My last night in Berlin was a bit of a nightmare. After my lovely pork roast dinner at the Lowenbrau I ended up with food poisoning and was up all night vomiting. But then had to leave the hostel at 4.30am to catch the train to the airport for our flight to London. I was not in a good way at all, which was made worse when we arrived at the airport and our flight was delayed 8 hours. By the time I arrived in London I barely had time to get to the hostel and throw on clean clothes before I headed out to Covent Garden to meet up with a friend from Sydney, Linda and her partner Emma.
After a few pints I stumbled back to the hostel and had an uneasy sleep in a strange dorm that had each bed surrounded by a curtain, similar to a few overnight trains I’ve been on. The following morning I discovered another other odd thing about this hostel; the showers are all grouped together in the sub-sub-basement in a grid formation with only a curtain between them and the water activated for 10 seconds at a time at a predetermined temperature by pressing a button. I felt like I was in prison.
I loved London when I was here in 2006 a couple of times and felt exactly the same way this time. London has been called a ‘world in one city’ and that’s exactly what it feels like to be here. While immigrants continue to flow in (especially Indians!) London nevertheless feels quintessentially British, whether it’s those boxy black cabs, the red double deckers or those grand symbols of Britain – the mother of all parliaments at Westminster, the silhouette of Tower bridge above the muddy Thames or the already world-famous London Eye.
Luke has been desperate to visit the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard for years so he had arranged with the curator to be taken through the next morning bright and early. There were extensive security checks and our police ID carefully scrutinised (as the museum is only open to serving police officers worldwide) before we entered the dark and freezing museum. While it wasn’t as big as I had anticipated it was truly fascinating. The museum is solely filled with the Met's private collection of macabre crime artifacts, all used in the commission of a crime or which have been exhibits in a court case in England. Some of the more interesting exhibits included those from Jack the Ripper, a pair of human arms sent from Germany (a very literal interpretation when British police had requested fingerprints of a body to be sent to them).
To be perfectly honest that was then the end of my sightseeing in London, I just ran out of time after that! We went shopping on Oxford Street that afternoon as it was freezing cold and I needed something warm. I also realised that my two pairs of footwear that had served me well all year (a pair of crocs and a pair of thongs) weren’t really suitable for going out in London so splurged on a new pair of shoes. How I long for my closet at home and the myriad of choice that lies within…
That night we went out with Seun, a friend of mine who I first met in Central America in 2006, and had a fantastic if expensive night out, and not just expensive by backpacker standards! To give you some idea, the standard price for a drink at the club we went to was 14 Pounds, or $28AUD. Unbelievable. Seun I adore you but if we lived in the same country and caught up more regularly I would go broke!!
The following morning Luke and I caught the train up to Cambridge to spend the night with Mark and Steph, friends of mine who I first met in Africa in 2006 and in Australia and Thailand as well since then. I love the London tube system, its so organised and punctual but Kings Cross station is a nightmare to the uninitiated. We spent over an hour walking around trying to find the platform we were supposed to be at to go to Cambridge and being seedy and tired irritation levels for both of us were at an all time high as we walked back and forth the enormous train station.
Eventually we found where we were supposed to be and slept the 45 minutes on the express train. Mark met us at the station in Cambridge which was so nice, such a change from buses and tubes and hours of waling to find our next destination. We spent a gorgeous summers day with Mark and Steph wandering around historic Cambridge. Its so different to London, none of the hustle and bustle and its far more quaint and laid back. There are push bikes everywhere and that seems to be the preferred mode of transport. After a fantastic home cooked meal (thanks again Mark and Steph!) we went out for a few beers and then off to bed.
We had organised to meet up on Sunday at the Nottinghill Festival with Luke’s sister Jodie who was visiting London. At the last minute Jodie changed her plans and wasn’t in London to meet us but as we had already bought our train tickets/accomodation etc we headed there anyway and went to the festival. OH MY GOD!! I have never seen anything like it. The debauchery, mess, chaos, noise and crowd crush was like nothing I have ever seen before. I’m still not really sure what the whole thing is about but from what I could tell the whole suburb of Nottinghill is closed off and over a million people descend for 2 days to listen to music at different stages around the streets and there is a parade (of sorts) of different musical acts.
I was thinking it would be kind of like the Mardi Gras in Sydney but its like that with 500 times more people, no organisation, no toilets, no barricades to stop people walking between the floats, no garbage bins and a general sense of lawlessness. People had set up bbq’s in their front yard and were selling food and drinks to the crowd, as well as selling the use of their toilets for up to 2 Pounds a flush! We met up with Linda and Emma there briefly but the crowd was so squashy that I just wanted to get out of there, and the music was terrible anyway. From that point it took us an hour and a half to get out of the festival area (about 700m away) because of the crowd crush.
My last day in London was spent wandering around Covent Garden, mostly accompanying Luke as he shopped his way through the suburb (in a way that I cannot afford!) and eating and drinking. That evening we met up with Matt, a friend I met earlier this year when I was at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand and we went out for a few beers. The early night we had planned for didn’t eventuate and it was a struggle to get up the next morning for a very early flight to New York on Tuesday.
