact without a barrier of some kind. Here in Magdeburg the elephant/rhino house is an older building and the facilities are not in place for this kind of care, giving the keepers no choice but to enter enclosures with the animals. Three of the five full-timers in my department (and myself) go in with Mwanna and Birma, and I can't quite figure out why the others aren't allowed (or why I AM), but the closest I got to an answer was one of the keepers cryptically stating that he and the elephants weren't friends anymore. The keepers who do train and clean the elephants carry short heavy sticks, which I have never seen them use and which would also be totally ineffective should an elephant actually decide to charge or attack.

The new elephant house will be finished in 2012, complete with all the facilities necessary to care for the animals using protected contact instead. But for now, I go into the enclosure with the 9,000 lb girls, use a push broom to clean them, and catch the ball when they throw it to me, so I guess we're still friends. Once I was in the enclosure when the African elephant started getting excited (we aren't sure what about) and my heart thundered in my chest, but I had to appear completely composed because that's one of the fundamentals of zookeeping (well, for me anyway). Stay calm, even if you animal isn't. Mwanna quickly relaxed and nothing went awry.

We did have a Benny Hill moment recently when Peggy, one of the horses, discovered how open the carabiner that helped hold her stall latch closed (she had already learned how to open the latch, hence the carabiner). She and her accomplice, Maya the mule, trotted out of the barn and down the visitor path while a trainee and I were raking the camels' yard. We sprang over the fence, and split up to try to catch them. I realized that neither of the escapees wore her harness. Goody. Miraculously this occurred during a penguin presentation, so most of the zoo's visitors were congregating at that enclosure and the paths Peggy, Maya and I were charging down were deserted. I lost sight of them around the reindeer exhibit, but turned the corner in front of the petting zoo in time to watch someone much cleverer than I nab the fugitives. Janko, an apprentice animal trainer from a long line of animal trainers, had cornered the horse and mule. He whipped off his sweatshirt and belt and lassoed Peggy with the belt by throwing one end around her neck. Now holding the horse by his belt in one hand, he swung his sweatshirt around Maya's neck and held onto the sleeves. We led them safely back to their stall using his makeshift collars. I was impressed.

In other zoo news, our female giraffe gave birth to a six-foot tall calf two weeks ago. I was lucky enough to help bottle-feed the wobbly youngster one day, and he showed off his purple tongue by slurping my fingers. Even adult giraffes are all knobby, so it's not surprising that this guy looks like he's made up entirely of joints. He doesn't have the graceful, slow-motion stride of grown giraffes though; he stomps along a lot more like Bambi at the beginning of the movie.

For those of you who incessently bug me about photos, I apologize first for being a negligent photographer and failing to capture most of the moments worth capturing, and second for being a poor photographer, thereby rendering most of the moments I DO catch unfocused and ill-framed. But if you can put up with that sort of thing, and want to see photos, please do visit my Myspace page. I am working on getting more pictures uploaded, but I actually have to get over my biggest stumbling block first, which is remembering to take pictures in the first place.

London Blog, Part 2: The Nightmare

As they say, every dream has to end and my London dream, when I woke up, was terrifying. It's one of those things that you laugh at in hindsight, and even in the moment KNOW you will laugh at in hindsight, but you just can't bring yourself to stop panicking. In short, as I stood waiting under the dark sky and bright lights at midnight, amidst the bustling nightlife of Picadilly Circus I had a very frightening realization. I had missed my bus home.

I would like to say that it was not my fault--that the bus driver didn't see me and kept going, or the tour bus left with an impostor in my seat--but in truth it was at least 95% my own damn fault.

The realization dawned rather slowly. First I stood at the corner alone, thinking the bus was merely a few minutes late coming to get me. After fifteen minutes I started to pace. After twenty, I started wringing my hands while I paced (seriously wringing my hands, and who DOES that?) My backpack was on the bus; all I had were the contents of my pockets: my passport, a map of London, 20 English pounds, and my American debit card. At twenty-five minutes after I thought the bus should have arrived, I was frantic. A man who looked to be in his early 20's with toasted-marshmallow skin crossed the square, stopped in front of me, cocked his head and said, "Mah seester, wat iz wrong?" I came out of my pacing trance, quit staring at the road where the bus should be coming from and stared at the man instead. He repeated himself and held out a hand. I took an instinctive step forward, a calculated step backward, and said, "I think my bus left me."

"Wheah ah you trying to go?" he asked, and his eyes widened a little when I replied, "Germany!"

"No problem, mah leetle seester," he reassured me. "Iz no problem."

"Feels like a problem" I stuttered.

He motioned to another dusky-skinned boy across the square. When he reached us, the second boy cooed, "Aw, leetle one, what iz wrong?" I repeated myself, half for his benefit and half to snap myself out of my anxiety induced stupor, "My bus left me. I need to get to Germany."

He answered calmly, "Iz okay, Seester. You will be okay. We will help. Are you cold? You shake from cold? No, from the fear? Aw...come here leetle one."

Part of me could not grasp that I was stuck in London with only twenty pounds and a map of the city, and I stupidly kept refusing to leave the corner with the boys because I thought the bus might be looking for me and they wouldn't find me if I left. The French boys humo(u)red me in this and one of them (Braim or Briar?) stayed with me while the other (Sami?) searched for the bus for a while. Because it was now the middle of the night, and I had no one and nothing, just the presence of the French boys was very comforting. They each offered their "flats" and even offered to drive me to the Dover ferry if I thought I could catch the bus there. I knew the chances of being stranded in London for eternity, or dying on the streets were slim to none, but under the circumstances, it was still hard to relax at all, even with all the reassurance that it "iz no problem, Seester." I wanted to cry.

At this point what I should have done was pull out the itinerary with the tour guide's number on it and use Briam's phone to call him. Unfortunately I could not do this because the paper remained "safely" tucked in the pocket of the pants I wore the previous day. These pants were in my backpack. On the bus. On the way to Germany without me. My pants reached Germany way before I did.

Leaving the paper on the bus seems like an impossible oversight, but at the time I left it there, I was getting off the bus to go WITH the tour guide to Greenwich. I thought about the paper and decided I did not need to make everyone wait while I dug it out of the backpack, at least not if the guide was going to be within earshot at all times. But since my German isn't that good, I had missed the part of the information about going back to London via boat rather than via our bus. I would like to place the other 5% of the onus on the tour guide. Twice previously I had needed to ask for clarification about ongoings because I was unable to follow his German instructions. I also overheard a conversation where a French couple on our tour (the only non-Germans besides me) asked him to please speak more slowly because they had trouble understanding. After the Greenwich excursion, I thought we were heading back to the bus, but instead we took the boat, and the tour guide spoke with me in his rapid German while we blocked the aisle of tourists exiting. That was when he told me I could stay on the boat and meet them later. Between my rush to get out of the aisle and my tendancy to lag a step behind when conversing in German, it did not occur to me that the paper was on the bus, nor did it cross my mind ask him to repeat the meeting time or place. I can't place much blame on him for this, but I'm a proud person, so I choose to believe it was at least a little his fault for leaving me on the boat without ensuring I understood. I never saw him again.

I realized leaving the paper was a mistake a little later in the day, but was not overly concerned because I (idiotically) trusted my memory. But as Briar and Sami discovered along with me, my memory did not serve me well in this instance. Finally at 1am, amongst the London party scene with two French boys I didn't know, I tried to make my exhausted and now petrified brain do something useful. For a brief moment I considered going to one of their apartments, just to get off of the street corner to sit and think, but even my stupified brain was a little wiser than that. "Can you take me to a police station please?" I asked. They didn't know where a police station was (it was only later it struck me that that was probably a good sign of their moral character), but they took me to a tiny outbuilding that was really just a box with a police officer sitting behind a window in it.

This police box was intended as a method of keeping peace in around the bar scene, so people could alert the officers to fights, or muggings, or just ask for directions to the underground stations. The French boys left me with a hug at the police box, giving me directions for how to find them if the police couldn't help me. I was too engrossed in my predicament to thank them properly for their kindness.

I came to the plexi-glass window with tears in my eyes, still wringing my hands a little. The officer let me into the tiny box which held two desk chairs, a desk, a radio, and a hot pot for tea. I perched apprehensively on one of the chairs while Officer Jim, who had a better head on his shoulders than I did, called the hotel our group had stayed at the night before. Then Jim valiantly tried everything else he could think of, including calling the tour company, the parent company, and the Dover ferry system to try to track down my bus.

At 1:30 we gave up. "There's nothing else I can do for you except give you a safe place to sit and a little company," he apologized. If I wanted any help getting home from the tour company I would have to wait until 8am to get it. If I wanted to get home without them, I needed to get to a train station or the airport, but the underground stations were closed by this time. So I sat in the police box. I put my head down on the desk and tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable office furniture coupled with the radio Officer Jim had to play to keep himself from sleeping on duty made it impossible. I pretended to sleep a little anyway, to relieve Jim of the burden of entertaining me, and to stew in self-pity for a bit. This was when I realized how I had missed the bus. When I had written down the meeting time on my itinerary, I had transposed two numbers. Just after writing it, I figured out I had transposed the numbers, scratched it out and rewrote the correct time. However, when asked to access the information about when and where to meet my group, my brain presented me with only the memory of the first time I had written and no recollection of scratching it out. At 3:30am in a police box in Picadilly Circus--THAT was when I remembered what I had done.

I think the worst part of being stuck in a foreign city was the fact that the destination I was desperately trying to reach wasn't home either. Not only was I in an unfamiliar place where I didn't know anyone, but the place I was heading back to wasn't a huge step up from that. The people I really wanted to be with after an ordeal like this were all in America. Officer Jim tried to distract me from my own nervous, unhelpful thoughts by chatting. I discovered that his son won a silver medal in diving at the Athens Olympics, and that he was going fishing in the morning when his shift was over.

I considered my options. If I waited for the tour company to help me, I might be able to catch the next bus out of London and, assuming it had a seat for me, get back to Magdeburg an entire day late. And since I was to blame for missing the bus, I would likely have to pay for the ride. I would have to find a way to contact the zoo and kindergarten to explain why I was coming in 24 hours late for work. If I could get to a train station I could take the train to Paris and likely take a train from there to somewhere in Germany, but the idea of navigating a journey like this without any more information (and without speaking any French) was unappealing at best. The last alternative was to make my way to Heathrow and book a last minute flight to Berlin. None of these options reunited me with my luggage, but at least they would get me into the right country.

The sun was up by 6am when Jim left for his fishing trip and had to kick me out of the police box. The next officer on duty wouldn't arrive for another two hours, but Jim plastered the wall of the box with instructions to please let this American girl named Suzanne use the phone and help her get to Germany. Further, since I had two hours to kill and he apparently didn't trust the characters who populate London in the early mornings, Jim took me to an open-air fast food/cafe and told the two men working there (who were acquaintences of his) to get me some hot chocolate and make sure no one bothered me. I was extremely grateful, but there was no way to repay him except profuse thank yous.

I pulled my knees to my chin and tried to be inconspicuous while I waited. The options for reaching Germany all seemed like too much effort and money for a person who had only a London map, twenty pounds, and an American debit card (this account is essentially empty because I use almost exclusively a German account). By this time I had also been up for over twenty-four hours, which was not conducive to clear thought. I also had to pee. There are no public toilets open at 6am in London.

At 6:15 a tall plain man with a Bible in his hand ordered coffee and a croissant with an unmistakeably American accent. He sat at the table next to me and started to read. When I had convinced myself that guys who get up at 6am to pore over scripture are probably safe, I leaned over and said, "Excuse me, do you know how to get to the airport?"

Daryl was a banker returning to his home in Iowa from a trip to Greece and Turkey. He wound up drinking coffee next to me in London because he had a 20 hour layover and insomnia. I tried not to play the damsel in distress. I looked like I hadn't showered in a day (true) and was on the brink of tears (also true). And it was a little suspicious that I was flying to Germany and yet did not know how to get to the airport, or have a ticket. So eventually it came out that I was actually quite distressed, if not a damsel. I refused offers for coffee and breakfast, but almost took Daryl up on an offer to ride the bus to the airport with him. The only problem was that his bus did not leave until noon, and by then I would not only be insane from anxiety but I would also be risking getting into Germany too late to make it to work. When he left, Daryl insisted I take twenty pounds from him. When I refused he told me to consider it as a help to HIM because if I took it he would feel like he'd done everything he could. I took it.

The McDonald's nearby had opened by 7:30 and I tried to use their bathroom but discovered you have to actually buy food to do that, so I used 99cents of my precious pounds to buy porridge (yes, they have that at McDonald's in the UK). Back at the police box at 8, I found that it was still empty. Jim had warned me that this might happen because the officers are allowed to choose whether they sit in the police box or patrol on foot. Apparently his replacement and my possible knight in shining armor was somewhere walking his beat. This meant I could not use the phone and therefore contacting the tour company was out of the question. I took a deep breath and decided to hightail it for Heathrow.

Taking the underground to the airport was as easy as Daryl had made it sound, but it was only one leg of a very uncertain journey. I read a newspaper someone had discarded; the main article was about the Britain's Got Talent winners I had eaten breakfast next to. That seemed like a world away. By a little after 9am I arrived at Heathrow; I chose a terminal at random and approached the first desk I saw that said "last minute tickets." I didn't like the offer, but in the end, after getting quotes from two other carriers and sprinting to another terminal, I went back to the first desk and bought that ticket anyway. It's not too expensive to fly from London to Berlin, and I had just enough on my American debit card.

What made this flight initially unappealing was that it had a layover in Paris, which would extend my already rather prolonged trip to London. But it was the best deal for getting me back that same day. It was also leaving in fifteen minutes. Luckily I had no baggage, or even anything to carry on, so my sprint to the terminal was unencumbered, and I didn't even trip on those strange flat escalators (they can't be escalators if they're flat, can they?) that shoot you across the long stretches of airport hallway. I made it to the gate with time left to use the last of my (English pound) coins to buy an energy bar from a vending machine before I boarded.

The flight from London to Paris is really just a jump across a puddle, about 50 minutes in duration. For the first time ever, I slept on a plane. The jostling of the landing gear hitting the runway woke me with a start. Once on the ground I had another dash through an airport, due to a very quick layover. The flight attendant who sold me the ticket explained I had to get from terminal 2D to terminal 2E, which didn't sound so far, but I realized why she bothered to explain to me so carefully how to get there. Any navigational errors or dawdling and I'd be stuck in Paris. The flight was leaving from one of those gates where you have to take the bus to even get to the plane, and I raced through the terminals (seriously, how many different terminals and gates should there BE between 2D and 2E?) and just caught the third and final bus taking passengers to my plane.

I breathed a sigh of relief once I was seated. I'm sure the man next to me did not, since I had by this time been up for about 32 hours and hadn't taken a shower during that time. And of course I had left all of my personal hygene products in my backpack on the bus. But I was feeling better. Each successful leg of the trip eased the anxiety a little, and knowing that now I would make it back to Berlin (I knew exactly how to get to Magdeburg from Berlin) was comforting, even if I still had another five hours until I would reach the apartment.

Once I'd landed in Germany at 3:25, I hurried through my third airport of the day. If I didn't catch the last train to Magdeburg, I would have to stay overnight in Berlin and take a 5am train to get to work on time. I did not want to do that. I was pretty sure the next train left at 4:17 (but why could I remember that useless piece of information and NOT remember what time my bus left London?) I did however, have to stop at the currency exchange booth to switch my (and Daryl's) pounds to euros because I would need almost all of it for the train ticket to Magdeburg. I got to the platform at the train station with four minutes to spare and used the last two euros that I hadn't spent on the ticket to buy "food" from the vending machine before boarding the train.

At 6:30pm Monday evening, I burst into my apartment and announced, "Sophie, I made it!"
"Meow!" said Sophie.

Things could certainly have turned out worse. I met genuinely helpful people and (after the initial blunder of missing the bus) my timing was perfect. Whenever anyone asks me how London was, I will say it was absolutely fabulous.

London Blog, Part 1: The Dream

As the three-day Memorial Day weekend (one week later than American Memorial Day) approached, my colleagues and I investigated easy and inexpensive ways to explore Europe on our time off. In the end though, I was the only one who accumulated the money, time, and gumption to take the trip. I booked a bus tour from Magdeburg to London, a very long ride that would take me through France and on a ferry across the Channel. It was quick, just three days, and it was cheap.


Directly after work Friday evening, I took my backpack and walked to a bus stop where a big blue and yellow tour bus pulled in and I got on. I was going to London! We switched buses and tour guides in Hannover and picked up more passengers, ranging in age from twelve years old to about fifty-five. Our new tour guide spoke in rapid German about how exciting our trip would be and encouraged us all to go on the tour's special "outings" with him. Of course, to do this, you had to pay extra, so I planned to spend a lot of time in London alone.

Either through virtue of smelling like a stable, or clever seating choice, I ended up with an empty seat next to me. I don't recommend sixteen hour bus rides for everyone, but if you're limber enough to conort yourself into a sleeping position and can handle being alone with your thoughts for long periods of time, bus trips are really quite practical. We reached Callai, France at about 9am and boarded the ferry to Dover. The ferry offered not only the usual tourist information and an open-air deck, but also had an arcade, two bars, and free currency exchange.

On the other side of the channel we approached the cliffs of Dover and drove through the English countryside, passing scenic views of sheep herds and small English towns. As we entered the outskirts of London early Saturday morning, the tour guide passed out weekend itineraries with all the options for outings, group meeting places, and his cell phone number, just in case. I tucked this page into the pocket of my cargo capris for safe-keeping.

Our first activity was a bus tour of the city, which is exaclty what it sounds like. We rode in the bus and passed most of the major sites in London. This is a very efficient method of seeing a city because you can see so many things in a short amount of time; the drawback is that all of your pictures are taken from inside a bus, and if you want to slow down to take a closer look at a building or monument, you really can't. At a couple of key points we did stop the bus to get out and snap a few clearer photos. London is a city jam-packed with sites to see. Westminter Abby, Winsor Castle, Tower Castle, the Parliament buildings, the O2 dome where James Bond landed in his recent film and more sites all whizzed by within a blurred hour and a half.

Next on the agenda was to get checked in at the hotel so we could drop off our things and explore. The journey from the city center to the outskirts turned out to be more complicated than expected due to the English FA cup, which was to begin in only an hour. Soccer is a big deal in England; well, okay it's a huge deal, so this cup made traffic worse than trying to get to I-5 after a Mariner's game. Fortunately our driver knew alternate routes, and as we drove, Wembly stadium grew closer and closer until we pulled into the Wembly Plaza hotel lot, near enough that I could almost have hit the stadium with a rock.

People dressed in blue and white jerseys flooded the streets, waving flags and singing chants about the players. Even people who weren't going to the actual stadium were standing outside their favorite pub or fish 'n' chips stand, sporting scarves with their team colors and cheering. This was no sleepy London borough.

Added to the excitement of the FA cup and all the fans staying in the hotel, this particular night also happened to be the season finale of Britain's Got Talent (the UK's counterpart to America's Got Talent, where a group of judges seek out unknown performers and the whole country votes for who they like best) and all of the contestants were staying at the Wembly Plaza too. There were limos and press and fans of the show mixing in with the soccer enthusiasts surrounding the hotel and in the lobby.

We had to wait in line while our tour guide got the room keys for each of us, and the hotel manager politely greeted guests, wishing them a good stay and apologizing for the delays and confusion. With the exception of a young French couple, every other visitor on our tour was German, and this was the first time since I'd left the U.S. that roles were reversed and I was the one speaking in my native language while Germans searched for properly formed sentences and asked for things to be repeated over the din in the lobby. It was a welcome change for me.

After dropping my backpack off at the hotel, I decided to brave the afternoon heat and soccer madness by myself. I could hear the roars of the Wembly stadium crowds whenever something especially exciting happened, but of course I couldn't tell what it was that had been worth cheering for. Had I been a soccer fan, I would have gone to London expecting the chaos of the streets on cup day and the rowdy crowds in pubs, but since I don't even really know how many players are supposed to be on the field at a time, this experience was a bit of a shock. It wasn't an unpleasant surprise though; what better way to experience British culture than to enjoy the national pastime? So I tried to go into a pub that had an appetizer menu hanging on the window (I was hungry). Two bouncers stopped me. "Are you for Chelsea?"
I had to be honest. "Actually, I'm from America. When I came here today, I didn't even know there was a soccer game."
"What did you call it?"
"Oh, I mean "match', you guys call it a soccer match not a game, right?"
"Closer."
"OH! FOOTBALL! It's football, not soccer! Sorry...I'll pretend I'm a Chelsea fan."
"I'll let you in if you promise NOT to."
"Thanks."
Inside the wooden floor had been cleared of its usual chairs and table to accomodate more customers in front of the large-screen TVs. There was a sign above the bar saying the kitchen was closed--"Chef is at the match"--so I was out of luck on the appetizers, but I stayed for a while and cheered with the Chelsea supporters anyway.

When I started exploring again I passed lots of restaurants and bars full of soccer fans and lots of empty botiques and businesses. Eventually I walked through the Indian quarter of town, passed Indian grocery stores, Hindu temples, stores selling saris, and many Indian restaurants. I chose a place to eat essentially at random, but judging by the clientel, I had picked wisely because every customer in the place was Indian. They probably knew where to get good Indian food, right? In the spirit of adventure I ordered a dish I'd never had before and didn't really know what it was, and a drink with an interesting name. The waiter warned me about the drink and tried to explain the ingredients, but I told him I would try it anyway. The meal was a platter of fried vegetable mash with chic peas that was covered with a mixture of yogurt and savory sauces. I ate every bite. But the waiter was right about the drink. It was some sort of milky liquid with ginger and parsley and other unidentifiable herbs floating around in it. Oh well.

After this satisfying meal (and a less than satisfying drink) I started to look for another pub or restaurant to relax in and have a beer. I was imagining a place like the ones here in Magdeburg, where people sit for hours, sometimes not even saying much to one another. But that was not in the cards for me. Not on FA cup day in London next to Wembly stadium. The game was over by this time and the soccer hooligans were spilling out onto the streets everywhere, celebrating in every corner of the borough. When I finally found a pub ( Thirsty Eddie's) that didn't have its patrons drunkenly jumping up and down, yelling and chanting on the sidewalk in front of it, I went in. The patrons were jumping up and down, yelling and chanting inside instead. I considered turning around and walking right back out but talked myself into staying. "Just one beer. For the experience." I stood awkwardly at the bar after ordering some sort of British beer. "What'd ya do that for? Lagers are a pound each!" someone informed me at full volume over the noise of the place. "I didn't know!" I yelled back. The man yelled his name at me three times, and I pretended I understood, even though I still had no idea.
"You have everything I like in a woman!" the random man announced.
"Which would be...?" I asked.
"Good teeth!" he replied. "But then you're American, of course." A friend of the random man came to the bar and asked if he wanted to leave. "I don't know, next on my agenda was to make sweet love to Suzanne here!" was the response.
"This is the first I've heard of it" I said. "You can go enjoy the evening."
Then the man said it was nice to chat and kissed me on the cheek. While I was still somewhat taken aback by that, his FRIEND said, "Good evening!" and kissed me on the cheek. I do not know if that is the customary British manner of taking one's leave, or if it was the amount of alcohol pumping through their blood.

I sat on a couch in Thirsty Eddie's and finished my beer, enjoying the chants of the fans, which were sometimes very simple "For Everton, forever!" repeated over and over, and sometimes very complex tales about how the baby of the opposing team's goal keeper wasn't really his own child. It took me a while to realize all this celebrating was going on in a pub designated for Everton, who had actually lost, though you wouldn't know it from looking at the customers. They had not made me declare loyalty to Everton at the door, however. A young man named Carl bought me another beer and taught me to sing some of the chants, and another fan put his team scarf around my neck and took a picture of "the American who came to experience UK football." I discovered that even though the whole bar looked like it was packed with people who were old buddies, they mostly were complete strangers bonding over a sports team. After another (free) beer and a little mandatory chanting and jumping, I was ready to go back to the hotel.

In the morning I accidentally went down for breakfast half an hour before it was served and sat in the lobby watching the news IN ENGLISH! I have not had television since February, and even then it was only CNN or MTV in English anyway. I watched about twenty minutes about how a dark horse dance group called "Diversity" had overtaken the previous favorite and won Britain's Got Talent and 100,000 pounds. When breakfast was ready I was seated in the community dining room enjoying tea and croissants and pondering whether to get a second helping of fruit salad, when a young man wearing a Diversity t-shirt walked in. The second young man who walked in looked a little familiar, with corn rows and a close-lipped smile. The third boy was unmistakable: barely into his teens, with glasses and a full head of bushy hair. These were definitely the winners of last night's Britain's Got Talent, who I had just seen on the TV in the lobby.

The hotel staff was star-struck, telling "what I did when I heard you won" stories to the boys while they ate their British breakfasts. Our tour group and the dance group left at the same time, us for our bus and them for their limousine with a hotel waitress calling after them, "wait! Can I trouble you for an autograph?"

I chose to participate in the tour group's morning outing to the Docklands of London and to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Naturally we took the opportunity to visit London Bridge (how could you not?) and we also saw some old ships from the Royal Navy and some monuments like Cleopatra's Needle, which is a 2,000 year old granite tower inscribed with heiroglyphs given to the British in the early 1800's by the ruler of Egypt. We also saw a gazebo on the water front that was visited by Queen Elizabeth on her coronation day. What do you put inside an empty coronation gazebo you ask? Why, a Starbucks of course.

In Greenwich I struck out on my own to find the observatory perched on a hill with a long steep path leading up to it. Here I stood on the Meridian line, longitude 0! I also saw the planetarium and went to a museum dedicated to the first British astronomers. I also passed a shop claiming to be "The First Shop in the World!" because it stands at longitude 0.04. Before meeting my group at the appointed site, I had time to walk through a market where merchants were selling everything from cooked-while-you-watch Portuguese food (smelled heavenly, but I didn't eat any) to exotic bugs pinned into frames. You could even pay to have a tu-tu making lesson.

To get back to the city center from Greenwich we took a boat along the Thames river and floated directly underneath the London bridge. The next group outing was to the London Dungeons, but I hadn't signed up to go, so our German tour guide told me they had to get off at St.Catherine's Pier, but that I could ride all the way to Westminster if I wanted. I did. From the deck of the boat, I could see many of the same sites I'd seen earlier on the city tour, plus a couple more. I was especially looking forward to seeing Shakespeare's Globe theater. We also passed the giant ferris wheel of sorts, built by a husband and wife architecht team to commemorate the millenium. This structure is called the London Eye, but whenever the Germans referred to it, I thought they were using the German word "Ei" which is pronounced the same, but means "egg." What is the London Egg and why would I want to see it, I thought.

When I got off the tour boat in Westminster, I visited Big Ben to wish him a happy 100th birthday before making my way to Buckingham Palace. I walked through Hyde park to the palace with its huge gilded gates and its flags of all the commonwealths. I looked for the guards, but I didn't see any of the ones in red jackets. There were plenty of guards standing still, but I guess you have to come at a certain time of day to witness what they call the "changing of the guard." All the zookeepers told me to say hello to the Queen, but I of course I didn't actually see her or any other royalty.

Next I made my way to the British National Gallery, partially just because I'd heard entry was free. I couldn't find the gallery on my map so I asked some street artists (whose paintings of the London cityscape were colorful and whimsical) for directions. I found the gallery in Trafalgar Square, and entrance was indeed free. The place was enormous. I started wandering through rather aimlessly before I realized how expansive the place was, and by that time I was in a room numbered 31 with another 30 to go. The gallery had a temporary Picasso exhibit as well as dozens of rooms divided by century and artists' country of origin. When a voice came over the intercom informing visitors that the museum would close in fifteen minutes, I found my way out of the labyrinth of artwork and into the museum cafe where I bought some fresh-baked shortbread and then headed out to the square for some people-watching.

The square was packed with people, tourists and locals alike, enjoying the fountains while children climbed on the lion statues and the big red buses drove past at least once every two minutes. After lounging in the sun and taking in the view for a while (and rejecting a random offer for dinner) it was getting late, so I started walking away from the sites on the Thames, which would all be closing, and heading toward the night life. I tried to see Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, but the box office had closed.

All the restaurants and night clubs were full of people enjoying the late evening warmth and a few good drinks. While I paused to peruse a menu, an Indian man handed me a flyer and said, "Comedy show tonight!" The show was cheap and started in twenty minutes. Having nothing better to do, I told myself if I could find the location in less than twenty minutes, I would pay the 6 pounds for the show. It turned out that the comedy club was in the basement level of a hotel called the Thistle, and when I told him I'd come from Germany, the man who sold me my ticket said, "Well then you need a good laugh. Germans have no sense of humour." The show's main act was a curly-haired comedian who took jabs at the small audience in the intimate club. I got teased for being American--"That's why she had to come alone, she has no friends and everyone knows she'll back out of a treaty" and "she paid the six pound cover charge with her credit card" etc.

When the show was over, it was time for a late dinner and I chose a restaurant called the Stockpot by the theater that I had passed earlier in the day. The pasta wasn't much to blog about, but the homemade tiramisu was fantastic. Content that I had made the most of my London trip, I licked the last of the chocolate off my fork and took the long way through the Soho district to meet the bus back to Germany.