Driving the bus, and other joys of public transportation

Anyone who has ever lived in a city knows that proximity to public transportation is real estate gold. Fortunately, my residence hall is literally right next to a tube station and a bus stop. The tube is generally faster, but the bus is less expensive, and I kind of like it better because my new favorite thing to do is sit in the very front seat on the upper deck of the bus and pretend to drive:

I KNOW, RIGHT? So fun.

So yesterday I was waiting for a bus at Trafalgar Square. It’s a fairly busy area with a lot of buses, but I was the only one waiting at this particular stop for a few minutes until an older couple walked up to stand with me. Generally people stand in line, but it was just the three of us so we wound up in kind of a cluster. After a few more minutes the bus pulled up, and the woman turned to me and said, “Would you like to get on first? You were standing here before us.” 

Um, what? Get thee back with thy strange manners! (I did not say that to her. I actually let her and her husband get on first because they were older and I felt weird and didn’t know what to do, and also their oldness probably meant that they weren't going to climb the stairs and sit in my driving seat.) But I was not prepared for her level of politeness. Not that I expected rudeness, but there were only three of us so it didn't occur to me that I should expect them to let me get on first.

That tends to be a thing here, though. People queue at the bus stop, at elevators, and at restaurants that are not yet open for the day. Nearly everyone waits until the little man turns green before crossing the street. At the tube stations, they will stay behind the yellow line on the platform until the train stops. And if you get to the platform and there are tons of people already waiting, you stand behind the crowd that was already there and let them get on first. Then the train pulls away and your bunch steps forward and other people get behind you. It’s very civilized, as opposed to everyone trying to crowd onto the 1 at Penn Station like it’s the last helicopter out of Vietnam. But I’ve only been here for a week so maybe I just haven’t experienced real life yet.

Another difference that I’ve noticed, mostly in the tube stations, is the absence of garbage cans, and also, weirdly, the absence of garbage. In the subway stations in Manhattan, there are garbage cans like every five feet and also what looks to be the entire contents of those cans combined all over the tracks. I haven’t been able to figure out the math behind that one yet; so far it seems like No Garbage Cans = No Garbage, while Many Garbage Cans = All The Garbage. 

I asked one of the British girls in my department about the absence of garbage cans, and she said, “Oh, do you mean bins? Yeah, that’s because the IRA were putting bombs in them in the 80s and 90s, so we don’t have them anymore.” and I was like, “That makes total sense, and incidentally I am now afraid of garbage cans.” 

But I don't want to leave you with the idea of garbage can terrorism, so instead here's a picture that I took today of a random group of Steelers fans near Covent Garden:

Apparently the NFL had an exhibition game in London today: Steelers v Vikings. Although aside from these dudes I didn't really see any team loyalty. I saw some Patriots jerseys (ironic, no?), some Bears, two Eagles, a few Green Bays, some Saints, and one lonely Cowboy. An interesting spread, if I may say so. 

I made it!

Hello from London! FYI, it looks like this:

AMAZING. I have now been here for two full days. I was awesomely upgraded to first class for my flight out here, which was a brand new experience. Did you know that they give you a MENU after you sit down?? They have appetizers and champagne and real cutlery and the seats lie all the way down. And when you’re finished with dinner, they give you an international cheese plate and an ice cream sundae. I had already filled up on free cheese in the United Club before departure, but I’m not the kind of girl who says no to Brie at forty thousand feet.

That was awesome, although the flight was shorter than expected so I slept off and on for only about three hours and then when we landed I remembered that my carry-on weighed almost as much as me. So after walking through the longest airport terminal in the world with the heaviest bag ever and then standing in line for a thousand minutes waiting to cross the border and spending over $100 on a taxi because I couldn’t manage all my luggage on the tube by myself, I was pretty much exhausted and it was only 11am.

I couldn’t pay the taxi driver properly because I had this brilliant idea that I would save my cash and use my card instead, but his machine couldn’t read my card. I was about £10 short on cash, but as I was rifling through my wallet to see what I could come up with in terms of coin, he said, “Oh, you have dollars? That’s all right then. You can give me some of those. I’m taking my kids to Disney World in three weeks so I’ll spend them there.” I gave him a twenty and wished him Godspeed, and didn’t tell him that in Disney World twenty bucks will only buy you like two cheeseburgers and a maybe a small diet coke.

I checked into the hotel, allowed myself a few minutes of sitting down with my feet up, and then hit the street to see if I could find a place to buy a SIM card for my iPhone, which actually turned out to be way easier than I expected. They are EVERYWHERE here, and the guy at Carphone Warehouse was very helpful. I’m not entirely sure what I wound up with because I couldn’t really understand him, but his name was Callum and he said “cheers” a lot and my phone works, so I’m good.

That didn’t take very long, so I went to Westminster and walked around by the bridge where I paid £2 for a crappy cup of tea from a vendor, which was totally worth it because it was kind of raining and I was cold and starving and exhausted. And then I took these lovely pictures, because I live here now but that’s not going to stop me from acting like a tourist:

After heading back to the hotel and sleeping for about ten hours, I woke up and spent today at UCL doing enrolment-type things and going to useful seminars. And now I’m very sleepy, so I’m going to put on a channel I found that is inexplicably playing a Hoarders marathon, and try to stay awake for two more hours before I crash. Later!