Tomorrow morning I’m off to London for three days, mainly to officially graduate from the London School of Economics. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also dreading it. I’m dreading the crowds, the cold apartments, the amount of time I’ll spend on public transportation. While I’m completely in love with Paris, I have a kind of love/hate relationship with London: It’s full of amazing things, but on normal, non-vacation days, the sheer inconvenience of living in a giant, dirty city, with endless commutes and no phone service on the Underground, mean I spend more time organizing my life then looking up at the city around me. Like in the photo above, taken when I popped out of the Underground because the Jubilee line had stopped, and I had to phone my flatmate about it.
But I still can’t wait to be back. And here are four reasons why:
4. Pubs: I never figured out the official difference between beer and ale. I thought beer was the general word, while ale was more specific. So I would ask what kind of beer a pub had, and they would only talk about Foster’s, until I whined that I wanted the interesting stuff. But whatever you call it, when any pub in the middle of nowhere (well, zone 4) has seven excellent somethings on draught and will let me taste each before deciding what I want, I’m happy. When these places also serve US-size helpings of fish and chips, I’m happier. Yeah, I know the English can be disgusting drunks just as much as Norwegians, but they can also go to pubs the way we go to coffee shops: for something that tastes amazing, and some good conversation.
3. Absence of snow: In London you can walk down the street ohe same way all year around. Back in Norway, I am now relearning how to change my gait so that I don’t fall over on the ice and snow.
2. Dancing: London’s West Coast Swing community has taught me so much, and it was totally worth it to commute an hour each way to dance and just never sleep. I haven’t really blogged about West Coast Swing here much, so I’ll just show you this video of two of my London teachers dancing.
1. Londoners: M y classmates, my flatmate, my dance friends, the people I took thek train with… I just generally liked Londoners. They are polite, small-talking, fast-walking people. Londoners, there are way too many of you in London, so I think more of you should just move to Oslo and teach Oslo-people how to walk on crowded streets and shop for vintage clothes. In return, we’ll teach you not to wear shorts and sandals when it’s snowing.
Photo credit: Lena R. Andersen (my mom)
According to Julie 