Sunday, May 3, 2009

London II

The next day we woke at noon for the soccer match at around 3:30. We went to the local grocery store and then headed to a friend's flat where we had some cheese and drank some drinks. After about an hour we got on the Tube to head over to the stadium. It was only a few stops but by the time we reached our destination the entire train was full of Fulham supporters. The vast majority of the train disembarked on a very small platform and we began walking with the crowd.

Every expectation I had of match day was fulfilled. All the local pubs were packed and roads were closed as crowds of people headed toward the stadium. Mounted police stood in large numbers to the side of the roads and loomed over the crowd. We went into a pub and the atmosphere was great. The entire place was packed and everyone was excited for the match. I grabbed a beer and took in the scenery before heading to the stadium. We got to the stadium, entered and found our seats. The seats that Alex's friend, Emily, had gotten were amazing. We were facing Fulham's home goal and were three rows back. Because the stands are slightly recessed below the field we were maybe two or three feet above field level. It was incredible, we were right in the action and so close. It also helped that the weather was sunny and fantastic.

The match started pretty slowly but Fulham managed to score midway through the half. The entire crowd erupted in celebration and I was pretty excited myself. Slightly before half time I went to grab a beer but was told that they didn't start selling beer until after the half. This didn't make much sense to me. At sporting events in the States they only sell beer at the beginning of the game. It was pretty strange.

The second half was pretty slow as well with Fulham holding Stoke City to a draw. With the match over we headed home and stopped in a restaurant for some real fish and chips. They were darn tasty and I'm glad I had the chance to try some.

Tired from the day, we all took a nap and woke up around 9 or 10. Because Alex's roommate didn't approve of a boy staying with her I was sleeping in her friend Steph's room down the hall. Steph decided to stay in so Alex and I went back to Diana's apartment to pregame and then go to a club in Camden. Once we were suitably pregamed we headed over to Camden only to find all the bars full because of some pub crawl. None of the bouncers would let us in so we bought some more drinks and then went to a kebab stand. I didn't order a kebab but talked to some disgusting, dirty, drunk british woman whose bra strap kept falling down.

The lady was filthy and also a bitch. She was doing a Fulham chant so I joined in and she noticed and decided to talk to me. This was a mistake. She started to tell me how Americans know nothing about 'soccer' (which she said derisively). I told her I liked 'football' and she asked what club I liked. Knowing that lots of people don't like Chelsea I told her that I didn't want to but eventually she forced it out of me. She wasn't too happy and got even more upset when I told her that Frank Lampard was a cutie. Apparently, Frankie used to play for some other club and when he transferred to Chelsea he said something about wanting to score on his home club. According to this woman that made Frank Lampard a bastard. I was starting to think that this lady was going to fight me when her friend got sick of hearing her flirt/yell at me and left. Two minutes later the lady realized this and took off, but not before giving me a lovely kiss goodbye. I made sure to wash my cheek afterwards.

With no club to go to we just headed back to Diana's and started drinking again. After an hour or so we decided to get on the roof. This was a great decision.

Diana was nicely situation in downtown London and her roof had a great view of the London Eye and other nice sights. We sat on the roof for an hour, took in the scenery and had some drinks. It was a great experience. By the time we got back inside it was 5 in the morning so Alex and I spent the night there and went home in the morning.

My flight left Sunday night at around 8 but that still meant I had most of the day to do stuff. Our first stop was the British Museum.

The British Museum was huge and if you took the time to examine everything you would be there for weeks. Instead, Alex and I checked out the highlights and then just perused the rest of the collection. The coolest thing they had by far was the Rosetta Stone. They also had some neat Samurai armor, cool Muslim artifacts (including a massive jade turtle) and ancient artifacts.

Getting out of the British Museum, we went back to Camden from the night before and hit up Camden Market. Camden market is a big hodge podge and shops and food stands with a counter-cultural aspect to it. I grabbed some Nigerian food (the first I have ever had) and then we went shopping. There were great record shops with some great old albums in them but I figured it would be too hard to get them home so I held back. As we walked around there was some cool dude just blasting funky tunes from these huge speakers. He was selling these funk CD's that looked like he burned them on his computer and then made a cheap label for them. But, I had some money to spend so I asked him what he recommended. He suggested "All Funked Up 2: More Seriously Funky Grooves" and I decided it was a good investment.

We walked through the rest of the market and then headed back to Alex's. I packed up my things and headed to the bus stop to take my ride back the Airport. My flight back to Prague was uneventful and I got back around midnight.

My trip to London was really enjoyable. I had the most time there out of my trips and I was glad for it. The city is very big and I was glad I had the extra time to see what I wanted. The football match was also a nice cherry on top. And, even though I was tired of traveling, London was a perfect place to finish because it felt so much like home. The stores had Doritos, sandwich shops were everywhere, you could get Dr. Pepper, etc. (they don't have those things in Prague). 

Before I applied to study abroad I initially wanted to go to London. I eventually decided against it and went with Prague but part of the reason why I visited Alex was to see what my experience would have been like. In essence, I wanted to see if I made the wrong choice. I loved London but I think that I made the right choice going with Prague. 

Saturday, May 2, 2009

London I

My recent trip visiting Alex Rush in London was the last trip I will take before my program ends. The trip itself ended three straight weekends out of Prague (Berlin, Copenhagen) and by this time I was pretty tired of traveling. That is not to say I didn't want to go to London, but I didn't have any clean clothes, had schoolwork due and was generally tired. 

My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:40 on Thursday morning which meant that I had to get up at 5 to make it to the airport. It was the earliest I have woken up since I've been here and it was an interesting experience. I took the metro/bus to the airport and saw a lot of interesting Czechs along the way. The check-in process at the airport was relatively painless and I found my gate easily. 

This was also the first time I had ridden a budget airline. It seems strange but a lot of budget airlines do not fly from Prague so I've had to fly Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines. For this trip I was using SkyEurope and was interested to see how it compared to the other airlines. I was really pleasantly surprised. The leg room was very small and the flight was very full but the staff was friendly, the plane was on time and everything went smoothly. Strangely, though, when I landed in London and Prague most of the plane erupted in celebratory applause. This not only annoyed me because I'm not a fan of pointless, inappropriate applause, but it was just plain bizarre. Why were they clapping? Was it because we landed safely? I can't see any reason to applaud the pilot for doing correctly what he should easily do 99.9% of the time. His job is to land planes. The fact that we need to applaud his successful completion of that task asks uninvited questions about his competence. 

Either way, I did land safely in London and took a long bus ride into London from Luton airport which is way in the middle of nowhere. As I got on my bus the driver had "I Can't Explain" by The Who playing and my iPod shuffle strangely gave me a ton of Oasis, Beatles and The Who.

Immediately after boarding the bus I already became aware of one of the things I liked most about London. The ability to communicate with people. In the airport I was easily able to ask anybody for directions, talk to store clerks, etc. I haven't fully been able to do that since I left the states and it was strange to able to understand the language again. Later on in the trip, I saw a huge crowd of people and was able to ask a police officer what was going on (you could never do this in Prague) and the officer told me Miley Cyrus was making an appearance. Sadly, I didn't get to see her.

I got off the bus and Alex was right there waiting for me. At this point, because of the time change it was about an hour before noon and we had the whole day ahead of us. She took me to her dorm which was called the IHS (International Students House). Alex has a Chinese roommate who she doesn't get along with but the place is nice and British. The halls have these appliances recessed into the walls that look like dishwashers. They're automatic trouser presses! The instructions say something like, "now you can have your trousers neatly pressed any time of day." The bathrooms have antique plumbing fixtures that are dated 1920 and some of the shower rooms just have a big giant bathtub. I don't think anyone uses it.

We started with a walking tour and headed over to Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, The London Eye and then Trafalgar Square. I was being cheap so we didn't go into any of the buildings but it was very interesting to see such famous buildings all in such close proximity to each other. 

By this time Alex and I were feeling a bit peckish so we headed over to SoHo for some Dim Sum. We went to a nice restaurant and when the cart came over we got some chicken feet and dumplings. Apparently, there were many other carts with non-dumpling type food but by the time we realized it we had already ordered a ton a dumplings. They were still tasty though. I also was able to get tap water which was a first. I started to toy with the idea of staying hydrated in London.

We took a walk through SoHo and Alex told me we could go in any stores I wanted. We passed all sorts of nifty stores but nothing really struck me until we passed a Border's. I apologized to Alex and asked if we could go in so I could get some books. Compared to Czech book stores where the English reading section is confined to 3 small cases it was a dream come true. I picked up 3 books for the rest of the semester in Prague and we went on our way.

We went over to Piccadilly Circus and then hit up Regent's Park, a nice park right near Alex's dorm. We grabbed some alcohol and a sandwich and the got ready to go out. Because the ISH isn't conducive for pregaming we went over to a flat where Diana Rojas is staying. We drank and talked of memories past and then headed to some club that was pretty nice. The cover was pretty stiff but they had house music downstairs and it was really crowded. I had some tasty Guinness, and, even though it wasn't Ireland it was closer than Prague. We headed back pretty early and I had a $7.50 kebab.

The next day we woke up a little late and headed to Borough Market. One of the reasons why I love Alex is her love of food. I'm a fan of food myself but Alex Rush helps bring me to the next level. Borough Market is a massive food market and we wandered the area for an hour just eating tasty free samples and browsing. We finally decided on getting a salt beef sandwich which was pretty much corned beef on a big roll with your choice of sauces. Finished with Borough Market we headed out to do some more sightseeing. 

We walked down to the London Bridge and got a great view of the financial district. I saw the famous pointy building and told me they call it the Gherkin. We walked over London Bridge and had a great view the Thames and the Tower of London. The Tower itself was really nice but expensive to go in so we just saw the outside. I did get to see Traitor's Gate so I was happy about that. Making our way over to St. Paul's Cathedral we saw some big police hubbub and then walked to the Millennium Bridge. The Tate Modern Gallery was right there but we decided to go to a better museum, the Imperial War Museum.

The War Museum, for me, was something I had to see. And it's free of charge! In the front of the building they have two huge ships guns mounted into the concrete, something Charlie would like. In the main atrium they have tanks, a Sopwith Camel, a V2, a Polaris Missile, a P-51, a Spitfire, a German 88 and various other artillery pieces. It was great! We toured the exhibits on World War I and II which included a 'Trench Experience' and 'Blitz Experience'. After getting Blitzed, as Alex called it, we saw some more of the exhibits. 

The two coolest things they had were:

They had these little telephones that played interviews with soldiers about their combat experiences. They had one World War I RAF pilot describe dogfighting and an average combat mission. Another really good one had a sailor tell his account of his ship sinking in the Battle of Jutland.

The Enfield Rifle given to T.E. Lawrence by Prince Feisal during the Arab Revolt. I didn't even really notice it at first. I was looking at the exhibit on the Arab Revolt and saw the robes Lawrence worse and a bust of him, but then noticed the rifle. Last semester I wrote my 208 paper on Lawrence so I knew that Lawrence etched his initials and the date on the rifle 4.12.1916. The initials were right there above the trigger. Interestingly, the rifle was captured by the Turks at Galipoli and therefore ironically returned to the British who were now Allies to the Arabs. Very cool to see in person.

We also checked out an exhibit on the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and MI6. Both were super cool and they had a video on Operation Nimrod where the SAS stormed the Iranian Embassy in London when it was taken over by terrorists in 1980.

After the Museum we headed over to Red Brick Lane and got Indian food. The entire street is full of restaurants and the owners sit outside and try to get you to come on. You have to haggle and we got a free bottle of wine and 10% off so I guess it was a good deal. The food was delicious.

We went right from the restaurant to a bar and I managed to get a Dr. Pepper at a store on the way. We hung out at the bar for a while and it was very old. Apparently, it was where one of Jack the Ripper's last prostitute victims hung out before she was killed. We called it an early night and went home because we had the Fulham v Stoke City match the next day.

(I need to make lunch so this is gonna be a two parter)