travel | Can't Stop, Addicted to the Shindig

Allow me to “Tarantino” this.

So, I’ve been in Amsterdam for approximately ten days now. Fate has conspired to prevent my blogging about my new home for the next four months in two ways: (1) I’ve, naturally, been pretty busy getting settled in; and (2) Sara and I (we haven’t decided who yet) pushed my laptop off of my bed, face-down, onto the hard linoleum floor of my (very spacious) room, which obviously messed something up because it took four hours to turn itself on. Once it did turn on, it only showed me the pinwheel of death. It’s been in the local “Apple Authorised Service Provider,” a place called iCentre on Prins Hendrikkade, for the last week or so, and they have yet to get back to me with the eighty-Euro diagnosis.

Anyways, let me give you a run down of what I did in the days leading up to my arriving in Amsterdam. In case you didn’t know, I spent about a week in London.

January 18th –25th

I flew from Portland International Airport (PDX, for those curious) to Heathrow Airport in London, where I would be staying at the home of my friend Alex’s mom – one Doris Sisk. Coincidentally, Alex was on the very same flight in to Heathrow. We took American Airlines, which, after comparing with everyone else from my program, was not the most amenable choice. This really means that it only had a few movies to choose from. I watched Eagle Eye, which entertained me for the first few hours, but after that the only thing offered was some movie called Ember, about an underground city in the future. Or something. But what Flight 50 lacked in digital entertainment, it made up for in interesting people. Alex and I were situated in the rear of the plane. It was a relatively empty flight, so many of the passengers (including the two of us) had entire rows free to stretch out in. The few people that were sitting near us, all happened to be in the 21 to 24 year old range. One girl, from Alex’s hometown Tucson, was in “international marketing” and, according to every story to she told, loved to party. Another girl was actually from the Netherlands and she went to university in the South (in a town I have yet to remember or pronounce). She had a thing for Alex. Lastly, there was a guy from Dallas, Texas, travelling on his way to Paris to see a dying uncle or something (I was kind of half-asleep for that story). He loved to talk, especially about his favorite bands (MGMT and Vampire Weekend) and he was sure to let us know that he was not like the other people from Texas (i.e. he was wearing an Obama shirt). Also, he loved to sing, and he led us all in a spirited, if off-key, rendition of Heartless (then again, shouldn’t it be off-key?), which I’m sure the rest of the plane loved.

We eventually landed and joined Doris and a two-hour-delayed Sara, and got in to the taxi. I notice two very striking things about the driving habits of Londoners on the hour-long drive to her townhouse in Croydon. The first and superbly obvious thing is that they’re driving on the left side of the road. But the second and much-more terrifying thing is that there appear to be absolutely no traffic laws in the city. Cars are going on sidewalks and into opposing lanes of traffic (with or without signalling), drivers are parking their cars in the middle of the street, no one is moving over for ambulances, and cars are parked in the wrong direction on the opposite side of the street (which is actually the smartest and most-enviable part of the backwards country).

We didn’t do too many “touristy” things during the week. A typical day involved waking up at around 10:00am; eating crumpets for breakfast (“crumps,” as we called them, are f-ing delicious, by the way); walking down the block to buy a 7 GBP travel card that gave us all-day access to bus, rail, and tube (“mind the gap”); travelling in to London; walking around for a while; getting cold; ducking in to a pub around 5 o’clock (17:00 for the yanks); getting drunk on cider; eating fantastic pub food or fantastic Indian food; getting drunk-er on more cider; travelling home; watching American news; sleeping. It was pretty epic.

We didn’t do too many touristy things. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, that giant ferris-wheel thing, the Millenium Bridge, and the Tate Modern. We checked out the neighborhoods of Croydon, Soho, and Notting Hill. We went to the transportation museum, which was showing an exhibit on the history of their iconic posters.

We also took a trip to Brighton, which was by far one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to. Apparently, it’s a big university town, so it was full of some pretty cool, independent stores as well as one of the best sandwich shops I’ve ever been to. Most notably, Brighton is the home of Banksy, which is why I wanted to go in the first place. I’ve been a fan of his work for a while, and I was excited about seeing it in person. The peice I saw was the one featuring two cops making out. The pub whose wall it appears on had taken steps to protect it, by fixing a sheet of clear plexiglass over it. On the one hand, it was cool that they were trying to preserve it as art, but it also sucked that it’s impossible to see it without a sheet of plastic in front of it. Oh well.

Some random thoughts on London (mostly about food, really)

They have mastered the art of the steak-fry (“chips” to them I suppose).
Ford is the most popular American car, hands-down.. The European Focus, the European Fusion (both of which get hella gas mileage and look a hell of a lot sportier than their counterpart in the former colonies), the Fiesta, and the new Ka were everywhere on the streets (I know I’m missing some). I think I saw one Dodge.
Their grocery stores make more sense than America’s. None of this cleaning-product-aisle-between-the-baking-goods-aisle-and-the-canned-food-aisle business. As Alex put it, “What a rational country.”
The police look bad-ass, even with the bobby.
It’s a damn shame that crumpets aren’t more popular in the U.S. And no, I don’t mean English muffins.
Everyone on the street is dressed impeccably.
They don’t have corn-syrup in any of their foods. Meaning Coke in the UK is slightly less unhealthy than it is in the U.S.
Whereas in the U.S., old people dress worse because they don’t care, old people in the UK dress to impress.
The police force isn’t afraid to buy foreign when it comes to cars. What would you be more afraid of in a high speed chase: A Crown Vic or a suped-up 3 Series?
Their showers don’t make any damn sense.
They adore Obama. Every news publication had him on the front page, even on the days before and after the inauguration.
I thought it was odd (and really disappointing) that I didn’t once hear “American Boy” on the radio.