thehostelwitness

Photos from London

London photoset

London day 6-7

London isn't quite as expensive as one would think, especially if you have the benefit of a free apartment and kitchen in which to cook. For every 10 pound Westminster Abbey gimmick, there's an absolutely free art gallery or heavily discounted museum to walk through. In just the last few days, I've gone through the national portrait gallery, paid 3 pounds to see the National portrait photography competition, 3 pounds for a great exhibit on Lee Miller, another 3 pounds for the Shell Wildlife Photography exhibit, and paid nothing to go through the Victoria and Albert museum, the museum of natural history, the Tate modern, the Imperial War museum, and the British National museum. My most expensive expenditures have been paying for coffee and spending one night out at the movies to catch Beowulf 3-D (Angelina Jolie in 3D is well worth it, by the way).

My days have fallen into a very comfortable pattern. I sleep until about 9-10am. Up by 10am, I drink tea while watching reruns of Fraiser on the tele-vision. Showered and out of the door by 11. Then I walk for a while. By mid-afternoon I jump into a museum, then come back to the apartment to do a bit of reading. I wait for the flatmates to get back to the apartment and then its dinner and whatever strikes their fancy. After they all leave for work in the morning, I do the dishes and then its time for Fraiser. I'm pretty much a housewife, but without the breasts.

November it turns out, is a great month to visit. The weather has been chilly at times, but nowhere near the levels of Vienna or Budapest. It rains, but usually only for a day before it clears, with sunny days alternating with dramatically cloudy ones. It really reminds me of Seattle, but with more sun thrown in there. The city isn't packed with tourists and the sights all tend to be spread out over the entirety of the city, giving you a good chance to hit nearly every neighborhood over the course of a week. Finally, there's Harrod's.

Harrod's Department Store is probably the most extravagant, kitsch, uber-expensive place I've ever been in. Its like the stores of Las Vegas packed into one huge building. Halls decorated entirely in art deco, Egyptian, aquatic themes with a simple hair clip running for nearly 135 pounds - that's $300 bucks for a plastic hair clip. There's four sections alone dedicated as a food court, with the highlight being a water fountain with a fish sculpture sitting on ice - its literally a sculpture created with fresh fish. An entire floor is dedicated to cigars and in case you needed it, there is a floor for Harrod's bank and even an estate agency. I saw three generations of women shopping together, all dressed exactly the same from the straightened blonde hair to turtleneck long sleeve and right down to too expensive jeans tucked into boots. Grandma, Mom, and Daughter, each one with just as much work done on their faces as their wardrobe, an unholy plastic trinity.

Southwark, where I am staying, is located along the southern edge of the Thames (pronounced "Timms" - its their own language, the least they can do is follow their own pronunciation rules) river. What was once occupied by scores of industrial warehouses was soon replaced, as it is like to be, by art houses, bars, and cheap living. Soon, it became a cool place to be and scores of folks moved here, taking up what available real estate there was. Developers followed, knocking down warehouses, building apartments, and pricing out those very things that made the neighborhood the hot destination that it had become. It was a microcosm of what had been happening to New York, but all of this happened within just a few years.

Still, with half of the neighborhood under construction and the other half just cruising along, it has a great feel of something happening. Whether or not it turns out to be a good happening remains to be seen. Still, for now, I like it. I have just a couple more days in London before crossing the Atlantic to spend some time back in New York. I am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces!

London day 5

It was last night when I found myself again parked in a chair at the White Hart pub, speaking with an Aussie named Nick. Far more than any other nationality I've run into, Australians seem to be perpetually on the road travelling. Australia itself reminds me a bit of Canada, in that its a huge landmass populated by a handful of cities and barren wilderness, often with hundreds of miles separating one city from the next (Perth, on the western coast, is the world's most isolated city). Sharing the same width as the US, Australia also has about 85% of the landmass. The problem is, if Australia is like Canada, the closest thing they come to the US then is Europe. So when they do travel, they do it seriously - for weeks, sometimes months at a time.

This was something that I had envied with each Aussie I had met, the chance - no, the expectation of a major trip almost on a yearly basis. Here before me though was someone who had successfully made travel his vocation. He spent years in coastal cities around the world as a scuba instructor and now, he crews private yachts. His current berth was in Spain, part of a three person crew aboard a 90 foot yacht. At the owner's beck and call, in the winter he may never be asked to sail at all, but still gets paid a healthy yearly salary. The ultimate goal, he told me, was to get on a senior crew that rotates out every 3 months. This means 3 months of work for a years' wages.

For a moment, I thought here was the vocation that I had been looking for. 3 months of work - not even necessarily hard work, 'cause if you have an owner who only goes out say, once a week for two hours at a time, you are really only looking at 24 hours of work in total. An entire life dedicated to serving the super, ultra rich and in return, a life of travel and luxury.

Slowly though, doubts started to enter my mind. I looked closer at Nick. Red, wind worn skin, late thirties. He had no family, no desire to settle down. He could see himself doing this for the rest of his life. Really though, there comes a point in your life, where when you reach it, physically there is just no way of going back. Nick had dedicated the last 15 years of his life to the beaches and the sea. He probably still chased skirts in every port of call. Today, he was having fun, but like a 40 year old bartender who wakes up one morning and realizes he's desperately unhappy, there was just no other road for a vocation in front of him. And quickly, right before my eyes, he grew very, very alone.

I had a mini-epiphany right there in the bar. I did not want to get to a point in my life where there was no turning back. What I realized is that right here before me was a map to the easy life. The problem with the easy life though, much like the suit wearing life, is that it comes with a cost. To live the easy life, you had to dedicate your life to it and you have to be willing to live your entire life alone, with friends you see briefly, maybe once or twice over the course of years. Its just too much (or rather, not enough). The realization set me aback and occupied my mind for most of the following day. All my life back there in the back of my mind was the possibility that maybe, one day, I could just give it all up, cash in what I had, and go live on the cheap somewhere out on a beach. To have that idea suddenly implode left a little hole in my psyche, like losing your blankey after 30 years.

I decided to just walk for a while. I headed north, head looking down, deep in thought. I walked for hours north through London, all the way up to Hackney. To paraphrase from the Naked Gun movies - "I had to clear my mind. I had all of these questions in my head - what could I do now? how could I have not seen it coming? And...where the hell was I?"

Hackney was dominated primarily by city housing projects, liquor stores, empty sidewalks, and the lone hoods standing on the corners. Clearly I had exceeded the bounds of my visitors visa. I turned back around and, a bit more mindful of my surroundings, headed back into the city. I told my friends about this later and they all ll looked at me like I was crazy. I walked south to London's financial center, its skyline dominated by what looks like a gigantic glass egg, the lovechild of Godzilla and Frank Lloyd Wright. Next to it, much smaller but nonetheless just as amazing, was a building entirely without an exterior. Ducts ran all the way up the building, glass elevators cascading down, trusses exposed at every corner. One side of the skeleton was built into a classic columned London building facade, but the other three sides were left completely exposed. I had never seen anything like it - just imagine hordes of suited men and women going in and out of a building in mid construction.

I walked south some more, coming across the Tower of London, briefly touring the castle grounds, before going into the Tate Modern Art Museum. The Tate is monsterous. Housed inside an old electrical plant, its one of the largest free modern art galleries in the world. Along the entire length of the bottom floor ran an ingenious sculpture - Shibboleth - a single crack in the concrete that spanned the length of two football fields. Try as I could, I just could not figure out how in the world the artist, Doris Salcedo, had created it. She's not talking either. In her 90's, Salcedo plans on taking the secret to her grave. In addition to the most recent of modern art, the museum also houses a fine collection of Rothko and Monet paintings. Did I mention it was free? Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Sitting in the galleries helped calm my mind a bit and I ended the day in higher spirits. The whole purpose of my trip was to answer some questions - whether I could dedicate an entire life to leisure being one of them - and slowly I'm getting the answers I was looking for. I realized that my shock from the previous night wasn't so much from learning that I didn't want a life living on a beach somewhere afterall, but rather for the first time, at the age of 30, I wanted to settle down or, more precisely, I realized that I was afraid of not settling down, the whole wife and kids bit. The alternative frankly, was sitting there that night next to me in the bar.

Still, living my whole life on the road and taking a bit of time off to travel for a bit are two entirely different breeds of life. I think what had been missing before in life was a bit of the balance and the trick is now to try and even out the last 8 years. There's still a year of this left in me yet.

London days 1-4

There is a point when travelling, I am told, when the solo traveller starts craving home, of seeing friends and family, of eating home cooked meals. Fortunately, I thought as I munched down a Burger King Royale Chicken sandwich, I haven't hit that point yet. The train to London was leaving in about a half hour and really, since the cuisinee in Scotland is legendary only for the wrong reasons, I felt pretty guilt free hitting the Burger King, hoping for some kind of homeward pangs of conscious. No such luck.

The train to London would take me about 5 hours and cost me almost a quarter of what I paid for my Eurail pass in totale. Even though I could have paid about $40 for a flight to London, I am a firm believer in the axiom, "You get what you pay for". Sure, nothing crashed, but just like the lotto, someones number one day is going to be called. One day, a $40 value flight will crash and I have no desire to leave my parents crying, wondering why oh why did their son trade his life just to save a few bucks?

That's how I worked to rationalize the cost, anyway. The truth is I've grown quite fond of the train and spending the day watching the countryside pass before my eyes is well worth the cost. Besides, I'd be spending my days rent free, the result of a drunken invitation from my friends from Rome - surely a little luxury is therefore in order.

Arriving in London's rail station during rush hour is a bit like going to a David Lee Roth concert - thousands of people milling around with a resigned look of defeat on their faces, each wondering why the hell they were there. The people in the London tube push just as much as they do in a NYC subway, but the difference is nothing is said. No comments, no yelling, if anything just a cluck of the tongue to signal impatience. Wearing my backpack, everytime I heard a cluck, I turned around to try to locate the source, braining someone in the process. The Tube, I learned, is an accurate name for the subway, as everything - including the cars themselves - are circular. I've never seen a mass transit system designed soley for the short.

Eventually, I made it to the London Bridge station, where pulling out my directions I noted I should be walking eastward along the Thames. I walked, beaming. This was the first time in all of my arrivals that I would get somewhere without getting lost. Or so it would have been, if I would have headed west instead of say, east. I walked for minutes, scratching my head in puzzlement at each map I encountered, each time discovering the street I wanted was growing father behind me, but because I'm an idiot, kept on walking. I wanted to trust in my instincts and hastily scribbled directions and in my stubbornness, desperately wanted for once, not to get lost. At worst, I rationalized, eventually I'd get to the street. I may run out of island and have to circumnavigate the globe in the process, but eventually I would get there.

In the end, my desire to get out of the cold and not spend the nigt on the street was enough to get me to turn around and heading west, I promptly found the address.

Conveniently, as if almost meant to be, a pub sat next to the apartment. I decided a brief stopover was in order. I shuffled into the pub, which was packed with the post work crowd, ordering a Tenet's. The first immediate difference between a London pub and an American pub is the volume. There is life in the pub. Loud music, raucous laughter - all at 7pm. My entire stay in NYC, I was searching for a bar like this (in fact, I would have killed to have a bar like this right next to my apartment). I loved it. My glass empty, I was emboldened to order a scotch - no, scratch that. Whiskey. Jack Daniels. No Ice. God damn me if there isn't a drink more American than a JD neat. I felt a flush of pride (and alcohol) - here I was, sitting in our country's ancestoral homeland and even though we can't put together one decent pub, we've still got baseball, Bryan Adams, Ford Trucks, and Jack Daniels. God bless us all.

So was my mental state when I made my way out to the apartment to reintroduce myself to friends.

Fortunately, I was allowed to stay. The weekend was spent visiting the bourough markets, an open air affair where one can purchase everything from fresh rosemary to ostrich burgers. Even in the cold morning air, the place was packed with Londoners shopping for the week's groceries in this, one of their better kept secrets. I spent that night pub crawling with a pack of Australians up in Camdem in the neighborhood colorfully named "Chalk Farm". The highlight of the night was a hastily arranged "knighting" of a homeward bound Aussie (who was presented with t-shirt -"Lord of the Lifestyle") and another Aussie who had her birthday that night. To her, she was given a certificate naming a star after her trademark saying ("hihihihi haha!"). The unhighlight of the night was falling down on my face, a result I'm sure of London's uneven sidewalks and not, I will maintain, to drink. I am injury free, although I did skin off the hair on my shins, which only bothers me as it probably took my entire life time to grow them.

Sunday was kept a bit lighter, with a cooked dinner out in Hammersmith. I was keen to visit Hammersmith, as Joe Strummer grew up in that neighborhood. Of course, much has changed since then, with brand new townhomes standing in what used to be a run down suburb. Gentrification strikes again. While overall its a good thing, on the other hand you'd have a hard time as a kid being upset and angry - where is the anger for tomorrow's music going to come from?

Monday morning, my hosts were at work (suckers...) so I would have to find my own diversions. I decided that I would walk east along Southbank and the Thames river until I ran out of walkway. Turning north, I crossed into Victoria Gardens and wandered by Westminster Abbey (they wanted 10 pounds just to walk inside of the church...and they said the church had stopped selling favors...), before sitting down for an outside lunch at the National Gallery. I stopped in the National Portrait Gallery, mainly because it was free, but was surprised to find an exhibition highlighting their 2007 Portrait contest, where thousands of professionals and amatuers had sent in prints of portraits they had taken in the past year. 60 finalists were chosen to have their final works displayed in the museum. I only go into length about this as I know certain photographers who definately should enter into this next year, i.e. Tara, Jayson, and John. I'm just saying...

The rest of the week will feature more museums, probably a tour, and a daytrip out to one of the surrounding communities. In the meantime, I'm happily sitting in a pub (as I write this, I'm staring out across at a theater featuring Christian Slater starring in the stage production of Swimming with the Sharks. Who would have thought, that after Gleaming the Cube, Untamed Heart, and Pump Up The Radio, he'd be on stage in London?) I love this city.