london.
had a fantastic time in london. after finally finding the joseph...
the joseph
eindhoven has a nice little airport. although a bit disorganized. the flight to london was at gate 3, which was past the passport control and into it's own glassed-off waiting area. which makes sense. and there's a large glass sliding door to the actual gate. i was told i was in boarding group 2, which would board at 8:25.
8:25 came and went, with no sign of any airport personel near the gate. some announcements had come over the loudspeaker, but if there was any noise at all in the waiting area, those were nearly impossible to hear, let alone make out what was being said.
finally they opened the glass door, and everyone rushed the gate. everyone. and those being told they were in group 2 just kind of hung out near the door instead of going back to sit. making the gate area something akin to the front row of a rock show. the group 1 people had to push through to get in. there was nothing that even came close to resembling a line.
but we finally got in, and i slept the majority of the 1 hour flight. got in to stansted and went to the non-EU passport line, which was decidedly less populated.
since i had only my carry-on, i bypassed the baggage claim and went to the bureau de change to switch my fifty bucks US into british pounds. i knew it wouldn't be much, but i needed to get a ticket to liverpool station. the change guy asked if i wanted a ticket for the express train. i said yes, roundtrip. so i got a whopping 86 pence out of my fifty bucks.
i called joe at his brother's place when i got in to liverpool. no answer. i was hoping that bastard was asleep.
i found the bus stand after hitting the ATM for some cash. but i needed some change since the smallest i had was a ten pound note. i bought a bottle of water and i swear the woman said it was 7.50. seven fifty what? i have no idea. since my change from my ten pound note was nine pound and some change.
so i hopped on the 214 bus toward jimmy's place. and i realized i had no idea when i'd get there, as there are no indications of any kind as to what bus stop you are coming to. i sat on the left side by the windows and tried to watch the bus stop names as they went by. i saw the central st. stop as we flew by it, so i hit the stop indicator and got out at angel station and walked down.
once at the place, there was a gate and an intercom to get in. i rang number 18. jimmy's place. many, many, many times. no answer.
wtf.
did joe think i went to scott's? was he still sleeping?
i walked back towards angel, i figured there'd be a phone booth up there. i found one and called. no answer. twice. i tried scott's number too, but since i had forgotten to write down the leading zero in his number, the nice recorded voice on the phone told me it didn't recognize it.
i sat on the park bench to figure out what to do.
after about a half an hour, i called jimmy's number again and joe answered.
"dude, weren't you supposed to get in like two hours back?"
"...dude. i did. wtf."
so he came to the gate and let me in. we still haven't figured out how he missed me all those times (he did let one phone call keep ringing... as he was "indiposed", but that was all he heard). but it quickly became funny rather than infuriating on my walk back to jimmy's from angel station.
whilst the joe was waiting for me... gero, barbara, and jimmy were out seeing the sights.
including the whale that lost his way.
so after dropping my gear off, we went across the street for some food. there's a pub called "offside", clearly a sports pub.
we order a few pints and decide to get the fish and chips, and sausage and mash. because you can't really get any more stereotypical pub grub than that.
and then a football match was about to begin. everton vs. arsenal. not a bad match, but arsenal was clearly out-gunned... pun intended. everton won, 1-0.
that night we went for some pints in leicester square, near piccadilly circus.
da square.
some pub with something about a moon in its name. and guinness was as cheap as stella. they had a "pricewatch" sign up to show you how they were the cheapest joint around. that was nice. but i had to try the beers on cask. i love the cask. a little warmer than on tap. and they have to pump it out. i have a scottish "harviestoun bitter". not bad.
the joint.
it seems i'm in the middle of a funny story... whilst prachi inspects the "pricewatch".
the crew. minus the joe.
the crew, minus the joe's brother.
you can see the "pricewatch" poster on the wall there.
so this place closes at 10pm. we decide we need food.
the only things open are a burger king... and a pizza hut. great.
we decided on the pizza hut. there were six of us, we decided on some family deal with a large pie, a few appetizers, and another large pie half off.
and i realized that this is what is supposed to be happening at 3am. not freaking 10.30pm.
the joe and i at the pizza hut.
yes, that's a beer in front of me.
afterwards... joe and gero found a place to take a pit stop.
in the middle of the sidewalk.
on tha bus. with babs.
the next day they wanted to do some more sightseeing. since this is my second time in london, and in the first i was taken around town by my knowledgeable architect friend scott... i had no opinion. i had seen a lot already, and whatever they wanted to do was fine.
we decided on camden market. and then the london bridge/tower bridge area. which is cool, since scott and i didn't spend much time there last time. and we didn't go to camden market at all.
and as a side note, most people don't know that the "london bridge" is just a regular ol' boring bridge. the tower bridge is the one everyone thinks of.
tower bridge.
after walking around a bit, and snapping off numerous pictures...
a bit of camden.
immature? sure. funny? absolutely.
now, how cool is that?
in fact... how cool is that too?
...we decided we needed to find a pub to watch the manchester united vs. liverpool football match. and a pub with a tv turned out to be harder to find than one might expect. although this was the downtown/financial district area. and not very residential. and it was a sunday.
but we eventually found a few, all packed with people. joe and jimmy and i watched the first half as gero and barbara went to see more of the tower.
gero and barbara got back just as half time started, so we hopped a bus back toward jimmy's to finish off the match back at "offside".
great game. man u pulled it out with a goal precisely at 90:00. added time was only 3 minutes, and liverpool didn't have a chance. 1-0.
then we ate dinner at a place called "masala zone". and holy crap, it was good. i've never had such authentic indian food outside of india before. it took me back. all these memories of my india trip came flooding back. i thanked jimmy for his choice of restaurant.
masala zone. where they have wall murals such as this one.
oh and they call the restroom area the "toilet zone".
it's funny. the english love their indian food, and you can find a curry dish in just about any restaurant, not just indian. and yet they refuse to add any taste to their own dishes. odd.
after we got back from dinner, we chilled at jimmy's for a bit. joe passed out on the couch. i called scott to see if he's free.
i took the tube. even though i hate the tube. i mean, i'm all for public transport... but the london bus system is much better. it's hard to have a service outage with buses. but the tube is constantly having "engineering outages", track and station fires, and train malfunctions.
i suppose my hatred started on my last trip to london when i had to get to liverpool to get my bus to stansted. i was in a hurry and scott took me most of the way and said it was really easy from there, just hop on this other line and take it in. and he went back home.
but no. turned out that all the lines coming into the station from the east were down. we passengers had to circumvent the station and come in from the west.
and then the line i chose to do this with shut down. and we had to get out of the tube, walk to the next undergroudn station, and get back on.
by this time, i had clearly missed what the website had told me was the last bus to stansted that night. and my flight was early in the morning, before any of the service supposedly started up for the day.
and yet there was another bus to stansted. so i was all set.
but i still hate the tube.
but the trip to scott's at bethnal green station wasn't that far. just take the northern line south a few stops to bank and switch to the central, two stops to bethnal green.
the scott.
he met me and we went to find a pub. we had a good time, talked about his new place, what he's been up to. and how i should look into moving to london after i graduate, buy some property and live there for five years, and then sell it off for a huge profit as the 2012 olympics draw nearer.
hm. not a bad idear.
that pub closed and we went off to find another one. scott's still getting used to his new 'hood. we found a pub in which it seems we were party to a "lock in". they hadn't a license to stay open later, so they just locked the doors and closed the shades. when it came time for me to head back to the tube, we had to be let out.
so i was nervous about the tube, given mine and scott's history. he said i should be fine. his boyfriend estimated that i needed to head back by midnight, but he overestimates everything. so scott chose 23:30.
we got there and the sign in the station said the last train out is 00:06. it's a 23:34.
no wait. that's weekdays. the last train is 23:35!
we raced down the escalator to see that i did, indeed, have a minute to spare. the train came and scott saw me off. i started to think about bank station... i passed liverpool station and thought maybe i should have hopped out there and gotten a bus just incase. but i didn't.
i was right. i missed the last train out of bank. shit.
...but i remembered passing the bank station stop when we took the 43 down to the bridges...
so i got out and looked for a bus stop. i took a random turn and there one was. i went up to it and saw that it's princes street. and the 43 stops here... now to make sure it's the right direction. i found the schedule and there was angel station. so i was right.
as i was looking at it, a rather large black man with long, thin dreadlocks asked me "d'you know where you're headed, mate?"
i guess my non-britishness is quite apparent.
but i told him, yeah. i was pretty sure. 43 toward old street. he said he didn't think that was right... but we looked on the map and saw that it was, and he gives me a "cheers".
again i had the issue about knowing when to get out of the bus. it seemed, so does my new mate. he had the driver tell him when to get off. as did another guy on the bus. all of us had been in the tube station. this other guy was looking for angel too. but as we were stopped right before it, i saw we were at central st., and i hopped out. jimmy had given me a key before i left, so this time i got in with no problems.
once back, joe was the only one still up and apologized, with a smile, for passing out earlier. no big deal, i told him. we sat down and discussed some work stuff. one of the reasons i decided to take this trip in the first place. i passed out for a little bit.
gero woke me up around 3am. time to head back. their flight back to dusseldorf was 5 minutes before mine, out of stansted also. but they took the bus from liverpool to the airport. and i had a return ticket for the train. we got to liverpool station in record time. it was early in the morning, we were the only ones that got on the bus, and i think the driver thought he was mario andretti. we got there arounf 3:20am.
and the station was closed. it seems they don't open until 4am. but that's hardly common knowledge, as there were a collection of us outside, british and not, wondering when the hell the station is gonna open because we needed to catch the express to stansted.
but the station opened at 4am and we caught the 4:30am express. i read the whole way. we got in around 5:15am and i checked in for my flight. as i expected, there was almost no line, and i was set to go to the gate after a quick trip through security, where they surprisingly told me to keep my laptop in my bag.
i met up with gero and barbara at their gate. gero had mentioned before that he may want to visit amsterdam sometime before i leave, so i gave him my email address. hopefully he can find the time to do it. that should be fun.
i slept the whole flight back. hopped the bus back to the main terminal, and walked back home. and passed out for a few hours.
the joseph
eindhoven has a nice little airport. although a bit disorganized. the flight to london was at gate 3, which was past the passport control and into it's own glassed-off waiting area. which makes sense. and there's a large glass sliding door to the actual gate. i was told i was in boarding group 2, which would board at 8:25.
8:25 came and went, with no sign of any airport personel near the gate. some announcements had come over the loudspeaker, but if there was any noise at all in the waiting area, those were nearly impossible to hear, let alone make out what was being said.
finally they opened the glass door, and everyone rushed the gate. everyone. and those being told they were in group 2 just kind of hung out near the door instead of going back to sit. making the gate area something akin to the front row of a rock show. the group 1 people had to push through to get in. there was nothing that even came close to resembling a line.
but we finally got in, and i slept the majority of the 1 hour flight. got in to stansted and went to the non-EU passport line, which was decidedly less populated.
since i had only my carry-on, i bypassed the baggage claim and went to the bureau de change to switch my fifty bucks US into british pounds. i knew it wouldn't be much, but i needed to get a ticket to liverpool station. the change guy asked if i wanted a ticket for the express train. i said yes, roundtrip. so i got a whopping 86 pence out of my fifty bucks.
i called joe at his brother's place when i got in to liverpool. no answer. i was hoping that bastard was asleep.
i found the bus stand after hitting the ATM for some cash. but i needed some change since the smallest i had was a ten pound note. i bought a bottle of water and i swear the woman said it was 7.50. seven fifty what? i have no idea. since my change from my ten pound note was nine pound and some change.
so i hopped on the 214 bus toward jimmy's place. and i realized i had no idea when i'd get there, as there are no indications of any kind as to what bus stop you are coming to. i sat on the left side by the windows and tried to watch the bus stop names as they went by. i saw the central st. stop as we flew by it, so i hit the stop indicator and got out at angel station and walked down.
once at the place, there was a gate and an intercom to get in. i rang number 18. jimmy's place. many, many, many times. no answer.
wtf.
did joe think i went to scott's? was he still sleeping?
i walked back towards angel, i figured there'd be a phone booth up there. i found one and called. no answer. twice. i tried scott's number too, but since i had forgotten to write down the leading zero in his number, the nice recorded voice on the phone told me it didn't recognize it.
i sat on the park bench to figure out what to do.
after about a half an hour, i called jimmy's number again and joe answered.
"dude, weren't you supposed to get in like two hours back?"
"...dude. i did. wtf."
so he came to the gate and let me in. we still haven't figured out how he missed me all those times (he did let one phone call keep ringing... as he was "indiposed", but that was all he heard). but it quickly became funny rather than infuriating on my walk back to jimmy's from angel station.
whilst the joe was waiting for me... gero, barbara, and jimmy were out seeing the sights.
including the whale that lost his way.
so after dropping my gear off, we went across the street for some food. there's a pub called "offside", clearly a sports pub.
we order a few pints and decide to get the fish and chips, and sausage and mash. because you can't really get any more stereotypical pub grub than that.
and then a football match was about to begin. everton vs. arsenal. not a bad match, but arsenal was clearly out-gunned... pun intended. everton won, 1-0.
that night we went for some pints in leicester square, near piccadilly circus.
da square.
some pub with something about a moon in its name. and guinness was as cheap as stella. they had a "pricewatch" sign up to show you how they were the cheapest joint around. that was nice. but i had to try the beers on cask. i love the cask. a little warmer than on tap. and they have to pump it out. i have a scottish "harviestoun bitter". not bad.
the joint.
it seems i'm in the middle of a funny story... whilst prachi inspects the "pricewatch".
the crew. minus the joe.
the crew, minus the joe's brother.
you can see the "pricewatch" poster on the wall there.
so this place closes at 10pm. we decide we need food.
the only things open are a burger king... and a pizza hut. great.
we decided on the pizza hut. there were six of us, we decided on some family deal with a large pie, a few appetizers, and another large pie half off.
and i realized that this is what is supposed to be happening at 3am. not freaking 10.30pm.
the joe and i at the pizza hut.
yes, that's a beer in front of me.
afterwards... joe and gero found a place to take a pit stop.
in the middle of the sidewalk.
on tha bus. with babs.
the next day they wanted to do some more sightseeing. since this is my second time in london, and in the first i was taken around town by my knowledgeable architect friend scott... i had no opinion. i had seen a lot already, and whatever they wanted to do was fine.
we decided on camden market. and then the london bridge/tower bridge area. which is cool, since scott and i didn't spend much time there last time. and we didn't go to camden market at all.
and as a side note, most people don't know that the "london bridge" is just a regular ol' boring bridge. the tower bridge is the one everyone thinks of.
tower bridge.
after walking around a bit, and snapping off numerous pictures...
a bit of camden.
immature? sure. funny? absolutely.
now, how cool is that?
in fact... how cool is that too?
...we decided we needed to find a pub to watch the manchester united vs. liverpool football match. and a pub with a tv turned out to be harder to find than one might expect. although this was the downtown/financial district area. and not very residential. and it was a sunday.
but we eventually found a few, all packed with people. joe and jimmy and i watched the first half as gero and barbara went to see more of the tower.
gero and barbara got back just as half time started, so we hopped a bus back toward jimmy's to finish off the match back at "offside".
great game. man u pulled it out with a goal precisely at 90:00. added time was only 3 minutes, and liverpool didn't have a chance. 1-0.
then we ate dinner at a place called "masala zone". and holy crap, it was good. i've never had such authentic indian food outside of india before. it took me back. all these memories of my india trip came flooding back. i thanked jimmy for his choice of restaurant.
masala zone. where they have wall murals such as this one.
oh and they call the restroom area the "toilet zone".
it's funny. the english love their indian food, and you can find a curry dish in just about any restaurant, not just indian. and yet they refuse to add any taste to their own dishes. odd.
after we got back from dinner, we chilled at jimmy's for a bit. joe passed out on the couch. i called scott to see if he's free.
i took the tube. even though i hate the tube. i mean, i'm all for public transport... but the london bus system is much better. it's hard to have a service outage with buses. but the tube is constantly having "engineering outages", track and station fires, and train malfunctions.
i suppose my hatred started on my last trip to london when i had to get to liverpool to get my bus to stansted. i was in a hurry and scott took me most of the way and said it was really easy from there, just hop on this other line and take it in. and he went back home.
but no. turned out that all the lines coming into the station from the east were down. we passengers had to circumvent the station and come in from the west.
and then the line i chose to do this with shut down. and we had to get out of the tube, walk to the next undergroudn station, and get back on.
by this time, i had clearly missed what the website had told me was the last bus to stansted that night. and my flight was early in the morning, before any of the service supposedly started up for the day.
and yet there was another bus to stansted. so i was all set.
but i still hate the tube.
but the trip to scott's at bethnal green station wasn't that far. just take the northern line south a few stops to bank and switch to the central, two stops to bethnal green.
the scott.
he met me and we went to find a pub. we had a good time, talked about his new place, what he's been up to. and how i should look into moving to london after i graduate, buy some property and live there for five years, and then sell it off for a huge profit as the 2012 olympics draw nearer.
hm. not a bad idear.
that pub closed and we went off to find another one. scott's still getting used to his new 'hood. we found a pub in which it seems we were party to a "lock in". they hadn't a license to stay open later, so they just locked the doors and closed the shades. when it came time for me to head back to the tube, we had to be let out.
so i was nervous about the tube, given mine and scott's history. he said i should be fine. his boyfriend estimated that i needed to head back by midnight, but he overestimates everything. so scott chose 23:30.
we got there and the sign in the station said the last train out is 00:06. it's a 23:34.
no wait. that's weekdays. the last train is 23:35!
we raced down the escalator to see that i did, indeed, have a minute to spare. the train came and scott saw me off. i started to think about bank station... i passed liverpool station and thought maybe i should have hopped out there and gotten a bus just incase. but i didn't.
i was right. i missed the last train out of bank. shit.
...but i remembered passing the bank station stop when we took the 43 down to the bridges...
so i got out and looked for a bus stop. i took a random turn and there one was. i went up to it and saw that it's princes street. and the 43 stops here... now to make sure it's the right direction. i found the schedule and there was angel station. so i was right.
as i was looking at it, a rather large black man with long, thin dreadlocks asked me "d'you know where you're headed, mate?"
i guess my non-britishness is quite apparent.
but i told him, yeah. i was pretty sure. 43 toward old street. he said he didn't think that was right... but we looked on the map and saw that it was, and he gives me a "cheers".
again i had the issue about knowing when to get out of the bus. it seemed, so does my new mate. he had the driver tell him when to get off. as did another guy on the bus. all of us had been in the tube station. this other guy was looking for angel too. but as we were stopped right before it, i saw we were at central st., and i hopped out. jimmy had given me a key before i left, so this time i got in with no problems.
once back, joe was the only one still up and apologized, with a smile, for passing out earlier. no big deal, i told him. we sat down and discussed some work stuff. one of the reasons i decided to take this trip in the first place. i passed out for a little bit.
gero woke me up around 3am. time to head back. their flight back to dusseldorf was 5 minutes before mine, out of stansted also. but they took the bus from liverpool to the airport. and i had a return ticket for the train. we got to liverpool station in record time. it was early in the morning, we were the only ones that got on the bus, and i think the driver thought he was mario andretti. we got there arounf 3:20am.
and the station was closed. it seems they don't open until 4am. but that's hardly common knowledge, as there were a collection of us outside, british and not, wondering when the hell the station is gonna open because we needed to catch the express to stansted.
but the station opened at 4am and we caught the 4:30am express. i read the whole way. we got in around 5:15am and i checked in for my flight. as i expected, there was almost no line, and i was set to go to the gate after a quick trip through security, where they surprisingly told me to keep my laptop in my bag.
i met up with gero and barbara at their gate. gero had mentioned before that he may want to visit amsterdam sometime before i leave, so i gave him my email address. hopefully he can find the time to do it. that should be fun.
i slept the whole flight back. hopped the bus back to the main terminal, and walked back home. and passed out for a few hours.