1. The British Customs Officers are a mean, nasty bunch. I had to go through customs in Paris before catching that Eurostar train (don't worry, folks, they totally had things up and running again on Saturday after that dire weather emergency), and they had some real, live snotty English people to help me through the process. The woman I dealt with gave me so much shit about the fact that I didn't have the address of where I was staying (even though that would have been like 12 places) and told me it was "grounds for refusal." Then she made it all personal and was like, "If it were me trying to get into America there'd be no argument. You have to know the address." Listen, lady, I'm not the effing INS, I don't make the rules, just let me go on my vacation. And she did. After much further badgering.
2. The Tube. What's the big, fucking deal? I know some (snobby) people who studied in London and were all like, "Oh, the Tube is soooo much better than anything we have in America." There were two lines closed this weekend for repairs, and (as we later found out) both our hostels were located on notoriously slow lines. They're supposed to come every seven to eight minutes, but we often ended up waiting upwards of 20 or 30 minutes. Which leads me to point three.
3. The bus = mostly more reliable than the Tube + lots of things to see out the window + crazy late night adventures. The first time we had to take the bus was on Saturday because the Tube closes at 12:30! On a Saturday! The bus we were actually waiting for seemed to be indefinitely delayed, so we took a different one and ended up having to pay a cab to get the rest of the way home, in the end. But while on the bus (in heavy traffic), a very drunk man fell on (not to be confused with stepping into the vehicle), accompanied by his slightly less inebreated friend. This second guy proceeded to try to speak in many foreign languages with the other (foreign) bus passengers and set A up with some guy sitting accross from her named Mohamed.
Today our bus driver hit a pedestrian. Hit someone. She wasn't bleeding or anything, but we all had to get off and walk the rest of the way into town.
4. Big Brother lives here. The whole damn city is monitored by CCTV, there are cameras in all public areas. [Awesome and relevant photograph of grafiti to be added later]
Added. I love that this was painted under surveillance.
Now my time is up and I don't want to be charged more than half an hour! But I'm actually having an amazing time. More to follow.
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