Tourist info said we'd have a good time

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Episode 1: London according to Louisville
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As our regular readers know, I made a friend from Louisville in Vienna. She has appeared on our show a number of times, including our episodes on Budapest, Munich, and Paris. Lana happens to have a good friend (from Louisville) living in London, and her name is Lauren (seen there with Zeke- we'll meet him later).

By some stroke of absurd luck, Lana convinced Lauren that she should put me up when I visited London, even though Lauren had never met me and Lana would not be present. And so it was that I arrived in London and headed directly for Paddington Station, walked down a classic London Street, and rang the doorbell of someone I'd never met nor spoken to, after dark.

And no one was home.

Lauren had stepped out to the store, but she soon returned, inspected my documents, and accepted that I was the vagrant she had agreed to put up. with.

As it turns out, Lauren was also putting up with another guest: a young lady, recently imported from Louisville, named Narissa. (Yes, yes, that's Zeke in the photo again. I told you already to ignore him, we'll meet him later!)

These two ladies led me somewhere I hadn't been in a long time: an actual home. I mean, it's a one-bedroom flat with 3 people in it... but still! A flat! A kitchen, a bath, some semblance of privacy, a DVD player with plenty of fuel, free Internet access without anyone breathing over your shoulder. Comforts I had almost forgotten.

It should be pointed out that at this point, the only English experience I had had was getting confused while crossing the street about which way to look first. And now I was in a comfy flat with two Americans.

In my first three days in London, I rode the tube twice and took about 5 black cabs (Lauren can't be bothered with the tube), and did exactly one cultural thing: check out the Tate Modern with Narissa. The other activities in those three days were distinctly un-English: on my first full day we hunted all over London for beans so Narissa could whip up real mexican food- a conspicuously rare cuisine throughout Europe. I stuffed myself. The black cabs were mostly taken on a night out- the three of us went to a huge club to see a band called VHS or Beta. VHS or Beta is a rock band (with a front-man originally from Portland) hailing from (where else?) Louisville, KY.

So, we had what Lana had led me to believe was a pretty standard night-out with Lauren:

Saw VHS or Beta:



They played a short set, which I enjoyed. Then we met up afterwards with the band (old friends of my hostess), had some drinks, and went back to their hotel. At the hotel, we sat in the closed bar/lobby drinking Vodka drinks and chatting with Zeke, Chea, some groupies, and some random British people from the hotel. Zeke was one of the highlights of the night for me- he was an awesome guy.

More highlights from the Lauren-show:
- We met some British business man around 3 am who sat down with his friend to chat with us. They were drinking vodka, but had their own bottle. They were gregarious, goofy, and friendly, and then they both disappeared. When we were about to leave, around 6 am, the first guy stumbled back in. He started talking to our threesome, the last of the party, and when a hotel employee wandered by he hailed her to bring another bottle of vodka. Lauren tried to stop him: "Oh no, hon, we're leaving!" He turned, smiled, and said, "Oh, it wasn't for you."
- Lauren, who paid for black cabs everywhere all night, accosts a business man outside the hotel as we leave. This man has just awoken and is obviously on his way to a meeting of some sort, and is sipping from a Starbucks cup. Lauren approaches unhesitatingly: "Oh! Can I have a sip of your coffee?" He gave it to her. Here Narissa and I are with said coffee:



- Lauren takes us to a huge Aussie-bar to meet up with Nigel, an Aussie working as a concierge who she befriended in (you guessed it! ) Louisville. The bar is hosting a live viewing of some sporting event from across the world, and you need to have purchased tickets just to get in the front door. There are no more tickets. Lauren insults the man in charge, then spends 30 minutes in the cold London morning trying to talk, bribe, or trick her way past the security guy. To no avail. Nigel tells us later that we didn't miss much.

- Lauren takes us to her favorite all-night breakfast joint. We see 3 fellows sitting at a table, each with a bowl of chips (french fries) along with their meals. Lauren with the approach, yet again: "Oooh.. can I have a fry?" The nice man lets her take a chip, and says as we sit down, "Here, take them- we have plenty!" as he offers the bowl. Lauren laughs and Narissa tells the man we don't need them. He persists. I look back and forth, walk over to his table, and say, "I have no qualms about accepting free food, I'm a vagrant."
- Lauren insists that after we eat the chips, we leave without ordering anything -- even though we still want breakfast -- for 'hilarity factor'. We do.
- Lauren stops to ask some carpenters getting their day started where we can find another breakfast place. They invite us into the home (likely not theirs) and offer to make us breakfast. Lauren and I are game, but Narissa is having none of it. Lauren laments the loss of potential 'hilarity factor'.

Oh, here's me at the hotel just before we left, something was funny and I fell out of my stool:




Needless to say, after that night it took me a little while to get back to having my waking hours take place during daylight. For complete photo documentation, I'll refer you to Lauren's smugmug.

In order to earn my keep, I put together Lauren's still-in-the-box futon frame, giving her a place to put the futon mattress that I was sleeping on (when Lauren let me). Apparently, building an Ikea-futon-frame is worth 2 weeks of crashing in someone's flat, plus extras like food, drinks, and waking up your hostess on a school-night at 5:30 am because you were out partying. Lauren was exceptionally welcoming; that and the free accommodations, creature comforts, a great city (which I eventually ventured into), and a helping of laziness kept me in London longer than I had planned.

Fortunately for both my daytime plans and my liver, Narissa went out of town and Lauren started classes soon, and she only took me out for one other crazy night on the town, which I'll leave out of this already-ballooning entry. Regardless, I was in London for 5 days before I got back to being a tourist.

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Episode 2: London according to Jessie Marshall
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My dear friend Jessie Marshall lived in London for a while, and she wrote me two e-mails to prep me for London. The first was a list of 'things to do', ranging from restaurant suggestions to nice walks to take to cultural experiences to pursue (like hanging out in pubs... I managed that one). I took a lot of her advice, and enjoyed the results. The second e-mail was contact information for some of Jessie's London friends, which was excellent.

I contacted Harmony first. Harmony invited me to come over to her 7-person house on a Sunday evening to socialize. Those familiar with the dynamics at the "Gamble House" in Portland already know what this place was like- a house full of young folks who work together to create a fun, welcoming, and messy home where everyone goes to party on any day of the week. I was immediately comfortable. I stayed up late chatting over cheap wine with some housemates and another visitor, and crashed on the couch. I was told to come knock on the door anytime and I would be welcomed, and indeed it was so.

The next day, Jos (from Harmony's house) took me around his favorite parts of London- he showed me SoHo, where the young & hip mixes strangely with the affluent & respectable, with a splash of red-light alleyways. We visited some record stores and accidentally wandered into what we think was a Nazi-run independent clothes store. Jos took me to one of his favorite cheap-eats spots for lunch, and we checked out the Monument- a 300-step tower monument to the Fire of London, providing a windy view of the city from its middle:



From there, Jos and I spotted some odd buildings in the financial district nearby, so we went to check them out. We discovered a building that apparently had a section of some column cast by the queen herself (it had a plaque with that information and not much else):



Nearby we saw this excellent contrast between the old church in the foreground and the modern tower behind:



More neighborhood touring followed, and it all ended happily in a genuine English pub. Here's our mystery-man, Jos, enjoying a pint:



Turnabout's fair game in England, too:



Jos entertained me basically the whole day. It was (as we say back home) pretty rad.

I also spent a good deal of time with Max, who was the only person home on one of my visits to the house, but patiently fed me and chatted with me for hours. I also accompanied him to his sister's housewarming party, where my American accent was unexpected, and I twice was told to "just keep talking, I don't care what you say!" The dude in this picture isn't the one who said it, he's just some guy outside the window:



That was the night I woke up Lauren at 5:30. Long story. Long walk, too.

I also met up with Jessie's friend Val, who took me to a strange, new market which was supposed to have "live graffiti" and "dancing" and such. It was a fascinating environment which, though parts were less exciting than advertised, was nonetheless a pretty cool spot.

We had coffee, found Val a rad skirt, and window shopped (without the windows). We also went to a crazy-hip little bookstore that had a lot of post-independent publications. There was a great cartoon about robots, which I'll (probably illegally) describe here in glorious paraphrase:

"Fighting robots"
(two fighting robots face each other, not fighting)
robot 1: Why must we always fight?
robot 2: What else is there to do?
robot 1: You are right.

Val was very sweet. She is a playwright and a teacher, which both interest me, so I peppered her with questions and she was nice enough to put up with it.

All the Londoners were awesome (and so was Nico, one of the housemates who is French :) and made my visit to London feel very intimate and authentic.

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Episode 3: I'm having fun, but my boogers are black
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I won't go into too much detail, but here are some other things I did outside the Louisville & Jessie's friends worlds:

Saw a Shakespeare show at the Globe as a groundling:



Saw Big Ben, Westminster, & Parliament, and this little square with a bunch of statues of English political figures. Foremost among them (and by far the largest) was Winston:



Westminster Abbey, all religious and historical and whatnot, is an odd place to find the tombs of Newton and Darwin, but it was awesome to see them. I also found Henry James in there, which is cool because I discovered his books on this trip.

I also crossed a lot of bridges at sundown somehow, getting great, smog-enhanced views like this one:



Of course, I checked out some of what popular travel writer Rick Steeves calls "cultural peacocks".

This particular peacock -- the remnant of a bygone era when there was a point to having a man in armor with a sword in front of the Queen's residences -- gets payed to sit, very still, on a horse, in goofy-looking armor, all day, while tourists snap photos of him.



The irony here is that once upon a time, it was probably a man's job to sit in a similar place and actually *look around*. Like, for threats that he might be able to stop. Now the major job skill to be learned, it appears, is sleeping while sitting up with your eyes open. Or maybe restraining yourself from attacking all these jerks with cameras. Hey, did you see the double-decker bus in the background?

The Imperial War Museum was amazing- great exhibits on WWI and WWII and how the one led to the other, a temporary exhibit on D-day, and a great Holocaust exhibit. They also have a bunch of old war artifacts which fascinate me less than they once would have. This huge cannon on the front green was rather impressive, however:



I stumbled around town on my own and found some cool little spots:



Karen, who some of you may recognize from the infamous gomio.com Paris party pictures, was an Aussie friend I made at the hostel in Paris. She is living in London, so we met up a couple of times. Here she is with some guy we kinda just bumped into that she met a long time ago on a bus in New Zealand. They took 10 minutes to figure out why they knew each other. Yep.



I also went to other museums, including the Tate Modern where there was an excellent exhibit on Frida Kahlo, and wandered around looking at all the other famous places in London. I especially enjoyed the madness of Camden Town.

Eventually, I escaped the cozy confines of Lauren's world and, thanks to Lauren herself and a little luck, found myself on a bus back to mainland Europe. I won't go into fancy language for a preview, I'll just say this: Amsterdam.

-gcb