| London,
UK
2.5-8.5
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israel |
| London,
UK
2.5-8.5
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israel |
London seems warmer than I would have thought. Double-decker buses, on the other hand, still have the most uncomfortable seats on the planet, and the London Underground is still ludicrously priced: £4.50 from Heathrow to Camberwell Green is more than Cairo to Alexandria in first class.
(Poor Mohammed.)
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Yet another museum -- although by visiting this somewhat
misnamed museum first I could have avoided going to most
of the ones I've been to in the last few years and saved
all their entrance charges as well, since the British
Museum is free. Don't let the name fool you: a better
name would be the British Empire Museum, since the
place is essentially a storehouse for the loot collected
during the good old years of imperialism. Too much of it
is currently closed, but there's still plenty to see,
despite breezing through the Greek, Roman and Egyptian
galleries that are generally considered major attractions.
The exhibit on money was downright fascinating, and the
constantly changing Japan section was almost too
natsukashii. Not only did they have the
obligatory teahouse replice, but an authentic mandala
of Kokuzo as well!
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And the Indian section is amazing, the China section
isn't much worse, and some of those metopes
in the "Elgin Marbles" taken from the Parthenon
manage to inspire despite heavy damage (now whose
bright idea was it to use the place as an ammunition
dump?). I actually ran out of time while exploring,
all in all probably the best collection of loot I've
ever seen -- with the possible exception of the
Louvre.
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My sleeping schedule (or lack thereof) is bizarre. Tired by a day of hardcore tourism (and frozen by Arctic temperatures, it's not that warm after all) I snuck into bed to warm up at 22. I was jolted wide awake when E. came home from work at midnight, she got up again 8 for another grueling day while it was closer to 12 by the time I'd extracted myself.
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There's a bizarre yellow UFO floating in the sky, circular in shape but too bright to be looked at directly, and it seems to be emitting some type of heat waves -- I've been forced to strip down to my T-shirt. And it's actually not raining at the moment. Who stole my London?!?
HM Sultan Azlan Muhibuddin Shah Ibni Almarhun Sultan Yussuf Izzuddin Gkafarullahu-Lahu Shah, Yang di-Petran Agong of Malaysin
Groovy. How much would I have to pay to become a Knight of the Somewhat Less Honorable Order of Toilet? Bidet? Pissoir...?
Aside from housing registries of Eeenglish ka-niggits, Westminster Abbey is a baroque version of the Roskilde Cathedral, every available square inch on the floor and walls barnacled with marble, alabaster, gold point and red velvet in commemoration of people ranging from "Gvliermo" Shakespeare (isn't pseudo-Latin fun?) to the 18-year-old son of some random 17th-century baronet. It would probably be a beautiful building underneath all the junk though.
And that was just a few selections from the 3rd floor. Downstairs a robot plays the violin, visitors sit on an exercise bike that carves industrial noise on a metal platter a meter across. Two padded rooms equipped with ambient and light installations (one, "Civic Recovery Center", by Brian Eno) provide some much-needed relief.
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My explorations of London have been limited to the immediate vicinity of bus 12 between Camberwell and Piccadilly, nearly everything of interest being within a few hundred meters of its route. This is the first time I've actually been on the South Bank of the Thames. Almost all the (many!) Cultural Centres here are monoliths in raw concrete, even the Hayward Gallery's own brochure describes the exterior as "brutalist" -- DDR style willfully perverse enough to be funky. |
If the weather keeps up like this (and I have a few pennies left over), I'll have to head over to the countryside for a few days' trek next week...
It's funny to live like this, so far detached from Real LifeTM, existing in the moment with -- most unusually for me -- little idea of what to do next and no idea what to do tomorrow. In this city there's always something, and I'm not even trying to "collect the whole set", just pottering about and doing what strikes my fancy. Only the uncertainty of my departure to Japan casts a shadow over this stasis of peace...
Chunnel is right off Albert Embankment next to the Thames, so I strolled up the riverside to gaze at the sodium-floodlit Houses of Parliament, a familiar sight from CNN. A riverboat bopped past, playing last summer's hit "Sweet like Chocolate" and bringing back memories of Malta.
At 11 PM I returned and got in without a hitch, the bouncer expressing surprise at somebody coming all the way from Finland. Getting in cost a tolerable £7. Chunnel is a rather small place, with two austere black rooms and (on this night) Trinity's portable decorations scattered about. The house room was playing kick-ass music but everybody just stood around until past 12, I was again reminded why going to parties where you don't know anybody isn't much fun. But neither E. nor M. are particularly avid clubbers, they were off to a party with E. coworkers and M.'s old London friends where I would've felt as out of place as they at Trinity.
Slowly but surely more people filtered in and started to groove, although most still concentrated on sipping their Smirnoff Ices (vodka & lemon) at £3 a shot. (I tried one: very much like Finnish lemon lonkero. Not bad.) At 12 the DJ changed, somewhat for the worse in my opinion, but the locals didn't seem to agree so I joined the heaving throng. Not bad, not mindblowing. In the 2nd room the DJ was playing garage and a skilled (for once!) MC was rapping on top.
I decided not to push myself and left around 3, hopping on a night bus to straight to Camberwell (I love London's late night public transport system!). Within minutes a very drunk E. & M. appeared and degenerated into a giggling heap.
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Whoah, this place is outasight! Despite the EgyptAir
in-flight magazines comparisons of Camden Market with
Cairo's Khan el-Khalili and E.'s enthusiastic recommendations to
boot, I was less than convinced that this is the way to
spend my last Sunday here -- may the powers that be forgive me
for doubting her! The Camden Market itself in Camden High Street
is not too impressive, a jumble of nondescript stalls all selling
the same junk, but once past the Canal the winding alleyways
and old warehouses start to reveal true treasures. The Stables
Market off Chalk Farm Rd. (!?) is a clubber's Mecca, with
cavernous stores for brands like Swear, Cyberdog, Jupiter...
and lots of little places selling cheap jewelry etc at less
than half the inflated prices in the city, a million food
stalls dishing out Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Italian and
occasionally even British food (3 very fresh cinnamon
donuts for £1, mm-mm!). Enough crowd to make it lively,
but few enough to make it manageable and easy to navigate.
For once, I can't ever recall seeing a place like this,
even Yokocho in Tokyo (Ueno) is only a pale imitation.
Unfortunately everything still costs money... but mostly
less than in Finland! Buy, buy, buy!
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- Excuse me!
- Yes?
- Do you speak English?
- Yes...?
- Wonderful! Could you possibly spare a pound because...
- No.
I snort (unintentional, but I hate beggars who importune me) and attempt to walk away. But she grabs me by the sleeve and, visibly distraught, bursts out:
- Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute! You know, when you do that, just.. just.. brushing me off like that, it makes me feel like nothing? How could you do that to me?
I am sufficiently shocked to be able to tell nothing but the truth:
- Look, lady, I've just come from Cairo and I've had way too many people ask me for money in the last few weeks. I'm sorry.
"Oh," she says, surprised. "Yes." And I walk off, without giving her a pound.
(I'm still not quite sure what to make of this episode. I do know that the armless beggar in Cairo needed that quid a lot more.)
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The Docklands Light Railway and the Canary Wharf area it passes through bear a remarkable resemblance to Tokyo's Yurikakome New Transport and the Odaiba area. Both "trains" are bizarre train-meets-bus-meets-monorail-meets-arthritic-slug systems, down to the pastel shades of the elevated train stations; both towns are hypermodern suburbs by the sea, built mostly on reclaimed land. I smell a conspiracy...
Canary Wharf (occasionally also known by its original names as the Isle of Dogs, although this name isn't publicized too much) is a land of Jag and Ferrari dealers, still heavily under construction and mostly desolated (at least on Sunday), except for a few black janitors tiptoeing among the manicured lawns. Even the pubs are all steel, polished granite and green glass...
Today's thought: why does nobody ever fill in the missing letter "I" in those ubiquitous "TO LET" signs?
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0°0'0", baby! Observe the Naval Military College in the foreground, the mutant voodoo-skewered jellyfish of the Millennium Dome is lurking to the right. The observatory itself is set in yet another one of London's dozens of immaculate parks, just half an hour from the city centre. The sun is sitting, time to head for dinner at Tententei...
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MufTM. E. & M. hoisted their overstuffed backpacks (respectively in day-glo pink and faded orange) and headed off to Shanghai, leaving me behind with one annoying extra day. A day less, and I could've left tomorrow with everything "done"; a day or two more, and I could've left gone on a decent walk in the countryside... but what can I do in 24 hours? The answer seems to be Cambridge.
But today I decided to pop into another park. While few of London's parks are what you'd call "small", Hyde Park is really immense -- there are parts where you can't see the surrounding city, and the only eye(/ear)sore is a multi-lane throughfare cutting it in half. All this green-green-grass lawn inspires a bit of reverence even in me, I can only imagine how a Bedouin from the deserted mountains of the Sinai would react to all this water going to irrigate hectares or hectares of grass, with no productive purpose whatsoever, aside for being nice to wriggle your toes in.
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Oofnon-TM. I just gorged on £17.40 (that's
"$$$" to you Yanks) on the best sushi I've eaten outside Japan,
and rest assured I've looked. The place was the 100% authentic
if bizarrely named "Kulu Kulu", 75 Brewer St. (SW1?), which is
actually one of the cheapest kaitenzushi
(conveyor belt sushi) shops in London. Fresh maguro (tuna),
sake (salmon, not the drink), even nattoo and unagi
(eel) -- guess
which one I steered clear of. The eel wasn't too spectacular
(at least not at £2.40 a plate) and one tuna roll had a
hidden wasabi bomb but the tea and gari were free,
the staff and most of the clientele were Japanese... and
£17.40 isn't that bad for 11 plates. Two thumbs up! (Incidentally, "kuru kuru sushi" is a colloquial way to refer to kaitenzushi in Japan, so maybe the name isn't all that un-Japanese after all.)
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A bald shaven-headed man in his fifties with the angular face of a boxer sits at the next table, also scribbling into a notebook. A few of those cute African girls that so define southern London (Camberwell, yes; Soho, no) chatter away nearby and a steady din emanates from the bar behind me.
The DJ just started playing seriously bassy (& drummy) older rave, and the bald pate in front of me bobs to the beat. But now the music just stopped...?
Giles Peterson Monday, Josh Wink Wednesday, DJ SS Thursday. So maybe this isn't quite an ordinary bar... and some people are actually dressed up, even on a Monday!
The music is starting to be ear-splittingly loud, and the place is filling up fast, Not much dance floor area though, and... and... whoah, I did bring earplugs after all, entirely by accident! Maybe I can stay a bit later after all.
[But I didn't. -Ed.]
