London, England: And We Pronounce That Lie-cess-tur-shy-er?

            I must admit I feel quite lucky. I’ve been back in Europe for 3 weeks now, and have managed to avoid serious snowfall. Until now. Currently my village is blanketed in white, while snowflakes continue to fall and threaten to ruin my trip to the grocery store. But I will say something, it is a beautiful sight.

With three more weeks of school under my belt and only 10 left to go, I’m looking at my time in France a bit differently. I still wish I didn’t have to take vitamin D pills because I haven’t seen the sun in 5 months, but I suppose that is a small price to pay for living in the center of Europe. I wouldn’t say travel has been necessarily easy, but it is definitely feasible. And that is a big step up from the US. And so, true to form, I took off to London during my second week back. Ah, London. You know those cities where you step onto the sidewalk and you immediately feel at home? Where you know there is a culture that is somewhat akin to your own but still foreign enough to be exciting? And where, by the grace of God, you are lucky enough to have friends who make it feel like a home away from home? That is what London is for me. Note: this phenomenon did not happen in Alsace.

Love the London phone booths

As with any of my trips here in Europe, my second voyage across the English Channel, this time by plane, started with some planning. I had a flight leaving Basel at 7:00am, but no train from my village, from Strasbourg, or from Mulhouse would get me to the airport on time. Enter English Teaching Assistant Program. While not technically a program in the traditional sense (the only thing I had from them when I arrived was a contract and the address of my school, the rest, and I mean rest, was up to me), it is quite a nifty networking tool. And so, through a friend of a friend (all assistants), I managed to find somewhere to stay in Basel on Friday night. I quite like this assistant network thing. Whenever anyone has a problem or needs help with something, I feel like there is always someone there to help. And so, thanks to Ruth for a lovely Friday evening in Saint-Louis, and putting up a girl she barely knew, it was really kind.

5am Saturday morning came all too early (when most of you in the US were still experiencing “yesterday”). I prepared myself for the cold, 30-minute walk from Ruth’s apartment to the Saint-Louis train station. There, I was to grab the bus that runs to the airport. All together not the most enjoyable walk of my life, as I spent 30 minutes constantly turning around to see if anyone was behind me in the dark, or if cars were approaching too slowly (they were not). Not to mention practically sprinting to the train station at break-neck speed. Young girl, alone, in strange city, in the dark (sorry, Mom). Not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, but I was going to get to London if it killed me. But why all the walking and bussing? To avoid a 20 euro cab ride that I simply could not afford. Walking to the bus? Free. Bus to the airport? 1 euro. Not bad. However, my well-laid plan was soon going to go awry. Adrenaline pumping, I arrived at the station a good 10 minutes before my bus was to depart. However, in typical French fashion, it never arrived. There was no one at the depot and no one driving any bus. I guess it was just too early on a Saturday morning for them to feel like going to work. Only in France. Luckily, I spotted 3 other people waiting for the same bus, and asked if they wanted to share a cab to the airport. This ended up costing me 3 euro instead of 20. Nice.

Eliza and I as a soldier and Paddington Bear

Basel airport was incredibly busy for 6am. There were flights going everywhere! However, I blazed through security and right to the gate with plenty of time….I was just hoping not to fall asleep in a chair before boarding the plane. Here’s one complaint I have about Basel airport. The airport is technically called Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport. Serving 3 different countries, it operates in 3 languages: English, French, and German. Now this can get quite confusing. More often than not, the person doing the announcing will get something wrong in one of the languages (for example, the gate number), and send all the English-speaking people to the wrong gate. It happens.

The flight was a total breeze (I slept through it). I woke up in London, wizzed through the airport (as fast as I could, Gatwick is a MAZE), through customs and immigration, took a bus into the city, and was at Eliza’s apartment by 10am. We made breakfast (egg-in-a-hole, if you’ve never tried it, Google it and try it immediately, it is so good), chilled out for a bit, got clean (i.e. de- stale-smelling from the plane), and trotted off to the British Museum in the early afternoon. 

British Museum

The British Museum is quite an impressive place. The second-most visited museum in the world after the Louvre, it houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside Egypt. Home to the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin marbles, and many Egyptian mummies, it makes for a very interesting afternoon. I highly suggest it to anyone in London. The museum’s entire collection spans over 2 million years of human history. And…it’s FREE! Those are the kinds of things I like to go and see. Specifically, we went to go see an exhibit on the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian compilation of spells designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld and into the afterlife. As my luck would have it, the tickets for the exhibit were sold out for the day, so we booked for Monday afternoon. We spent the better part of Saturday afternoon roaming around the other parts of the museum. Upon finding the Rosetta Stone, we could barely see the thing but for the throngs of snap-happy tourists in front of it. We also saw part of the Sphinx’s beard, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon, AND Cleopatra’s mummy! Pretty awesome place, that British Museum. In total, we spent over 3 hours wandering around the museum and experiencing its vast array of artifacts. We also spent lots of time in the gift shop…in the children’s section, of course. They have some pretty cool books on ancient mythical creatures. I’m just saying.

Peekaboo!

After the museum, my lack of sleep from the night before was getting to me, so we went home for a quick nap and got ready for a dinner party we had been invited to. Eliza’s friends really are quite sophisticated. I don’t think I have ever hosted a dinner party. Our idea of that over here in France is a few bottles of cheap wine and some Monster Munch. The dinner was really a lot of fun. We were 9 people around the table, and finished off a lovely 12 (or so) bottles of wine. However, the most interesting part of the evening to me, was the discussion about boarding school. I have always had the impression that British people like to rid themselves of their children at an early age. Just exactly how early, I was unaware. Every single British person at the table (8) had gone to boarding school at the age of….wait for it….NINE. Nine years old! To me that practice is unfathomable. At 9 you are still a child. Why any parent would not want to experience the growth and development of their children is beyond me. And when I asked them all if they would do it again for their children, the immediate response was an emphatic “yes” without any hesitation. Absurdity. And for all you who will read this and argue in favor of boarding school, I’m sure you will make some very good points. I just don’t believe in it. After 5 hours of eating, drinking, and chatting, Eliza and I made our way home around 2am. Not having really napped at all, I was quite exhausted.

At the dinner party

But true to my insomniac nature, I was up and at ‘em at 8am Sunday morning. So much for the day of rest. While Eliza slept, I busied myself with job applications and episodes of tv shows on my computer. Around 2pm, I went to lunch with Kenny and Minnie, two Swedish friends I traveled Croatia with last summer. I arrived at the restaurant early, so I decided to duck into a bookshop across the street. I went immediately to the travel section and sought out the books on Alsace. Out of the hundreds they had on France, there were two on Alsace. To be honest, I don’t blame them. I was curious as to what the books would say, so I settled down in a corner and got somewhat lost in the pages of wine, Munster cheese, and choucroutte recipes. On the inside of the front cover, the first thing I saw, was a giant article on Saverne, the town where I work. Never thought it would make it into anything…

Of course, I stayed way too late at the bookstore and was actually late for lunch (sorry guys). But we spent a couple of hours catching up over what Kenny deemed “mediocre” food (it was), and it was so much fun! I met up with Eliza at her apartment, and we raced back out to meet another friend of hers, Henry, for a pint (or two). Not having visited any pubs on my last trip to London, I was eager to go to a few. We arrived at the Anglesea Arms in the pouring rain (typical), but had a lovely time. Afterwards we raced home because it was our turn to host the dinner party! On the menu: fajitas! Us Americans seriously missed our Mexican food. I made my famous guacamole, Eliza poured the margaritas, and dinner was a success. We had a strong UVa contingent, exactly half of the group, which is always a recipe for fun.

Westminster Abbey

Monday we got up late, but made up for it with an incredibly full day. Just before 1pm we met Taylor, another UVa girl, at Westminster Abbey, to re-explore the beautiful church we had all seen before. Price to enter? Make sure to close your mouth after it drops from this figure: 16 pounds. That’s 25 dollars. Just to go in and walk around! Since when did being a tourist get so expensive? When we walked in, there was a lovely little old man distributing guides to the abbey. He recounted his years in the army and working for Boots Chemists before he let us on our way. We picked up our free audio guide (thank god it was included in that price), and began our journey through the church. Unbeknownst to me, Westminster Abbey used to be a monastery. The coronation church of England, it has seen 38 sovereigns crowned here since 1066 (that’s so cool). Many of them, and their spouses, are also buried in the church, along with important figures in British history. Elizabeth the First and Bloody Mary (her half-sister) are buried together, one on top of the other. Right across the ambulatory from their burial place is the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth first imprisoned for 20 years and then executed, to protect her claim to the throne. Down in the Poet’s Corner, where Chaucer (the first poet buried here), Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, and Rudyard Kipling are all buried. In the main nave we found the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, surrounded with poppies, the tomb of David Livingstone (I’m an African studies nerd, so of course I was most interested by this one), and those of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. Just as we were leaving, the clock rang out that it was time for the hourly prayer. The entire church quieted as the priest read into a loudspeaker. Something he said stuck with me, “never be too busy to pass by those who suffer”. I lit a candle, said a prayer for my family, and left.

Book of the Dead exhibit!

We scooted across town as fast as we could to make our 3pm reservation to see the Book of the Dead exhibit. And boy, was it worth the ticket price. I was under the impression that it was just one book. Silly me. Basically it is a guide to the afterlife, with spells for how to pass by certain gods, how to pass the test of weighing your heart against Maat, the feather of truth (so it doesn’t get eaten by the Devourer – scary, huh?), which amulets to bring to life to protect you, etc. All the ones we saw were different, varying from dynasty to dynasty, evolving over time, and written on sarcophagi, papyrus leaves, etc. The longest book of the dead, known as the Greenfield Papyrus, is a whopping 37 meters long.

After the museum, we went to dinner at a lovely little Italian restaurant in South Kensington and quickly stopped off at home to change for the theater. Back when I visited in November, Eliza and I had bought tickets to see Wicked, her favorite musical of all-time, and one I had never seen. We had incredible seats, right down in front, just about 10 rows back, on the center aisle. And the show was amazing! The costumes were fantastically whimsical, the songs were beautiful and the story was moving. All-in-all, a rather enjoyable evening!

Fish and chips

On Tuesday, Eliza and I went out to lunch with another friend of hers, Archie, at a little restaurant called the Giraffe. Pleasantly making the rounds to visit all her friends, I was enjoying the meals out, the dinner parties, and the good company. Afterwards, we stopped at a pub in her neighborhood called The Builder’s Arms to celebrate, well, you all. I had found out that morning that I had over 2,000 hits on my blog. Which I feel is quite an accomplishment, and that is all because of you! Thanks for following me, it really means a lot. So we had a beer or two in your honor, some chips (or French fries as we would call them), and made our merry way home. Of course my efforts to eat Fish and Chips (something I’ve never had even though I’ve been to London 4 times), were thwarted when they “ran out of fish”, so I guess I will leave that culinary experience until next time!

Oh my goodness. YUM.

When we got home, I had a quick job interview (on Skype - gotta love technology), before we headed out to meet Henry for another pint. After our quick visit to the Drayton Arms (I love the names of the pubs over here), we went all the way across town to meet Taylor for Indian food. YUM! My mom can attest to the fact that I love Indian food more than the average person. In fact, I’d quite like to go back there for an extended period of time and eat my life away (equipped with lots of Pepto Bismal, of course). Our dinner at Delhi Brasserie was amazing – naan, basmati rice, curry, aloo gobi, etc. As usual, I ate way too much, and almost had to be rolled home. When we arrived, there was yet another Indian dinner party going on. Popular cuisine in these parts…

Love.

On Wednesday, in an attempt to rid myself of the giant circles under my eyes (thank you, insomnia), I slept in late, leisurely packed my suitcase, looked at a few job applications (sadly my stint in France will end, and I must return to the real world), grabbed a late lunch, and left for my bus to the airport around 2:30pm. The ride was quite pleasant, as I was the only one on the entire bus and had the whole thing to myself for 7 pounds. Not bad. My flight back was even better. I had an aisle seat with an open seat next to me, the plane took off early, landed 35 minutes early (wow), I sailed through customs and immigration, and the bus to the train station was waiting for me as I exited. Again, I had the whole bus to myself, and this time for just 1 euro. I arrived just in time for a train back to the city and got into Strasbourg at 9:30pm. Easiest return home I’ve had!

And so another trip to London has come to an end. But I’m not staying put for long. A mere 6 days from now I am off to Paris for another UVa reunion and I cannot wait…More news from the City of Lights next week!