Berlin, London, Old Hampshire

Hey everyone! In case you missed the fantastic news, I went to England for four days last week! It was absolutely amazing - seeing all these places that I'd been reading about for ages was so cool! Here are the pictures along with my always fascinating commentary.

The trip didn't get off to the best start. My train to Berlin was delayed by 25 minutes by the time it got to Erfurt. I was concerned that I might miss my S-Bahn to the airport, and then have to run to catch my flight. (I wasn't seriously concerned about missing the flight though. I built in a bit of extra time.)

Finally, the train showed up. We managed to make up a bit of time, and I made my connection from Berlin to the airport! I went inside to check on the length of the security line - it was extremely short, so I went outside and sat on the grass for a few minutes. (You can't see them, but there were a ton of other people out there doing the same thing.) I though that this would be my last change to soak up some sun before England, but I was wrong. It was so warm and sunny on Wednesday that I got a bit of a sunburn!

Here is the train station at Southend Airport. It was a pretty airport - it looked like it had been opened about 30 seconds before I got there - parts were still under construction. Since I'm not European, I had to fill out an immigration form and wait in a special line for non-EU citizens to be cross examined by the British border control. I think the guy in front of me was South African, and the girl in front of him was either from Vietnam or China, so it took a while. When it came to me, I showed my form, told the man that I was on vacation. He glanced at my US passport, stamped it, and let me go. This isn't the first time that I feel like I've gotten off easy at border control thanks to my magic blue passport. It makes me a bit angry! The people in front of me got fingerprinted, and I didn't even have to do that since I'm American. I'm pretty sure that the people in front of me, who were all in their twenties, weren't international terrorists either. I think we were all backpackers on vacation.

MUGGLE MONEY!!

Getting to the hostel was an adventure because nothing can be simple with me. Once I left the airport, I took a train to London's Stratford station. After that I got an Oyster card and took the Jubilee Underground line to Willesden Green, which was my stop. From there, I had written down the directions, but they said to turn left onto a certain road, which it turns out didn't have a street sign at the intersection in question...I wandered for a good 8 or 9 minutes before giving up and turning on the internet on my phone to find my way. 

The hostel was really nice! There was a mom & daughter from Holland in my room when I got there, and we were shortly joined by another girl. There was at least one school group there, but I thought that was pretty cool!

I didn't get to my hostel until almost 8, but I decided that I wanted to go back into central London, even though the tube strike was due to start at 9 pm. I took the bus back to Oxford Street - there was a bus from my hostel there that took about 40 minutes.

The promised land.

The ride from my hostel to central London was really interesting because the area was so diverse! I knew that London had a ton of people of Indian descent because of colonialism, but I was still surprised by just how diverse London was! (I'm too used to Germany where everyone is white. It's so boring because everyone looks the same.)

I hopped off the bus near this giant Primark on Oxford Street. Primark is like Forever 21, so I rather enjoyed it. The place was packed with people from all over the world. I got a skirt, which I rather like. It was nice to be able to make small talk with the cashier while I was checking out. That's something that just isn't really done in Germany.

After that, it was almost 10 pm, so I stopped in a McDonald's to finally get some dinner! Once I finished eating, I caught a bus back to my hostel, which got there a bit before 11. (I didn't realize that the stops have different names coming & going, so I actually missed my stop and had to walk an extra block back.)

I made a relatively early start of it the next morning. I grabbed breakfast around 7:40 at the hostel before heading back into the city. (Since GB is an hour earlier than Germany, that didn't feel early to me.) Then I decided to take on the Tube strike to get to the train station at Waterloo. The trains were coming every 10 minutes at my station and the entire line had just started running. Since I live in Erfurt, where trams only come every 10 minutes, I didn't think anything of it, but on Thursday I found out that the underground usually comes every 2 minutes! That would explain why my stop was so crowded. I could barely hold on because there were so many people, but luckily you couldn't fall because people were so crammed on.

I saw two men almost get into a fight over who was waiting longer for the very last square inch of standing space right next to me. It was crazy! All the stereotypes of people from Britain being great at standing in line are very true - they get in straight lines to board the subway!

Finally, a note about the Oyster card. This thing is basically magic. You pay to put money on it, then just tap it against the ticket barrier to make it open. Also, since there was a tube strike, several stations were totally closed which made it take less time for me to travel around! All in all, the tube strike ended up being almost beneficial to me!

Once I got to Waterloo, which was so backed up that they weren't letting people through the ticket barriers, I got a train to Alton, which is a city southwest of London.

From the train station in Alton, I stopped in at a grocery store for something to eat before walking to Chawton, home of Jane Austen! I thought I was lost, but then I double checked the directions I wrote down and realized that I was just missing the pedestrian tunnel!

This is amazing. No pedestrian tunnels in Germany are this clean and un-grafittied.

Pretty house & farm near Jane's house.

"Drier?" British English makes no sense.

The house!!

There was a really cool station set up in the kitchen where you could make lavender bundles, write with a quill, and dress up in period clothes. I did the first two...I think I now realize why most people were righties back then.

The actual house had a sign that said "photography at steward's discretion" so I took pictures. This is the desk where Jane wrote her books!!

There was a really cool library in the house filled with Jane's works, the books that inspired them, commentary on her works, translations of the works, and reinterpretations of the works. I read part of a comic book version of Pride and Prejudice.

Stairs to Jane's mother's room.

Sleep tight!!

Jane and Cassandra's room.

I really liked that the house had some historical objects that cleared up some things from the books for me. They had ivory lottery fish, which explains the part where Lydia's going on about the fish she won.

On the right is the side of the house. On the left are bathrooms and a learning center.

Some of the learning center stuff was outside, so I added my name to the magnet board.

I got a nice older couple to take my picture in front of the house.

The walk back into Alton to catch the train was very nice. The weather was perfect - cloudy but not cold or raining. I ended up being a bit early for the train, so I went into Waitrose (a really fancy British grocery store chain) and got something to snack on.

The train station at Alton. The train back into London was nice and quiet. Since everyone and their mother reads the free daily newspaper on the trains then leaves it behind for someone else to read, I read a bit of the newspaper.