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While in London & surrounding areas, Dana and I got to sample the hospitality of America's "mother country." This was my second exposure to England and by far the experience was more positive this time than the first time. But both times were good.
Things I found that were truly improved over the past 10 years:
1) People in general were far more helpful. I recall a much more "buyer beware" attitude from my prior visit than I experienced this time. Especially in things like public transport. The people selling tickets for the trains, underground and tourist attractions were uniformly helpful and well informed. If there was a cheaper alternative to what you were asking for, they told you about it voluntarily. You didn't have to already KNOW. My prior visit it was not so friendly.
2) Tolerance. I suspect that there's probably a fair bit of racism everywhere in the world, but London, being a polyglot melting pot and cosmopolitan, was just a pleasure to be in. People mixed and didn't get pushy or angry. There was a mad rush, especially in the evenings on work days, but even then people didn't just run you over if you happened to be walking slowly or stopped to look at a map. And this was true for everyone, really. Just mainly friendly and cooperative. I don't recall a single surly person. Well...me, but that's to be expected.
3) The food. London has been described for decades as a great place to NOT eat typical British meals. The best thing to do was to find a small ethnic restaurant you liked and hunker down. Being cosmopolitan, the choices have grown in the 10 years since I was last there and the quality of food has improved dramatically. The pubs are still the best place to get anything "British" and even there we were lucky in finding really good meals. Someday, they'll realize that peas are not an essential aspect of every meal, but still, progress is progress.
4) Coffee. I could've included this in #3 above, except that I'd be doing a disservice to the positive WAVE of coffee knowledge that has spread through Britain in the past 10 years. I'm serious. Back when, you couldn't get a cup of coffee that was drinkable anywhere in the British isles. It just wasn't possible. It was like the entire nation just simply didn't "get it." Now, not only have they learned to make great coffee, but they are concerned about making great coffee. They serve it and then hover...waiting to see if you liked it. They WANT you to like their coffee. Ah bliss.
If I had to still "ding" the Brits for anything, it's that they seem to have lost their way architecturally and with holding onto what's best in recent history. They know how to preserve the really old stuff (500 years old or more). They sort of do okay if something is around 200 years old, but things start to break down at that point. Cool stuff that's less than 100 years old is simply disposable. Gone. Not even a plaque to mark its passing. 84 Charing Cross Road is a Pizza Hut.
Also, new buildings are going up that look awful. Not boxy 60's institutional bad, but just badly out of place. A giant glass egg-shaped thing. Superb technically, but ugly in a "what did they do to the skyline" kind of way. Sad, really. Better than the really bad years of concrete slab construction, but still nothing worthy of the surrounding architectural gems from the past.
Also, they're borrowing all the wrong things from America. See Pizza Hut example above. Starbucks has arrived and taken over (but thankfully, I didn't have to do Starbucks in order to get good coffee). McDonald's is everywhere too. That was sad. Surely we have better things to give the world than our crappy fast food and overpriced froo-froo coffee? I think Wal-Mart hasn't shown up in London yet. One can hope...
I'll end on a personally sad note. MG/Rover -- the last sliver of the great Austin Auto Group still mass-producing cars in England -- has died. It died while we were there. It appears to have succumbed to its own inefficiencies plus, perhaps, some near-Enron-style bad governance. At any rate, it was seen as the death of England's legacy old-style industrial revolution. The industrial revolution started there. And it's moved on.
I'm sorry I didn't get to buy a new MG or maybe a Land Rover. Someday I may own a used one, but I really liked some of the new designs and I'm sorry all those folks are out of a job.
Which brings me to the term "made redundant" to refer to layoffs of employees. I could never figure out that particular Britishism. A worker is "redundant" and thus let go? In this case, the cars they made were more redundant than the workers ever were.
Oh well...it must mean something different in real English.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:snog - to kiss, usually with tongues. A childish word, mainly used by teenagers ("Cor, Sally got a snog off John after the disco !") or humorously by others ("Fancy a snog luv ?").
I guess the answer is "yes" but I don't know how fancy it was really.
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When I have the chance to spend a decent amount of time there, I will get Amira to give me the tour (If she'll give one, of course!), although I sort of know London from childhood memories. There are some places, like the Science Museum, that are quite surreal to me .
EDIT: I won't mention the extra vowels, though, because *coughcough* I'm actually a British Emigrant. It's YOU with the lack of vowels!
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Hurray for extra vowels. I lived in England for about a year and I loved it. It had fun visiting London and many other areas. I also enjoyed going to school and making new friends. London is a great city. At the time, I had about three quarters of the stops on the Central Tube line memorized. I wish I could go back there.
Posts: 132 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I love the London Underground. The one-week passes were such a bargain and a joy to use. The system map is easy to follow and we pretty much could get within EASY walking distance of anything we were interested in seeing. We never did make it to the zoo, but apparently that's a bit tough if you want to just just the tube. The pass covered surface transit too, however, so I think we'd've been just fine using the tube and then transferring to a bus.
I've decided I'll give you the extra vowels. I'll even throw in the reversal of "r" and "e" in words like theater (theatre). I simply cannot forgive certain pronunciations though. To pronounce "Leicester" as "Lester" is clearly wrong headed and confuses many first time visitors. In future, I suggest that Londoners adopt the proper pronunciation of this important square/tube station: Phonetically, it should be "Sko-pats"
Edit: I've never really been to London. I've been through Heathrow numerous times on my way to Amman, Paris, or Athens... but I've never actually left the airport. London is on my list of cities to see, though.
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There was a young curate of Salisbury Whose manners were quite Halisbury-Scalisbury He wandered round Hampshire Without any pampshire Till the Vicar compelled him to Warisbury
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Everything was freakin' expensive. I mostly pretended the prices were in dollars and willfully ignored the exchange rate so that I wouldn't go into shock every time we bought lunch.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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