LONDON

Time for us to write about London as well.

PIECE ONE: perspectives:

Quick thoughts about perspectives: In London you pay at least a thousand GBP rent per person per month for a decent place. That's a large chunk of your income (much larger than in Sofia), if you're working for real, and an impossible chunk of your income, if you are a student returning to Bulgaria to work afterwards. Also, London is a huge place where despite the extensive transportation network more often than not you need to walk for decades of minutes for the nearest Tube station. Additionally, most of the city looks old and worn out, lacking renovation since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Streets are tight, neighbourhoods are musty and suspect, buildings are in derelict maintenance.

But then you enter the apartments. They look brand new from the inside. They are equipped with the newest kitchens, chairs, tables, large plazma TVs, state-of-the-art computers, the nice large wine glasses, the fancy bed sheets and matresses. You feel inside like a king, like at a fancy cocktail. What a weird contradiction in London...Real estate madness...

PIECE TWO: Saturday:

I wake up and exit the apartment I am staying in. It is a lovely (by London standards) Saturday morning. I have a mini jet lag (2 hrs difference is significant, mate), fatigue in the legs from lots of walking and travelling, etc. First thing that hits me is the air. More humid, full of flavours, smelling like something strange, unfamiliar. Then it is the buildings. Neat and tidy, short and organized, with little fences and clear markings. Then it is the people. The occasional jogger. Arab dude standing in front of the Ali Baba restaurant. Paki woman hurrying along Glocester Place. Blonde German-looking backpacker circling Dover Square. This is variety you don't get anywhere else...

Then you get to Baker Street. There are minature Sherlocks pasted on the tiles along the Tube entrance. Mdme Tusseauds is beckoning nearby. The Globe across Marylebone is semi-full of Chelsea fans already. You smell bakery (it's Baker Street, dumbass). You see rushing cars but cannot comprehend the traffic direction despite the instructions on the ground. Admiral Nelson should have imported proper traffic direction, mate. You feel a rain drop but do not worry or look up - the rain in London is completely neglectful - there are plenty of places to hide plus it stops and goes on again, all the time...

You end up in the Sports Cafe near Picadilly to watch Chelsea-Man U along with hundreds of others and a couple of pints of Magners/Guinness. You take a stroll afterwards, along to Covent Garden and across the river to the London Eye bank and you suddenly realise that you need to dedicate a whole week to each London neighbourhood in order to really get to know and feel the whole of London. You see people that seem more and more unfamiliar (unlike Sofia, where everyone seems like you've seen her/him again some time before). The activities seem more and more absurd also - people pretend to be dull statues, mimes eat ladies' ice cream, dude gets out of a crazy suit... You rest a few hours and continue to dinner at Soho, dizzily (because of the sleep). The Indian tapas are nice and fulfilling, Cobra is a decent lager, but you need some time to awake. Then it's off to the heart of Soho and Waxy O'Conner - the best pub ever, but for two small details - the Tequila Lady does not respect your manhood (because you don't want tequilas) and it closes at midnight. What an absurd English tradition, you think, but you notice that everyone is either wasted or has a plan for where to move to next. Would it be possible that the tradition is there simply to stimulate folks to move along and interact more, instead of standing silently in one and the same place for hours? Donno. Anyway, you have now awaken, but your company is tired and want to go to bed. That sucks.

We walk to catch the last Tube train. We catch it. It seems kinda homey, like it's accompanying you home, not like NYC where the crazy folk come out at night on the F line. We walk home some more. It's warm and cosmopolitan. Like a wise man sleeping. We get to our little street. Everything is quiet and so are we, turning the key in and getting to sleep. m-f