“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life” ...
...Screamed the poster at the Heathrow airport. The 10 hours of flight punctuated by yes prime ministers and free food was surprisingly quick and did not give my back as much of a beating as I had expected it to. Flying over Europe, across the English Channel into the island country was pretty uneventful except for the rapid staccato of in-flight announcements by the possibly disgruntled pilot. Descending below the clouds, I was given a breathtaking view of London from the skies. It was love at first sight.
Watching the neat row of identical buildings streaking below kept me peeled to the glass windows. I could make out the Tower Bridge, the Big Ben among the other buildings and it was stunning to see the Thames winding across the city. Landing a brief 10 minutes later at Heathrow, I expected the place to be cold enough to persuade me to take the next flight back. However, it was comfortably warm and it was refreshing to give out puffs of smoke (minus the risk of cancer). Being detained at the immigration counter for having failed the first visa application, I was let off by the officer after a brief delay. It is quite ‘fun’ to be detained actually. It gives you a lot of ‘respect’. People in the immigration queue give you either a sympathetic nod of the head as if saying “oh you poor thing” or they just stare at you as if saying “Look! An illegal immigrant”
Coming out of the airport, I was received by a friend. Bright and sunny, it was the first in a number of days that London was having a pleasant weather. After a quick wash up, I set out to explore. Eager to travel on my own, I took the first tentative steps into the famous London tube. I was truly amazed by the complexity of their underground railway system. In Singapore, we have 3 train lines and I thought it was a big thing. London has around 10! Hopping from Uxbridge to Kings Cross and then to Victoria was a breeze. Catching a bus to Leeds from the famous Victoria coach station at the last possible instant, I hoped to catch a glimpse of the English countryside but was thwarted by jet lag and the freakishly quick sunset. Before I realized, I was asleep and it was dark. Waking up at 7.30 PM, I found the bus racing through the streets of Leeds which at first glance seemed more like a ghost town. Later I realized that most shops shut at 5 and people scurry to catch the warmth of their homes or pubs. After a night’s sleep at my friend’s place, I was itching to explore Leeds. I went to the University of Leeds (which looks pretty much like any other university), the city centre and a ruin that once was a monastery. I remembered one of my ideas on humans, the big wonder about old ruins, gigantic temples, pyramids, statues etc is not that they are things that our ancestors couldn’t have done but the fact that we don’t know how they were able to do it is the actual wonder. This, I think reflects man’s innate curiosity and thanks to that we have progress in Science and more importantly I have a ‘job’ and I get free food every Friday.
The same night (after an unsatisfying dinner at Burger king), we started for Glasgow. The train journey from Leeds to York and then from York to Glasgow was refreshingly short. Getting off at Glasgow, I realized that London was a LOT more comfortable. -1, -2 are abstract numbers and don’t give you a feel of what is it to be out there in reality. Walking as quickly as we could, we reached our friend’s place (it is funny how I seem to ALWAYS have someone any place I go. Maybe something to do with my magnetic and charismatic personalityJ) and after a dinner of vegetable biriyani and raita, (slurp!!!) I hit the sack. Waking up, I was greeted by the rising sun. It was unusually warm and sunny (again, something to do with me I guess). We started off by trying to meet up at one place (5 of my classmates from madras were in Glasgow and we had planned to meet up), from then on we went to the Glasgow Caledonian University (which seems to have been established solely to extract ‘talent’ from foreign students, talent here being an Egyptian slang for MONEY). George square, the main town centre in Glasgow was small but quite beautiful. Lined with statues of famous Scots, I could recognize James Watt (Steam Engine) and Francis George Scott (the Famous Scottish composer) but no one else. The next place to visit was the Kelvin Grove art museum. Though not a connoisseur, I was able to appreciate the amount of work that went into creating and maintaining the numerous priceless works of art. Four hours later, I had not been able to go through half the museum. This was a theme that was to become recurrent throughout my trip, the lack of time! Moving on to the transport museum, which was closing within the next 30 minutes, we hurried our way through the neat rows of cars, buses, trams and engines giving no more than cursory glances to each of them. Pausing at a selected few (such as the Ford Anglia used in the movie Harry potter and the chamber of secrets, among others) to take pictures, we were almost kicked out at 6 PM! My friends parted ways here and I made a last stop at the Glasgow University. The magnificent and imposing building that has come to represent the University of Glasgow was a sight worth missing the bus to London but the curiosity to explore London was so overwhelming that I didn’t find it hard to bid goodbye to Glasgow, which had now started to get uncomfortably cold. Settling down in the double decker bus that was to take us to London in 8 hours time, I found it very easy to get some sleep considering that we had mostly been on the move ever since I had got to the UK.
London here I come!
