As London Burns

As I see news of the riots in London, it occurs to me that perhaps I should work on finishing up this here blog. As a matter of fact, the next installment in this series just so happens to be London. My memories of my time there, now over two months old, do not yet fail me, though I have my journal here to remind me of the dates.

So picking back up on May 30 of this year, I boarded a Eurostar train in Paris and traveled in a manner that is as close to flying as you can get without leaving terra firma, on a track that was dug halfway into the earth, then later, fully under the English Channel, thus providing nearly no breathtaking views of the French and English countryside. The bullet train reached the London St. Pancras station 2.5 hours later at 7pm to a light drizzle and otherwise dreary evening. I walked through the hordes to street level and quickly saw the beautiful face of my good friend Quinn across the street. We greeted non-chalantly then walked the four blocks back to his dorm room.

On the inside I was elated to see my first friend or family member since I left Luang Prabang. There is a thrill in seeing a familiar face in such a distant land. What was also quite familiar, was the language being spoken all around me. I had heard it in movies and on TV many times before, and it sounded somewhat similar to the language we speak here in the US of A. In fact this was the first real English-speaking country I had stepped foot in since I stepped foot onto that ship in the Oakland Harbor back in early February.

Soon behind came the realization that I had reached a milestone of sorts, geographically speaking. I had crossed the entire Eurasian continent from Pacific to Atlantic without ever going airborne. I was also very much back in a culture that was entirely Western. The fact that I was almost home sunk in, which brought both excited thoughts of reuniting with friends and familiar places, but also the sad understanding that I would soon be back living a very conventional life, where every day is similar to the one before it.

Well, I'll save that discussion for later. As for now, I was elated to be with Quinn. After getting organized at his dorm and a brief video chat with our friend Andrew, we set out to a Cuban restaurant to meet Quinn's two Norwegian friends (because Quinn loves him some Norwegians). So for my first meal in England, I had Cuban-style Paella and Spanish wine. The pounds that my wallet lost were gained in body weight. After dinner, the four of us bought a twelver of Heineken keg cans and took a long, lovely, lonely English stroll along the canal to Camdentown, whereupon our Norwegian friends left us. Quinn and I walked into a stylish pub, then decided against staying and walked back home to call it a night.

Quinn and I woke up late the next morning and went for a walk past his very prestigious school, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and then on to the British Museum. The BM is a huge, world-class museum in which you can get lost for days in historical and cultural exhibits. I just wanted to see the mummies. And since all museums in London have free admittance, I felt free to just see that single exhibit. Some more walking brought us to the north bank of the mighty Thames, where I got my first stereotypical London view of the river, the London Eye, Big Ben and all that British jazz.

After my first ride on the London Underground, we found ourselves at Regent's Park where we tossed around one of those magical Aerobie discs for a couple of hours in the sun. Come evening, we returned to Quinn's place where we met the charismatic Norwegians, drank some beer, played some stringed instruments, ate some pizza, then went to a local theatre where we witnessed Zach Galifianakis' brilliant turn in The Hangover II. By the show's end, it was time to call it a night.

So now we arrive at June 1 and the two of us experienced London in a somewhat similar way as the previous day: food, museum, beer, and music. We got to another late start, because you know how Quinn and I like to sleep in, then walked and tubed down to the Thames. We crossed a bridge which led us to the Tate Modern, perhaps the best modern art museum in the world, some would argue.

I think I've made it clear in previous posts that I am not always brimming with enthusiasm when it comes to museums, but I was somewhat thoroughly impressed with the Tate. First of all, it is housed in some sort of old hangar, and the space is huge, which is a good place to house the art of people with huge egos. Second, a good deal of the pieces on exhibition struck a chord with me. I especially enjoyed the exhibit that dealt with dreams and consciousness, which brought in a diversity of pieces from various artists, and the black and white photography. Alas, I was just a few days too late to see the renowned sunflower seed art of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who coincidentally was arrested as a political prisoner while I was in China.

Moving on, Quinn and I walked and tubes back north up to SOAS, where we went to the student pub (a raucous affair) and met an American colleague of Quinn. We enjoyed a couple good English ales (you've got to try the Old Speckled Hen!), before heading back to the dorm to prepare for the evening's festivities. Quinn and Ingvild, his Norwegian friend with whom we had spent the prior two evenings, were set to play an open mic somewhere further north in London. We bussed up there around nightfall, then proceeded to cram ourselves into a dusty basement of a cafe (which served scotch whiskey, among other things) with a bunch of young, bohemian art-types. The event was MC'd by a jolly englishman who would be a perfect fit in a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Quinn, on guitar, and Ingvild on Uke, played two pieces; a noble rendition of Beck's Rowboat, and some sort of Norwegian folk song.

Wrapping up the open mic, a few of us moved some blocks away to an industrial warehouse which housed a makeshift musical stage and basic bar. The kids there were some shade of cool verging on pretentious, and we spent another hour or two sitting on couches, drinking beer and puffing tobacco, because that's how you do it in London. Soon thereafter, we ended the night.

June 2 was my last full day in London. Quinn had to work on his dissertation, so as he went to SOAS, I set out alone to be a tourist in London. I headed down to the wonderful Victoria and Albert museum. With free admission and exhibits that I could get lost in for a few hours, I was delighted to discover that I wasn't totally jaded on museums. I especially enjoyed the reconstructions of several hundred year-old building façades. I then moved on to the Westminster area, the seat of power of this once-great and still-worthy empire. I took tourist photos of the Abby, parliament and Big Ben, saw the prime minister's Downing Street residence, then sat and read in a park for an hour.

That evening , I met Quinn back at SOAS and we went directly to the student pub. Quinn and all of his classmates were celebrating the fact that this had been the last day of final exams, so everyone was jovial and ready to give the whole night up to drink. I readily joined in. After a couple hours at the pub, we stopped by a store, bought some more beer, then went back to campus to spend the rest of the night in the Mongolian-style Ger that had been constructed on the school's lawn.

It felt like a poetic moment in my journey; the fact that I was sitting in a Mongolian Ger drinking English ale in London, only served to further the growing realization in my mind that the world is a small place. The farther I travel, the shorter the distances become. I set out on this trip with the notion that I would learn to appreciate the vastness of the Earth by traveling by land and sea around it. As it turned out, I discovered that by playing a game of connect-the-dots between Oakland, CA and London, England, I made the world smaller in my mind.

And then the next morning, four months to the day since I boarded the Hanjin Pretoria in Oakland, I got on a plane and flew to Iceland. After tens of thousands of miles without leaving the surface of the Earth, I zipped to that remote northern island in a matter of hours. But while I was flying over the open ocean, I could look down and imagine myself traveling at 25 knots on the surface of it.

And thus began the penultimate chapter of my journey 'round. It was a chapter that would prove to be perhaps the most beautiful of the whole trip.