Post Numero Uno

Well, here I am. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, but London really is exactly what you expect. After the fifth time someone says “Cheerio chap” or you realize crumpets have their own aisle in a supermarket it becomes clear that London strictly adheres to every stereotype there is. The people here really do drink tea the way most people breathe oxygen. This would all be ok, I don’t mind tea and you can never get enough of a country full of British accents, but the weather’s just what you expect too. The sun rises at 1 pm and sets three hours later, and that’s not even on a bad day. It’s so gray you feel like you’re in a black and white movie sometimes. And even on days when it doesn’t rain everything still manages to be wet and cold. I think the British, Londoners especially, build up a sort of tolerance, and even cheerful acceptance of, what many in America would call painful deprivation. For instance, their tube (underground) is fantastic, it’s comfortable, fast, efficient and only rarely smells like piss, but it also has a tendency to just not work. You’ll be waiting at the platform and they’ll announce that trains on such-and-such a line aren’t working, try again later. They seem to just go along with this in a way that would absolutely not fly in New York City. I mean, this is a group of people who think a real treat is having one or two hard, tasteless (except for a hint of butter) cookies with their tea (no cream, no sugar). They seem to genuinely enjoy their food to be just a bland, bready mush. Except for curry. They love curry. They LOVE curry.

All this being said, I really love it here. I have a great single right near the London Bridge with a fantastic view of the city. At night the buildings light up an incandescent green and blue. I definitely lucked out with housing. London has a lot of character too, in an entirely different way than I’m accustomed to. Unlike the cities I’m more familiar with, London is not based on any grid system or logical organization. It’s clear that this is a place that was around well before the years when people could take courses in city planning at school. The streets are almost never parallel or perpendicular, and streets just tend to turn into different streets without any sign or marker. But that’s part of the charm. The history is strangely tangible, it hangs about the city like the fog. Like in a house where someone died and you feel kind of creeped out when you walk in their bedroom because in a weird way you still feel their presence. London’s like that, just everywhere. You walk down the street and think, “Wow, there were horse-drawn carriages here” or “They use to hang people by the boatload over there.” It might be that the buildings are all old, ornate and stone, but the ghosts of history just seem to hang around everywhere. This is a city unlike any in the United States. It’s a city that suffered through months and years of non-stop bombing in World War 2. Of course there are no visible signs of that now, but you still feel it on a subconscious level. I guess after all that lackluster sweets (somehow they haven’t figured out pretzels should be salted) don’t seem so bad. Maybe it’s just the wind, which whirls through the strange little tunnels and alleyways that London is full of so that no matter what it always feels like it’s blowing directly in your face, but there’s something stoic about the city that rubs off on the people. You don’t think “I haven’t seen the sun in four days, time to start thinking about ending it by jumping in the Thames,” it’s more like, “I hope the sun comes out tomorrow, but it probably wont. Good thing I got this nice, warm scarf. Better have a cuppa tea and a pint.”