Blood's a Rover
London journal
Fast forward 5 or 6 hours and Steve, Conner, and I are loading up onto a charter bus for PARIS! After the 6 hr bus ride we get dropped off in the middle of a parking lot at the Paris airport and it wasn’t until that moment that we find out we didn’t have directions to our hotel…so let me set up this situation; we’re in Paris, somewhere, we have no idea where, we have no cash, no phones, no wifi, apparently we didn’t even know the address to our hotel, and none of us speak the tiniest bit of French…thus begins an adventure within an adventure. After wandering around the airport (an event I’m getting very accustomed to by now) and trying to interpret the signs that are all in French we find what we think is a train station. We then found a map and picked a spot that one of us thought was the general area of the hotel based off of a glance at google maps he had the night before. It was pretty much the equivalent of throwing a dart at a map and hoping our hotel was right where the dart hit, but it was worth a try. We bought a way overpriced train ticket that took us into the middle of Paris, which is amazing! We got distracted a bit by the overwhelming shock of walking out of a tunnel to find yourself right in the middle of Paris, but we soon got back down to business because at the moment, we had no idea where we were sleeping that night. On a lucky strike we found a café that had free wifi, which is way more difficult to find than you would think. We got the address to our hotel, looked up directions and we were off, not so bad considering the situation. After walking a few miles we start looking around us and come to the realization that the probability of us booking a hotel for 40 euro a night right next to the Eiffel tower was pretty well into the negatives. Turns out the one thing we thought we could trust (googlemaps) was completely wrong. So we start again from the beginning, but his time with no wifi. One of the guys at the train station luckily knew his way around Paris pretty well, so he was able to direct us to the right train stop, which was FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM THE AIRPORT ¤_¤ At least we knew where we were going now, so that was comforting. Until we show up at the “right train station” and have no idea where to go. No problem, we know were close so we’ll just call the hotel on a pay phone and ask for directions, of course they speak zero English. Eventually we were able to decipher the encrypted directions and actually found out where the hotel is. Of course we were at the wrong station, which is pretty much par for the course by now so weren’t too phased. We found a crude map and decided it wasn’t too far to walk, which was good cause we had already taken the last train of the night anyways. It was simple, we go down road 1 for a mile or so, turn left and go down road 2 until we get to the hotel. Road 1 is going well so far, we get to the end and realize that road 2 is not only a road but a huge freeway. Apparently the French like big map signs cause they were everywhere, which was really nice. So we look at one and find out that nothing coming off of road 1 leads to the hotel. So like any other sane people would do we decided our only choice was the freeway. We went back to the bridge on road 1 that went over the freeway, jumped a fence, almost lost one of our bags rolling down the hill onto the freeway, make it to the road and proceed to dodge traffic on an 8 lane freeway at 11 at night in the outskirts of Paris for 2 miles. After conquering the beastly freeway we finally actually made it to our hotel, and slept…hard.
Armed with a scrap of paper with a bus stop written on it that was supposedly right next to my school, I set out from hackney. An hour or so later I was wandering down a road next to a hospital that was luckily across the street from where I needed to be. For some reason the English seem to like to keep you guessing on what you’re actually supposed to be doing and just kind of give you vague clues that will eventually maybe lead you to that important meeting you can’t miss, or the place where you’re gonna be living for the next 3 months. This was my dilemma, but after asking about 5 people I ended up walking to the right building, which turned out to be the wrong building, which for some reason meant I needed to go to the complete other side of campus to talk to some person who told me to go right back to where I started. When I finally found my flat I was pleasantly surprised by free “bedding” and various cooking implements used to make my staples of top ramen, eggs, pb&j, and frozen pizzas, which I’m surprisingly not sick of yet. I settled into my room and connected with the other guys from CA to go out to ASDA (wal mart) to stock up on groceries and stuff. Then that first night we went to hang out at a café on campus and meet 20 people all of which I’ve never seen again, save 2 or 3. That’s pretty much how it goes around here. We didn’t have class for another week, it was apparently “internationals week”, but it turned out to be more of a “we’ll have 1 meeting and then force you all to mingle awkwardly in a dingy cafeteria with no chairs and no tables, while feeding you dinner, and then the rest of the week you’re on your own, sorry, but we have a lot of drinking and football to catch up on week” Hey, at least we got dinner right? Only if you count doritos and wine dinner, in which case you are going to die very soon. Now I know I’ve been ranting, sorry about that, but that really is what the week was like, we did take some cool day trips out to the London touristy sites like Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace (which is surprisingly underwhelming) and some outdoor markets and shops and stuff which was fun, but for the most part, a whole lot of nothing. Until…we had the fantastic idea to use all this free time and go to Paris! So, at 11:55 Wednesday night we booked a charter bus for 8am the next morning, packed up, and went happily to sleep for a whole 3 hrs.
Before I left the states I was a bit unprepared which is strange because usually if I’m going to a new wal mart across town I’ll have directions drawn out both ways, and a phone number just in case, but for some reason I decided that it would be fine going halfway across the globe to a huge city in a completely foreign country by myself without having worked out a place to stay, no connections, and lacking access to a phone or internet. What was equal astounding was that my mother accepted an “I’ll figure it out” as enough to let her only son leave the country for 4 months. After a long but easy flight I arrived in an airport, all of which I knew was that it was in England somewhere. After a few hours of wandering around, paying for internet, taking a 45 min train ride on a hunch, and asking strangers for advice on phones and hostel, all while lugging my bags around for miles, I stumbled upon a familiar oasis in the middle of a momentarily very strange place in the form of an apple store. Through my eye contact avoiding skills I was able to slip in and do a little networking without being “helped” by any employees. It was here I happily discovered that while my real life was taking me wandering down unfamiliar streets, my cyber life was getting me places to stay. Thanks to the honorable and gentlemanly Stephen Anthony I had been contacted by his friend Peter who graciously offered to let me stay with him and his wife for a night. Jump forward past more trains, a chocolate muffin, getting lost again, and 6 hrs sitting in a café and I was actually sitting on a comfy couch in a super nice apartment in east London with the very exceptional Peter and Naomi Bikis who apparently ended up liking me enough to let me stay not just one night but for a whole week on their couch. What?? I know. it just happened, and it was great, and I’m forever thankful. The next week I actually did more nothing than anything. After recovering from a jetlag punch in the face, I would take little day trips to random shops or cafes, I stayed mostly on the East side exploring all the little alleys and canals and farmers markets. I did get touristy once when I ventured out to the Natural History Museum which is AMAZING (see fb photo album). I’ve been back again once so far and plan on it happening multiple times in the future, especially once the ice skating rink opens. After my week with the amazing couple sent from God (literally) I packed up my bags and they stood on their doorstep hand in hand waving as I scurried, Jurassic Park lunchbox in hand, up to the big bus taking me to my first day of school (not really but we were pretty much a little family by then). Thus ends my first week in London, sorry im behind so much, I’ll try to catch up so I’m not vaguely retelling my stories from three week old memories. Love you all, and hope everything going great back in the states.
This will pretty much just be a place that I can keep all of you updated on my life in London, sorry if it gets wordy at points, i’ll try to keep things interesting.
“Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover; / Breath’s a ware that will not keep. / Up, lad; when the journey’s over / There’ll be time enough for sleep.”
