Day 2: London

This is going up rather late.  In fact, it's about 1:30, and I would be killed if found.  I'm supposed to be adjusting to the time change, but woke up in the middle of the night in anticipation of Brussels.  I thought I would die of exhaustion last night, and fell asleep promptly at 9 PM.  Gill and Diogo were out for their last dinner together in a month, and I was in their flat, attempting to watch episodes of The Office (American, duh!) online.  Apparently, safe venues like Hulu are strictly off-limits anywhere but America.  So I had to go somewhere not nearly as reputable, and was rewarded with some weird alerts from Windows XP for my troubles.  Luckily, my computer lifted the ban on Internet use, at least temporarily, so I am now typing up my adventures.  Where to begin?

So yesterday, I woke up a little late.  With the jet lag, I think it should be okay, but I slept from about ten PM to ten AM.  Nice little 12-hour nap.  Woke up after Gill, which made me feel derpy, since she'd specified that she wanted to sleep in.  Until ten, apparently.  Crazy people and their normal sleeping schedules.  I had some tomato and lentil soup for breakfast (delicious), pondered my leftovers of Bubble and Squeak (the most adorable name for cabbage and onions EVER!  Cockney slang is hilarious, btw), made a contingency plan for my inevitable lost-ness, showered, ate some cookies (biscuits here, though Gill still calls them "cookies," because that's what they are!), and left the flat.

I went to the tube station, topped off the Oyster card (kind of like a Metro Card in New York, which allows for public transportation with a minimum of hassle.  On buses, you just touch it to a sensor, and they let you on with no trouble at all), and went to the London Bridge on the top level of a double-decker bus.  The sun was shining, and I felt overdressed in my orange plaid fleecy jacket, but the wind was high and I was sure I'd be thankful for it later, when the rain picked up (as it inevitably does). 

Different layers of rock found in Southwark Cathedral.  The bottom dates from the Middle Ages, and it's all up from there!

Impressions from driving around London in a bus, checking out the city mostly-objectively: The world has changed around London, and architectural stages have evolved.  I felt like an archeologist at a dig.  Everywhere, you see the mash-up of old and new; houses stacked on top of houses, and the debris slowly decaying away on the bottom.  People have always cared about London, and generations have come here for something. 

Ice cream truck parked IN FRONT OF the Tower of London

I don't know what it is, since it certainly can't be closeness.  Everyone is very impersonal.  Anonymity is assured, and there are stores at every juncture to remind you that nothing is unique, everything is mass-produced.  And yet somehow, the smile isn't unheard-of.  As I was walking into Southwark (pronounced "suthark," for no reason whatsoever) Cathedral, a worker was walking out.  I waited for him to clear the door with his large wooden rectangle, and he smiled and said "Thanks."  I was a conspicuous tourist with my hiking boots and bright yellow clothing, so I smiled in response.  That was probably the warmest interaction I'd had with a human all day.

Enough people DERPed around this door for the staff to put up a sign

Isn't that a pretty bridge?  This was right after the sun went away for .5 seconds.

I feel like I want to create my own language to speak exclusively in London.  There are soo many foreigners!  I heard Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and many, many more unidentifiable tongues that my imagination doesn't encompass.  I also made friends with a duck at the base of the Globe Theater (yes, the one where Shakespeare's plays were first performed, though a replica) without my knowledge. 

The Globe Theatre, featured, among other things, in a Doctor Who episode

I was just eating an orange and journaling when I realized I was attracting a LOT of attention.  This was different, since I was used to anonymity, so I looked up, and found a duck with designs on whatever I was putting in my mouth (that's NOT what she said!).

Unfortunately for me, the ONLY non-blurry picture of this event happens to highlight a lamentable posture and silly expression.  Eleanor (my duck friend) looks cute, though.

A friendly Cockney couple took my picture with my camera, and then fed Eleanor an entire cream-filled eclair from his shopping bag.  She didn't like the cream, which got stuck on her bill, and possibly in her throat on the way down.  Dairy is REALLY weird, especially for fowl.  Serves her right for being tame enough to eat food out of people's fingers.  I stuck around blocking the wind for my friend, who'd resigned herself to the fact that I wasn't giving her anything delicious to eat.  Then, I went into the Tate Modern, which was an entirely different (though equally excellent) experience.

Ai WeiWei's Sunflower Seeds

 

The first thing I walked in on was an observation bridge overlooking a large room with what looked like a rock garden.  I walked closer, and found that it was an art exhibit.  Only in a museum of Modern Art, right?  It turns out that there are thousands upon thousands of individually-placed porcelain sunflower seed replicas in this piece.  Did I mention that they were each hand-painted?  Ai Weiwei literally had an entire city in China working on the commission.

Apparently, in Mao Zedung's China, all the propaganda centered around sunflowers.  Chairman Mao was always depicted as the sun, and those loyal to him were the sunflowers.  They absorbed the message of the party and bloomed in response to his loving care.  Also, when paranoia was at an all-time high, and your neighbor might be the person betraying you to very unfriendly people with a lot of power, sharing a bag of sunflower seeds was one of the most personal acts you could manage.  This resonated with me, since I'm still an avid eater of this delicious snack, and a survivor of a former Communist country, myself.

So there's a sense of the scope of this piece.  Now multiply this by six.

In the video, you see people raking the sunflower seeds like in a Zen garden, and then the artist interacting with the piece.  None of these are glued down; they move under your feet.  Unfortunately, the Tate decided the fumes kicked up from their pedestrians would be too toxic.  Also, I can't imagine thousands of people walking through and resisting the urge to put one or two of these porcelain seeds in their pockets to take home, so the exhibit would probably be VERY short-lived.

I would write more, but it's time to shower and get ready for Belgium.  We're on our way in an hour and fifteen minutes, because our train is at six.  Still no luck finding someone to stay with in Frankfurt, but we definitely have a person in Amsterdam, so worst comes to worst, we don't overnight in Germany.