London Rambling, Part 3
/No more London, England. Amazing week. The final results are in.
What I loved about London
- incredibly friendly, helpful and communicative people, nicest people I’ve ever encountered
- amazing vegan food with a huge diversity of options
- Camden Town and Market, became one of my favorite places in the world
- the underground
- movie posters, ads for books and albums everywhere
- most stores play great music all day
- record stores that have almost any album I was ever looking for
- my students because they’re awesome
- many different cultures in one place
- the architecture
- Oxford, which is not London at all, but it was still a very cool city
- the Tate Modern because it’s so inspiring for me
- getting back twice what I was stupid enough to lose at markets
- watching people at the airport
- collecting good quote photos in shop windows, on murals and elsewhere
- having a great chat with a stranger on the train from Oxford about Africa and the rest of the world
- the weather
What I didn’t love about London
- prices sometimes
- that the underground is called ‘tube’
- Germans everywhere
- advertisements and huge clothing stores
- businessmen everywhere
- non-journalistic gossipy newspapers for everyone everywhere
- sheep between London and Oxford with tags on them, so demeaning
- millions of different “Keep Calm and…” slogans on shirts, mugs, coasters
- people saying they didn’t understand the art at the Tate Modern
- walking too many stairs at the underground
- finding cool shirts at Camden that were still “Made in Bangladesh”
- the weather
Maybe I’ll think of more retroactively in the future, but that’s London for me for now. Great experience, fantastic people, inspiring thoughts. Thank you, London.
When you and I
Watch the London sky
Traffic rolling by
Do whatever we like,
So we chase the day away
Feel the morning rain
Piss our money down the drain
And do whatever they say
Suede, Every Monday Morning (1996)
