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.
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