So after moving my ass all the way to the West American side of the so-called Anglosphere and back, this fine Easter evening I just landed back on my way from its very core -- from its very core's own core, even.
I'll have the reader know it was, for the lack of a better term to describe it, quite an illuminating experience, one that cannot be recounted in just one blog article, and certainly one which I have yet to fully internalize. To be honest, I'm not sure that by now I've internalized my two weeks in California completely, let alone the week (or just a tad over it) in huge-ass London. If I were to describe it in one word, I'd say it was "hardcore"; which on the other hand doesn't distinguish it from my many other experiences, some of which I've already recounted here on the blog1. This was not in small part due to the woman's patience to properly document places and establish itineraries which we only adhered to approximately, because... well, as they say in Romanian, socoteala de-acasă nu se potrivește cu a din târg. Și al dracului târg...
So just to at least attempt to keep it short: we arrived in London on a Saturday and we started seeing small parts of it properly each day starting Sunday, until the following Saturday. That is, we didn't have a single day walking less than ten kilometers, but to be fair, the average sits somewhere around fourteen. The reader who's been to London knows quite well that we couldn't see too much by walking merely fourteen kilometers a day, because the thing is huge. But it's not huge in the sense that California is -- no, it's huge and at the same time entirely walkable by foot, with tubes, buses and taxis only making sense over large distances, such as the trip we had to Richmond Park2. And even though we picked our base in Little Venice, which is awfully close to the local tourist traps, walking was by far the most challenging endeavour we went for, so much that by Sunday the poor woman went into a fit of exhaustion, and I was quite close to that point myself.
I'll have to say that London is quite the shithole -- but really, which of the big Western towns nowadays isn't. It's old, for one; the homogenous architectural style is quite beautiful, but unlike, say, Bucharest3, where Ceaușescu had the luxury of cheap and efficient technology4, London was developed on much more rudimentary infrastructure. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll add that the bricks make for a very beautiful town; but the same town is cold and humid most of the time, which isn't too nice considering the energetic situation. Ok, they'll develop new technology; but I'll have you know that the existing technology was already bolted on to the old buildings, and I expect that retrofit has been shit expensive. So there they go, Londoners have two problems now!
All that aside, London is quite fucking beautiful! despite the depressing weather. When we arrived, the gardens, and there are lots of them, were full of blooming cherry trees alongside Mexican orange blossoms, tulips, lilacs and others that I've no clue about. So as a side-effect, every ordinary bush or tree in Little Venice is filled with some birds, from the magpies and the crows that we also have over here in Berceni, to parakeets or some other species that I'd never seen before. Imagine, back in the day I'd sit six months in French Switzerland and I wouldn't see one bird, not even in those exquisitely spectacular Swiss mountains. By contrast, in one day in London I saw that it's teeming with life.
Speaking of which, it looks like in London everybody has some business or another. Even the tourists look like they're working their asses off to get as much information in as little time as possible; but the really interesting parts, at least to my eye, were those outside the trapholes: on the streets and in the cafes, in the small shops where one would tell a story about some object or another5, and in the mom and pop restaurants over in Little Venice. On Friday a friend of mine took us to a local pub in Hampstead; and boy would've we had the third beer, except we had to get up in the morning to go to Pimlico, I mean Camden Market, which was an entire colcăială. I'm not much of a shopper myself, so I didn't especially like it, but I managed to get myself a "pre-loved" King Crimson record from one of the shops, which was quite awesome to be honest.
So I'm not sure, I've only been there for a week and I might be talking shit. But it looks to me that London functions despite the times, not because of them. On one end of the arrow of history, if London looks like this today, I can only imagine how it must have been at the height of the Empire, y'know, when Elgin took those big rocks from the Parthenon and sold them to the British Museum6; while on the other, sure, times will definitely get worse. Even so, I'd worry more about Romanians than about Englishfolk, for reasons that I guess I'll have to expose some other time.
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For example, can you believe that I saw something of Rome in almost a day? ↩
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Yes, I made photos. I'll need a separate post just for that. ↩
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Ok, so I'm guilty of comparing fucking London to my hometown. What can I do, I guess I'm just a stupid Romanian dude derping around on his blog! what did you expect?
Sau ca să ne-o asumăm până la capăt, aia e, că alta nu e. Problema chiar nu-i că aș fi eu țăran -- ceea ce sunt, să ne înțelegem, tot așa cum or fost și ai mei și și ai lor și tot așa până-n negura istoriei. Problema-i că sunteți voi naivi dacă credeți că mai există diferențe semnificative de civilizație între Londra și București. Pe de o parte, aia din urmă, l-ați votat pe Nicușor să vă țină în frig (noroc cu încălzirea globală că o fost bună cu voi) și-amu vă treziți că-l vreți și președinte-executant șef al provinciei; pe de alta, cea dintâi, cum plm să îți arunci pungile de gunoi în stradă, coaie? Nu știu de UK în general, da' în București toată lumea-i obligată să aibă pubelă la intrarea în bordei. Și ce să vezi, englejii fie nu s-au gândit la asta, fie s-au gândit și nu au resursele să implementeze. A, că-i mare, păi... mulțumesc frumos, așa și eu pot să-mi găsesc multe scuze pentru faptul că-s țăran. Oricum, tre' să rămână notat în jurnal amănuntul că la noi la țară e ceva mai apreciată curățenia decât la civilizați. ↩
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Really, 1977 made a huge difference in the way Bucharest was subsequently planned by the communists. And even with the newer stuff, earthquake code is advertised on the market, which is not something London would ever think of, I suppose. I wouldn't know for sure, but I haven't heard of any devastating earthquakes in that area. ↩
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If you're swinging by Abbey Road, be sure to also check out St. Johns Wood Collectables on Violet Hill. The owner seems to have encyclopedic knowledge of the various British bands and how their records got made, which is also what he's selling, in case you're interested. We found out about it upon entering the "official" Abbey Road Shop, when someone gave us a leaflet with what he said was the actual Abbey Road shop. I don't know, but when we told the owner we're Romanians, he mentioned he really appreciates the wine moreso than the French stuff, which to be honest was a bit flattering. Hell, the fact that he appreciates something at all about Romania was unexpected. ↩
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Speaking of which... I was really too tired at that point, but I think that the British Museum as it stands today is really only useful to the scholars and no one else. For the layman, the whole ordeal of going through piles of ancient contextless objects is quite tiresome; for the specialist, it's absolutely essential. It's nice that they made the admission free of charge for all to see; but at the same time it's quite annoying to wade through the sea of tourists only to get a good look at some of the objects, let alone take a picture.
Speaking of which, of all the museums I visited in London, none of them had that Brukenthal crap where they wouldn't let you take photos. By now, Sibiu must have become the cultural capital of KWJs with their mouths filled with shit. ↩
Yes, there is a lot of beauty in London, much more of it than there is in Bucharest. In my two years living there, I visited most of the main sights, collected lots of souvenirs and pictures, attended shows, wandered the parks, even enjoyed that quaint British touch to the infrastructure and consumer goods they have. Ate industrial amounts of British breakfast (their only allegedly-national food that's palatable), so much so that at the end of my stay, Garfunkels' gave me a thank you card, which actually managed to stir up some activity in my emotional simulation processor.
Much to see, yes. Two weeks is criminally insufficient.
It makes sense, after all. The Brits had centuries to produce (and steal) interesting work, while we were huddling in huts getting pwnz0red by the Tatars. The Brits are falling from a lot higher up; they started off with a lot more hitpoints, as it were. But make no mistake, their fate is still sealed. The UK is toast, toast! I hope you are able to visit again and experience more of the good stuff while it is still there. The best we can do for it is preserve the memory and experience of what was once a great thing.
> The UK is toast, toast!
Eh, aren't we all? We are doomed, we are doomed / It can safely be assumed / We are doo wah diddy dum diddy doo.