Platform 9 3/4 or the Story of How I Almost Met Kate Moss.

After I got back from Jane Austen's house, it was only late afternoon, so I decided to go walking through the city again and try to find some places I wanted to see.

Due to the tube strike, finding Holland Road involved 2 different buses and wasn't a very fun experience. However, it was worth it when I discovered that my name is on the Holland Road sign. (I'm not enough of a Beatles fan to visit Abbey Road, but Holland Road? Much less touristy and more nerdy.) After that I tried to visit Chelsea's stadium, but the tube stop was closed due to the strike and I decided I didn't really care that much since I'm more of a FC Bayern girl anyhow.

Below find the explanation of why I wanted to see the Holland Road.

After that adventure I somehow ended up on the opposite end of Oxford Street that I'd been to the previous evening. It was a bit confusing, especially since the shops were the same at the other end. Eventually I found my way over to a cutesy alley where I went into a restaurant where the waiters were mostly goofing off and ordered a cheeseburger. (That's right, folks. You heard it here first. Chelsea ordered a hamburger of her own free will.)

After that I noticed a big crowd as I walked down the street. I asked someone in the crowd why there was a crowd and he gave me a look like no one had ever asked him such a rude question before, but then he told me that they're waiting for something on the stage outside Topshop. From eavesdropping on other people, I figured out that they were waiting for Kate Moss to show up. I decided I didn't really care enough to wait at the back of a huge crowd for Kate Moss, so I went on my merry way.

I then went into Waterstones Oxford Street! I was excited because they have a hilarious twitter account, but as a bookstore it was a bit underwhelming. I eventually ended up back at the giant Primark from the day before because I'd decided that I did indeed want this dress and sandals I'd seen in the window. So I went in and tried them on. While checking out, I asked the cashier how it was going, and the cashier next to him remembered me from the previous day. The rest of the customers at this incredibly busy shop must be so rude! This man sees hundreds, if not thousands, of customers a day and he remembered me because I showed basic human politeness towards him. People are the worst.

At that point it was getting dark, but I decided I could swing going over to King's Cross before the underground stopped running for the evening. My decision was made final when a beautiful red double decker bus with "King's Cross" written on it showed up in front of me as I was trying to decide.

St. Pancras International Station. It was a truly beautiful train station! My biggest complaint is that you have to swipe you ticket to get onto the platform, so I couldn't see the back half of the station.

Again, St. Pancras.

King's Cross!!!

Platform 9, Platform 10....but no 9 3/4.

(There was actually a wall off to the right that was made of bricks with a sign that said Platform 9 3/4, but I didn't take a picture of that.)

The outside of St. Pancras. (An older hobo sort of man stopped me and asked if I thought he was interesting as I was taking this picture. I said I needed to go, which was true.)

After that I got on a train towards my hostel, but I needed to switch at Westminster. I decided that while I was there I could check out Parliament at night. (Side note: the Westminster tube stop spits you out right under Parliament, which does seems like a security risk to me.)

The London Eye.

After grabbing some pictures, I went back into the subway station and sprinted from the bottom of the escalator into the Jubilee line train and caught the last one home!

The next morning I got up very early so I could go to the 8am service at Westminster Abbey! I got there just in time - the service was in a little side altar with about 10 people there. It was nice to have church in English, although British people say "trespasses" way differently than I do.

After breakfast I somehow ended up back at King's Cross where I got an almond croissant and vanilla chai tea from Pret a Manger before sitting outside the British Library to eat before it opened. Once inside, I looked all around their old and valuable books collection. It was breathtaking. They had original scores from famous composers, drafts of books by Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, and tons of old religious texts. Their other exhibit was called "beautiful science," which I looked at for a few minutes as well.

Exterior of the British Library

After leaving the library I headed to Covent Garden where I took a free walking tour of all the major sights. The tour guide also told us about a half price theater ticket kiosk in Leicester Square, which becomes relevant later.

Trafalger Square.

King George & Queen Elizabeth

St. James's Palace. (In Jane Austen books, people are always getting presented at St. James.)

The end of the changing of the guard. It starts at Buckingham, but finishes here and there is a much smaller crowd!

Buckingham Palace

Big Ben as seen from a park.

Big Ben + the houses of Parliament. We heard the full story of the Gunpowder Plot.

London = sunburn. Who'd have thought?

After the tour was over, I walked around for a bit - I wanted to find that half price ticket shop to see if seeing a show that evening was anywhere within my budget. On my way there, I saw a place called Tortilla, so I stopped in for lunch. I got two tacos - one carnitas and one chicken. It was delicious and I listened to these super fratty bros talk in loud American English about their study abroad classes. 

View from the taco place.

After that I walked on further and found the half price shop. They had a screen showing their prices for the evening compared to theater prices - it turned out that Once was only 19.50 if I got my ticket from the theater! (Book of Mormon was sold out.) So then I walked down to the theater where Once was playing and asked about tickets. The lady sold me a ticket for the 8th row for 19.50! (About 23 Euros and I've kinda lost my sense of how much a dollar is worth...) The lady asked me if I'd seen the show before, and when I said yes, she gave me a loyalty card. I'm now a member of the More Than Once Club!

With this victory under my belt, I walked down to see Piccadilly Circus. It was very busy and I didn't care for it much. (But it did look like the opening credits of Sherlock.) After a bit more wandering, I ended up buying Attachments by Rainbow Rowell at a bookstore and buying a Dr.Pepper from a shop in a train station. It was incredibly delicious. Although you can buy Dr. Pepper in Germany, it doesn't taste the same at all! British Dr. Pepper was the real deal.

After that I still had a few hours before my show so I went to the British Museum. I can't really recommend it. The only good things are that it's someplace to go and the bathrooms are free.

The mummies were still pretty cool, but I was expecting more stuff from British history - their entire collection of stuff from the past century was just a corner with dishes in it. 

The money exhibit was pretty interesting. 

As I left the British Museum I noticed that the giant line in Trafalger Square hadn't gotten any shorter - South African citizens were lined up to vote at the embassy, which seems to take a really long time. I got to see the ANC campaigning right in front of me, which I thought was interesting.

After the British Museum I wandered around for a bit before deciding that eating dinner at Chipotle wasn't a completely horrible thing to do. So I had tacos again for dinner. It was delicious.

After dinner it was time for Once!! Arthur Darvill was playing Guy again, so it was totally fantastic. I was a bit sad that the place was only about half full. I had almost an entire row to myself.

Taking pics of the stage is allowed in London until the cast comes out to play the pre-show music.

After the show was over, I headed directly home. However, I missed the last Jubilee train, so I had to take the bus from Victoria. It took me forever to find the right stop at Victoria, but once I got on the bus I thought it was all fine. Wrong! The buses were also being diverted, so it didn't stop at my stop, which I didn't realize until I ended up at the bus garage. I was quite panicked for a few moments and tried to ask a bus driver for help - he was very unhelpful, which surprised me because all the people working at tube stops were extraordinarily helpful - if you looked at the map they came to ask you if you knew where you were going. Eventually I realized that it was 2014 and I have a smart phone, so I punched in the name of my hostel and the gps helped me get back. (I did run for a bit of the way home, which I realized at the time made me look super sketch, but I was a bit frightened and lost and just wanted to be at the hostel.)

I was prepared to apologize for being noisy when I got back to my hostel room at midnight, but instead I had a pleasant surprise: the other three people had left and no one came to replace them! I got my own room!!

This was the nicest hostel I've stayed at thus far. You didn't even have to bring your own lock because your room key card unlocked your locker for you!

That morning I ate breakfast then headed out. It took me a while to get to Victoria Coach Station. (At one moment I was confused as to whether I'd missed it, but there was a sign that said Chelsea, Victoria Coach Station with an arrow pointing forwards. So nice, London. Putting up signs specifically for me.) Things at the coach station seemed to be in disarray, but I got on the correct bus to the airport. The ride was kinda horrible and took forever...but we eventually got to the airport. I flew home out of Stansted, which was not as nice as Southend. I got another Dr. Pepper at the airport before going to my gate. (I was actually three hours early for my flight, so I walked around for a bit as well.) The airline gate lady said the flight was going to Berlin "Shutterfield," which isn't even close to the airport's name (Schoenefeld). However, I eventually got back to good ole Germany...

...where my train from Berlin to Erfurt was delayed by 50 minutes so I had a nice long time to contemplate how sleepy I was. All in all, it was a fantastic vacation! I loved London!

Now I only have less than 8 weeks left at work, and I'm heading home in 76 days!

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.