Loony London

London is the craziest city I’ve ever been to. I don’t mean arty-crazy, I mean crazy-crazy. Like insane. Interestingly, there are lot more mad drunken women, screaming “Hey, Gov’nor!” than men.

Does England drive women crazy?

No mad man (nor an art director from Madison Avenue) has ever told me that Jesus loves me. Only women. So often, that I’m starting to think that I must look like a person Jesus loves. I can truly understand that I’m adorable.

But it is maybe because I don’t forget my trousers or skirt when I wear leggings. I am always decently dressed. A lot of women (all ages) seem to forget that they are not fully dressed when going outside. Living in London is so stressful that you easily forget that. And tights too. Hopefully not both at the same time. I’m not that curious to know if English women wear underwear. Do they? I hope Thatcher doesn’t forget her clothes.

There is something that is wrong with women here. They don’t seem to feel temperatures. Ballerinas and rain. Frost and denim jackets. Am I so ‘continental’ that I am a cissy when it comes to right clothes for the weather? I am used to much colder weather, but looking at these women dressed in summer skirts lets my body temperature sink immediately. Maybe for some it lets it increase, but not for me. Even thinking about them makes me shiver. They will all get a bladder infection.

Now, in this Christmas time, I’m asking myself where all these crazy women will stay. I got an email from tfl today to say that the transport system will close down on Christmas Day. People are forced to stay at home and try to get out of any family trouble or not even get to their families.

I have a brilliant and humanitarian idea for solving the crazy women and transport problem. Why not let the lunatics earn a bit of money for honest and important work? Let’s get them all together and brief them to be bus drivers on Christmas Day. As I experienced, bus drivers are not quite right in the head anyway. (see Routes? Where we're going, we don't need routes!)
“Gov’nors! Next stop Canary Wharf. Get me some dosh from the cab rank!”

“St. Mary’s Church. Jesus loves you, darlings! This is the end of the world!”

I would love a bus ride with them.

How to be anybody

I recently read a blog article by an English guy who lives in Germany and wrote a ‘guide’ on how to become a proper German (http://venturevillage.eu/how-to-be-german-part-1). Some things really annoyed me, such as the suggestion that wearing house shoes is very German. You don’t wear house shoes in Britain, because there’s carpet everywhere (even in airports) and no pretty hardwood floors. Although you should wear house shoes, because the houses are badly insulated.

I totally agree that Germans wear functional clothing (Jack Wolfskin stuff). And when you are old and married, you and your partner wear the same model.

I can understand that some things in new countries get more attention there as in the home country. It is sometimes good to go back and see the similarity of countries. Like finding out that meat is also a very common part of meals where you grow up. Funny enough that a lot vegetarians that I know always say that their home country is best for vegetarians. Probably not American vegetarians. But I don’t know any American vegetarians, maybe they don’t exist there. Or a meatless diet is called there the “low carb veggie lifestyle”. Anyway, I had a big piece of roast beef as my Sunday Roast treat yesterday (but the gravy was too thin).

These “How to be” articles are mostly rubbish. They use stereotypes that are sometimes right, sometimes wrong but never achieve truthfulness, because you cannot generalise a man, a woman or a country in this case (I’m quite sure that this Brit does not live in Berlin or Hamburg, or anywhere else above the Weißwurst-border, which is right behind Kassel).

I never use stereotypes. Only for Americans. Maybe I should change the nation to Liechtenstein. I have never met anyone from there, you don’t hear anything from there and I am frankly questioning the existence of that country. So who would be bothered?

Let’s think of steps “How to be from Liechtenstein”. I can’t think of any characteristics of that country except for: be rich (mixing that up with Luxembourg?), be small (country is small, and so are you because of lack of space) and have a shiny smile (try to say “Liechtenstein” without smiling).

And suddenly the face of Berlusconi pops up. Liechtenstein must be near Italy right? Doesn’t matter anyway. All the same.

Routes? Where we’re going, we don’t need routes!

I had one of the best bus experiences that I can imagine. I was on a bus, boarding in Hackney and happy to find out that the Oyster Card Reader didn’t work and ready to enjoy a bus ride that should – according to the tfl website - take approx. 43 minutes and 4 seconds. As we were driving (‘we’ means the bus driver and me) through Canary Wharf and I was glancing at all these evil banks and some workaholics smoking in front of the glass cages (on Saturday) that are supposed to give the feeling that these money companies are transparent (ha), I was thinking that this is a very peculiar and long bus route from Hackney to Commercial Road.

After passing the “financial heart of Britain”, the bus stopped near a McDonald’s next to a dual carriageway. Engines off, lights out. I was briefly alarmed (it was already dark outside and I was still the only passenger) of getting robbed, raped or being in some way a victim of harassment whilst filmed on CCTV. The bus driver came to me in the back. I was doing the cliché of sitting in the last row. My instinct knows how to build an arc of suspense. The bus driver said: “Hey, I need to go to the toilet. I’ll be off for three minutes” And ran to McDonald’s. So I sat alone in a dark bus somewhere near the Thames. When the bus driver came back, he murmured something that sounded like an apology for the delay and then we raced off the dual carriageway and suddenly stopped at a dodgy park station. “Final Destination”, the bus driver said to me. I thought “yes, not one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, but I remember that in sequel 2 or 3, people were killed on public transport” without realising that it was the end of the route and we hadn't passed my bus stop. I told him that (about the bus stop) and he responded: “That was a long time ago, when this bus was on that route”. That the website told me that we were supposed to go there just had rolling eyes as a reaction. “Where do you need to go?” – “Commercial Road” – “Okay, come with me, we'll drive back and then get off at xyz”. When I got off at Canary Wharf, because there would be a direct bus to my final destination for that evening (and I also couldn’t remember the station the driver told me), he saw me standing on the pavement and shouted through the closing doors of the bus: “That’s not the stop!” – “I know, but I have a connection here”, I shouted back.  – “Ah, ok”. And this bus, for which I hadn't paid a penny, went off.

I now think it was a bus back from the future, where they have different bus routes and people don’t have to pay because of a communist government that came to power after the economy crashed and the Chinese took over Europe. But it will be a moderate communistic work-attitude, because the driver was allowed to go to the toilet at imperialistic McDonald’s.

No need to be afraid of the future, Marty!

Great Expectations

I think I am now at a point where I start to feel that I’m living in London. I have been sexually assaulted on a bus, said hello to my neighbours and tried out every supermarket nearby. My everyday life has a routine now. This is good. And bad. I’m feeling stuck. If I don’t change something, this routine of going to lectures, studying at home, reading in libraries and occasional nights out will be equal to the routine of my life in Berlin. Although, I’m usually not studying so much and working more (or at least trying to).

So it’s time to get a job and get to know some more people. More money, friends and drinks. I think if I would be asked during a job interview what I expect from the new job, I would answer: “friends and money”. And to make that sentence more British and not oh-so-German brisk: “friends and money, please”

No, I would probably give a predictable human-resource-management-friendly answer, because I really want the job. For money and friends. But then I need to find a company where I can assume that the people working there are good candidates for my next BFFs and BMFs. That means that Downing Street No. 10 is currently off the list. That’s a shame, honestly, I want to do the Hugh Grant-dance. Maybe after the next elections my Downing-disco-dance will have a chance, or else I become a Tory. I have to think about that properly. Maybe I will start with a Burberry scarf, just to get a feeling of being elitist and get comfortable with it (it’s getting cold anyway). But therefore I need money. And for money - a job. God, what a vicious circle.

There are actually three things that my new job has to offer me: money, friends and relevance for my “career” (please). What I want to do, you’re asking? Guess what: something in the media. I have worked in so many companies for such short periods that I have a very large repertoire of superficial qualifications in writing, editing, organising, selling, casting and putting an intelligent face on. That face is very useful. I use it all the time. Especially at university. “Who is that young woman who looks so bright?” “I think that must be Laura, she doesn't say much, but what she says sums every discussion up and brings it in context”. “Oh yes, you can see from her face that she’s following the lecture”.

Yes, because I’m waiting to drop a stolen sentence in that I read on Wikipedia. It’s just an intelligent face. Behind my forehead everything’s about money and friends. And the crucial question: who is responsible for the Jimmy Savile case?

Think twice, where you enrol your child

Catholic Schools: Give children a rest!

Set my anger free

I have to come back to the link about the London tube that I told you about a few weeks ago. The London public transport system is seriously annoying me and stressing my patience towards other passengers. They don’t move. They just don’t. In a crowded overground, underground or bus, they don’t move when someone wants to get out. Even the people waiting at the platform and wanting to get in are not moving (but still minding the gap) and let people out. Even though this would give them space in the train to get inside. But if you, for example, want to get through a crowded pub, there is no problem. Sentences between the communicators A and B, A and C, A and D, D and C, and A and A look like this:

A: Sorry, I need to get to the other side. Sorry.

B: Sorry, yes sure, sorry.

A: Sorry, can I get to the bar? Sorry. Thanks.

C: Sorry. Yeah, Sorry, sorry.

A: Sorry, sorry.

D: Sorry, crowded, eh? Sorry.

D: Oh sorry, excuse me, sorry.

C: Sorry that I’m in your way and you had to trample on my foot and spilt your drink on it. Sorry.

A: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

A: Sorry. Sorry. (This was a soliloquy)

It can be more aggressive the later the evening gets (I think that’s one reason for the early closing of pubs).

But when it comes to being a club (a dance club I mean, not the snobby old men clubs): no conversations (heard of posh silent clubs though). People in your way are enemies. Not worth saying anything. Just dance them off the stage. With your long hair. Twirl it right in the face of others. Or your shoes. Oh, that’s what high-heels are for. Hurt them all. Slop your Red Bull over me. You know I don’t like that.

I think this phenomenon lies deep in the cultural behaviour and expectations of the nation. Behave well at work, at Sunday Roasts and the first years of marriage. But when you party, tell a joke and use the public transport, use these occasions as an outlet for all your suppressed emotions.

For myself, wife beater doesn’t make me angry. I just like the name. (But I don’t like domestic abuse)

What have people done to you, Royal Mail?

post office in Hackney

People are not paying, children left behind. Everytime I'm entering a british post office, it feels like this is how the last days of the world will look like. Crowded, stinky, empty shelves and the bitter feeling that the past was a better time.

I am the Lord of the Brick Lane

Yes, I gained recognition from a Bangladeshi waiter while eating my lamb vindaloo without any desire for water. I feel very proud now and ready for a „real“ vindaloo in Bangladesh or India or anywhere else in Asia. Brick Lane made me.

I am so into this blog, that I make notes for it. So I have a drunkenly written reminder in my mobile phone that says “low-sodium salt”. Whatever I wanted to tell you, my dearest friends, I considered that as so important to take a note. So low-sodium salt it is. I think I even seasoned my vindaloo with more salt. But I don’t know if that salt was low-sodium.

On that day, when I conquered Brick Lane, which was last Saturday, I went to an electro concert in super-über-trendy Dalston. The only band that I didn’t miss was a Swedish one-woman-band. But she is living in hip Berlin. London, I mean. (Getting so confused with all electro artists on dark stages with five people in the audience). She said that she felt a bit lost in urban London. Because she is a young girl from Sweden. Then she said that the next song is about living in a small village and that she feels that right now in London. This was the moment when I couldn’t follow her and her music anymore. I had to think about her contradictive argumentation and still didn’t get her. Maybe she was referring to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses? The metropolitan novel about a globalised world? Her own heroic voyage? A young girl from little Sweden to not-as-great-as-it-used-to-be Britain? Maybe she was just drunk. Or crazy (she’s from Sweden, don’t forget that).

My course has started and I have three three-hour sessions with 5, 6 and 7 people. Yes. No mobile phones, no nothing. Just plain higher education. But not naked like in good old Greece. We read Adorno and watched a piece of Pina Bausch. Germany, country of poets and thinkers (this is a common self-description made by Germans, usually referring to Goethe and Schiller, but I would extend the circle to Adorno, maybe not Bausch)

Thank you for reading!

Laura

Tea for two, including a bottle of wine

Liverpool, city of alcoholic 2 for 1 bargains

Evidence that tea goes with everything. Or wine goes with everything. I'm wondering what goes with ale?

I’m a postcolonialist, get me out of here

The orientation week is finally over and I hope I don’t have to answer odd questions asked by Americans anymore. These questions that only Americans can ask. Like which language in Germany is spoken or how licence numbers are assigned in Europe. But they are curious about us Europeans. That is good. Europe is aaaaaawesome, indeed. I’ve been very diplomatic and polite. Intercultural communication. It’s chasing me.

The last week I’ve been drinking more beer than water. But beer consists of water (besides barley, hops and malt). And I always have to drink more water. So I assume that’s ok. I think it’s not true that Germans drink more beer than every other country in Europe. Brits drink way more. The statistics are wrong.

Another thing is that living the past years in Berlin seems to make quite an impression on a lot of people. Everybody loves Berlin. Even people that have never been there. Or academic staff. I had an appointment with my academic supervisor and he did not say “Hello, nice to meet you”, he came in and said “You’re from Humboldt!”. Also, being German forces people to say something about Germans. Punctual, honest and so forth. When I asked for a stamp for my learning agreement that I have to bring back to Germany, my supervisor said: “Stamps, stamps, Germans always want stamps! I don’t have a stamp!” Or as I said that I have to write a certain amount of pages, so that I can count a course for my studies home, he replied: “Pages, pages! You’re so fussy about pages! My publisher in Berlin is always talking about pages. That I have to write more pages! Count in words!” I think the page complaining is a personal issue.

I went to an international television conference in the British Film Institute yesterday. After a few hours I discovered that the person who held the keynote speech has studied in Hildesheim. I hate the small-world-effect. And Hildesheim.

Laura

Stand right, go left

Yesterday, I had my enrloment at London Met and some truly hilarious presentations were given. I can't hide this link from you. It describes the everyday craziness in the London underground. Watch it.


Michael McIntyre about the tube in the City

I managed to open a bank account. It feels that, now, I can do everything. But the question is, what can I do?

On my first day I tried my luck at HSBC to open a nothing-to-loose-simple-no-monthly-fee cash account. But without my passport I cannot prove my address. And with my ID I cannot prove my identity and my address (even though both are proven on that card). My passport lies in a wonderful wooden chest of drawers in Berlin. Lucky me. So I tried my proof of address (ID was my proof of identity) with my tenancy agreement (ok, it’s just a receipt for holding a deposit but that doesn’t matter). But I have a private landlord, so no proof of address. Next, I tried my Offer Letter from uni, but the UK Border Agency has revoked London Metropolitan University’s authorisation for international students who need a visa. As I am from members of the EU, I thought this wouldn’t affect me at all. How naive. The HSBC has to get an „OK“ from the Border Agency that the uni is a sponsor for international students. So my offer letter was not helpful at all. The employee told me either to get a job or come with my passport again and pay a monthly fee of 8 pounds.

Today I went to Barclays and got a cash and a savings account. For free. With my ID. Ha!

It feels like I reached a goal and am now full of energy for everything. I have now much more free time than in the past months. And that’s the problem. Free time and no friends. Well one friend, who’s currently out of town. I have to face it: I have to get in contact with other exchange students. Yuck!

Laura

P.S. I realised that the common thing for women is to make one’s face up in the tube. Is it a time saving thing? I don’t get it. Like putting on make up in cars, it’s too hard for me.

Oh splendid, VW-driver. I'm sure you have the biggest.

Notting Hill, the show-off Portobello Road

Stream of Goodbyes

Right before you’re heading to go somewhere you’re reflecting the past years, decades or at least what you will leave behind. It seems that the years of study, which have gone on for five years now – are a permanent farewell. Leaving your home city to study, finish your studies and lose sight of your study buddies, start a new course – drop out and start another new course (where you want to drop out, but you won’t, because you dropped out before and don’t want to be like a s.o who dropped out) and finally go for a semester (better: term) abroad and say goodbye to your study buddies, that you just said hello to. Not forgetting to mention loads of badly paid internships with goodbye cakes and goodbye cards.

The most amazing thing is, when you’re in your mid-twenties, that you’re likely to settle down. Not like building a house and getting married, but you know, a bit. The urbanised settle down. Being in a sincere relationship, move in together in a nice flat, great neighbourhood with a fair rent (Berlin, baby). But you want to move on. Especially when you’ve never lived in a foreign country before. Very bad for your CV. So you’re taking the last chance, take the advantage of Erasmus and go in your final semester before your thesis (again a thesis...) and try to have the great experience of intercultural communication. I know what I’m talking about, that’s the course where I dropped out. It’s fun in practice, not really in theory. But for that, you have to say goodbye to your beloved one and start a  l o n g – d i s t a n c e  r e l a t i o n s h i p. An awful name, for stressful Skype connections, where the video call doesn’t function and you always hear an echo. Or metallic noise. Awareness of the medium, nobody wants that for intimate discussions with your boyfriend. But that’s our generation, isn’t it? The Easy Jet generation with loads of bird strikes (three times in one month!). But never ever Ryanair.

But before the blog becomes a melodramatic teenage diary: thank you for reading, friends, randoms and voyeurs. I hope you appreciate the digital status messages. I’m very bad at staying in contact. As you might know. But you still read my blog. Yay!

Laura