The ever so cheery (or cheerleadery, to be precise) Vicky from the great state of Connecticut had planned this trip for a while and Kataya and I just sort of tagged along, for no real reason, which is always the best one, isn't it? And so, on the May 30th we got on a plane to London. The plan was to stay there for 3 nights, then fly to Rome, from there to Barcelona, and then back to Vigo, via Porto. This would make one extremely long blog post, so I've decided to divide it into handy little bits. So here's Part 1 of 3, London.
Having been to London a couple of times already, I hit the ground running. Using most of the communication methods known to (hu)mankind, besides smoke signals, we had planned the whole thing out with Mart-Man, who was going to be our host in London. Ze Americans took a bus from Stansted to their hostel somewhere in St. James Park, and Kataya headed towards her cousin's flight attendant-pad near the airport, whereas I calmly walked down the stairs to the comfy Stansted Express, that would take me to Liverpool St. station, our (Make-peace and myself) official meeting point in London. (I realize we've only used it twice, but it's cool to have a meeting point in London, so there you have it.) Make-peace, my "brotha from anotha motha", was once again up for the task and took a train down from the woods of Nottingham to Make (hahahahha) the best of the long weekend. We had a few hours to kill before Mart-Man would get out of work, so we did what any self-respecting gentlemen would do, and went for a couple of pints. It was London, after all.
After recapping the TOP 5 Post-party Awakenings including Mo's waking up with a beer can in his pocket in Sacramento and some other classics, as well as some other nostalgic stuff from the past, it was time to jump on a tube and get our behinds to Canary Wharf. Mart-Man had really gotten his shiznit together and even learned how to cook, I have to hand it to the man. The rocket salad and the salmon pasta were quite amazing as was the white wine. Soon enough it was hammer-time. We were to meet the Doc (the female-one, not D.O.C) to find out about the vivid campus life of "something-something" med school. It wasn't half bad, we played some pool, found a random Finnish dude who didn't have a clue, and a pint or two.
Exiting the campus after a few hastily drunken beers we were arguing over the correct pronunciation of a few medical terms, which resulted in me not being able to say the word "defibrillate" ever again without Make-peace cracking up uncontrollably. A job well done all around. Next stop, Funk & Candy (or Kandi). This restaurant/bar/lounge was really something else. The furniture and lighting were classy and the music was chilled, but not the type that makes you sleepy. Once again, random dudes keps popping out of nowhere, which is one of the coolest things about traveling. This time it was a Swedish geezer who had been living in London for 8 years, and we got into an argument about which one is the better brand of vodka, Absolut, or Finlandia. Obviously there was only one way to find out.. Horrible idea by the way, since the prices weren't exactly similar to those in a bar in east Helsinki during happy hour, but who cares. So what I'm eating tuna and vegetable soup for the rest of my time in Vigo because of that trip.
Nevertheless, I had to cut that good, clean and healthy fun short, because the apple of my eye was about to join us. You see, as ever the operator I had bought tickets for Jewelz to fly in from Finland for a long weekend, and her flight had landed only minutes ago. But that didn't mean that Mart-Man didn't have time to turn into Space-Marty, a state, in which he walks around in huge steps simulating low gravity and making wind/Darth Vader noises with his mouth. Priceless.
Meanwhile, I kept receiving the same sms from Jewelz from the airport over and over again, and yet was unable to reach her. Vishnu bless the Spanish network operators. Finally Doc got a hold of her, and by some amazingly timed stunt managed to pick her up in our cab. Or those of us, who were still within regular gravity's reach. By this time we had been joined by Yahaa and Ze German, who had the connections for the next place. It looked liked a closed down theatre. All doors were closed, no queue to be seen, no bouncers. Still, Ze German insisted that it's one of the coolest hangouts in London called Paper. She knocked on one of the doors. Seconds later a huge bouncer opened the door and told her that they're closed. She told him something, a password or something, and went in, and the door closed behind her. I was doing my best to turn into a human question mark, in which I succeeded rather well, partly because I really had to use the lavatory really badly by now. A couple of minutes later the door opened and the bouncer welcomed us all to Paper. Well. Like I always say, connections make the world go around.
The place turned out to be one of the coolest clubs that I've ever been to. Hence the prices were also a bit steep, to say the least. No matter. We took over the dance floor and even Make-peace, who usually doesn't get jiggy with it so much, brought his A-game, largely due to the DJ who was nothing short of "on fire". In the midst of the general euphoria caused by the all-around awesomeness of the night, together with a 9 quid GT I got a brilliant idea. Or more accurately an idea that seemed brilliant at the time, because of the aforementioned circumstances. I saw a part of a wall that was cushioned with brown leather, making it look like a luxury asylum cell wall. Without further scrutinizing the situation I jumped against it almost horizontally, forming a human X. However, midair I spotted a crack in the middle of the cushioned area, leading me to believe that the wall was, in fact, not a wall but a double door. So moments later I found myself on the other side of the doors, on the floor of the VIP area, in an almost perfect human X. Obviously the bouncer at the door of the VIP section was not very impressed by my uncanny stunt. But he was also having a hard time keeping a straight face, because the rest of the people within a 8m radius were laughing their asses off, so he just escorted me back to the regular people's side. I wonder if Diddy did the same thing we he had a party at the very same club a couple of months earlier?
Eventually we were done for the evening and left. A polite gentleman outside asked us if we cared to purchase any "pills o' charlie", but no one felt like x or cocaine at the time so we respectfully declined. Very nice of him to ask though. As we were closer to Make-peace's pad and Space-Marty was long gone, Jewelz and I crashed there, and Make-peace loyally offered to take one for the team: (his mom was moving, so there was only one bed left)
The next day we walked around, along the Thames
and checked out a local market, where we got introduced to the best brownies in London.
They were delicious, I have to admit. As a matter of fact, the only better ones that I've had were in Montreal. I'm actually thinking about starting to import that stuff (the Canadian brownies), but as we are already a bit chubby as a nation, I'm not sure it's a good idea to force everyone to gain 5 kilos. Later that day we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant whose staff was overwhelmingly Chinese. I wasn't sure what to do with that. I mean they have the same writing system, they're both Oriental peoples and so on, but something about that setup was completely wrong.
As the night was closing in we contemplated different musicals and eventually ended up going to see Lion King, which Make-peace and I had already seen before. Nevertheless, it blew us all away. Honestly, the little black kid playing young Simba sang better than any Finnish Idols-contender ever, including the ones who have "won". Although I'm not sure if that surprises anyone, but still. The night was capped off by two excellent NCAA Final Four basketball games, that we watched at Mart-Man's pad in Canary Wharf. Eventhough, to be completely honest with you, the girls showed flamboyant disinterest towards the games, and we (the geezers) basically forced ourselves to stay awake and watch them despite them not being that thrilling basketball-wise, because in order to get the games to show, Mart-Man had to order some epic sports channel package for a year, and Make-peace and myself had raced from the other side of London, climbing over some walls in the process, to make it on time.
Third day. Indiya (pronounced [indaieiaia]) informed us that there would be another market open that day, this time consisting of clothes, accessories and other contraptions by young designers. Needless to say Jewelz was interested, and she actually managed to spend all of her travel budget within 20 minutes on a jacket, a dress and a purse that looked like a deflated basketball, but in a cool way, I was told. Due to a minor misunderstanding my lunch consisted of the things that food eats. I have no idea what half the stuff was, but it was green and left me feeling very healthy (read: hungry). Fortunately we were going to a Thai restaurant in Soho later so I was only cranky for a while.
The Thai restaurant's name was written in code and I had no idea whether to read it horizontally or vertically and from which direction, but in a nutshell, it ROCKED. Thai beer turned out be quite tasty to my surprise and the food was "fetén-fetén". (That's actually old spanish fo "outSTANDING" but I don't know any Thai so it'll have to do.) The meal even got some comic charasterictics when we, like any healthy young men, started to screw around with the spices and chili sauces. Here are some free samples.
After the dinner our team was rather spent and only a few of us had the energy to go for drinks later. We found this one place that was alarmingly close to the red light district, and the atmosphere was fitting. The events ranged from Men's 10 minute Toncil-Hockey, to "Are these real or not?, but a personal favorite was definitely the Jewish activist. You heard me. This guy apparently thought that we were laughing at him, when in reality we were following the humorous moves of a sloshed Asian girl, as she repeatedly attempted to pick herself up from the floor. He came over to us and started to rant about us being Jew-haters and so on. How he thought that we had known his religion remained a mystery, but it didn't seem to bother him. Instead he let us hear it for a good ten minutes, until reaching the apex by trying to convince us that he, a low-level computer engineer, was going to "rule all the companies and the world" in TWO YEARS. In my book that would be quite an accomplishment for any one person, Jewish or not, in any number of years, but he had decided to do it in two. Obviously, at this point our drinks were casually bursting through our nostrils as we wiped tears from our eyes and gasped for air.
But in case he actually takes over the world in 2009 you heard it here first. Man, is that going to be the biggest, fattest "I told you so!", if the poor bastard pulls it off. Remains to be seen, I guess.
I leave you with this random higlight: A van that drove around London centre advertising something. What made this van special was its driver, who was playing instrumental Sinatra songs from a loudspeaker on the roof, whilst singing the vocals into a microphone that hung from the roof of the cockpit. (Das Cockpit in German, by the way) This guy was actually GOOD, and he put his heart into it, too. You could see the progressing wave of smiles on people's faces as this car passed by, with soap bubble blowing from underneath it. I would have given him an award for making the world a better place, but I didn't have any on me at the moment and he was busy with the second chorus of "Strangers in the night".
Bonus question: Of which music video does this picture remind you?
