Back from the fourth weekend traveling in a row. Amsterdam, St. Moritz, Cork, and now London. Unless something really cool comes up this weekend, I think I’ll stick around and recuperate and remember what it’s like to live in Zurich, and give my bank account a chance to recover, although some of my friends will be heading up to Munich for Oktoberfest this weekend (aside: it has always amused me that Oktoberfest happens in September).
The evening before I went to London, I met up for a drink with a few friends at a bar near my apartment. You may recall that around the corner from my apartment, there is a porn cinema, which sits in the same square as the bar where we were meeting. A latecomer called to find out where we were, and I tried to give her directions while standing in the somewhat noisy street, and told her that it was near the porn cinema. “What cinema?” “Porn.” “What?” “Porn.” “What?” This continued for at least half a dozen iterations (she later explained that she thought I was saying "point," and was therefore confused), and it attracted the attention of several passersby, because not only was there an Asian girl outside of the red-light district, she was also standing there chanting, “Porn! Porn! Porn!” into her phone.
On Friday, four of us met up for dinner at the airport before catching our respective flights to Copenhagen, Vienna, and London. Only in Europe could you meet with a bunch of your friends for dinner at the airport before everyone catches their international flights for last-minute weekend trips.
My friend and I were both delayed getting into London, and further delayed trying to get to the hotel, due to London’s layout as an old European city with no perpendicular streets or numbered streets. We tried to get directions from various people, but they were all drunk, lost, unfamiliar with English, or visitors themselves. It was a minor miracle that we eventually found the hotel and checked in successfully.
We managed to meet up with five other friends, have sushi, go out for dim sum, catch a movie, and check out the Tate Modern while we were there. We also managed to get to the airport too late, so that I missed the check-in cutoff for my flight by ten minutes. The plane was still there, it just wouldn’t let anyone else on. The 7:45 p.m. flight was the last flight to Zurich, as Swiss noise regulations prohibit planes from taking off or landing after 11 p.m. So we spent an unanticipated eleven hours in Heathrow, waiting for the 6:20 a.m. flight. You would think that airports would have comfortable places to crash, since they are certain to have people on layovers or delays there at all times. We were lucky to find a carpeted patch of floor that wasn’t heavily trafficked. At one point, as we were trying to doze, we were woken by giggles and a flash, as a passing pair of travelers took a picture of us sprawled on the floor with our bags. They explained that they had once been stranded and had crashed in the exact same place we were crashing.
We were later roused by a policeman who wanted to see our passports and boarding cards to ensure that we weren’t terrorists or hobos, since we clearly fit those profiles, as fairly well-dressed, relatively clean-cut Caucasian males and Asian females are well-known threats to public safety. The policeman seemed suspicious that we each only had a small backpack, even after we explained that we were only in town for a weekend trip. I resisted asking him how much he packed when he went somewhere for the weekend, and whether he packed like a girl, as that seemed like the kind of suspicious question that a terrorist or hobo might ask, at least from the perspective of a British police officer.
Came straight to the office from the airport, and while I was sitting at my desk, bleary-eyed and zombie-brained, I received a spam SMS from my cell phone company offering me one million free SMSes for 30 francs (about $24), as long as the SMSes were sent in the next three months. It sounded like a good deal, since that’s about how much it costs to send 150 SMSes, until I realized that I send most of my SMSes for free online, so I don’t send 150 SMSes from my phone in three months, and who sends over 8,000 SMSes per day (to hit 1,000,000 SMSes over 120 days)?
The evening before I went to London, I met up for a drink with a few friends at a bar near my apartment. You may recall that around the corner from my apartment, there is a porn cinema, which sits in the same square as the bar where we were meeting. A latecomer called to find out where we were, and I tried to give her directions while standing in the somewhat noisy street, and told her that it was near the porn cinema. “What cinema?” “Porn.” “What?” “Porn.” “What?” This continued for at least half a dozen iterations (she later explained that she thought I was saying "point," and was therefore confused), and it attracted the attention of several passersby, because not only was there an Asian girl outside of the red-light district, she was also standing there chanting, “Porn! Porn! Porn!” into her phone.
On Friday, four of us met up for dinner at the airport before catching our respective flights to Copenhagen, Vienna, and London. Only in Europe could you meet with a bunch of your friends for dinner at the airport before everyone catches their international flights for last-minute weekend trips.
My friend and I were both delayed getting into London, and further delayed trying to get to the hotel, due to London’s layout as an old European city with no perpendicular streets or numbered streets. We tried to get directions from various people, but they were all drunk, lost, unfamiliar with English, or visitors themselves. It was a minor miracle that we eventually found the hotel and checked in successfully.
We managed to meet up with five other friends, have sushi, go out for dim sum, catch a movie, and check out the Tate Modern while we were there. We also managed to get to the airport too late, so that I missed the check-in cutoff for my flight by ten minutes. The plane was still there, it just wouldn’t let anyone else on. The 7:45 p.m. flight was the last flight to Zurich, as Swiss noise regulations prohibit planes from taking off or landing after 11 p.m. So we spent an unanticipated eleven hours in Heathrow, waiting for the 6:20 a.m. flight. You would think that airports would have comfortable places to crash, since they are certain to have people on layovers or delays there at all times. We were lucky to find a carpeted patch of floor that wasn’t heavily trafficked. At one point, as we were trying to doze, we were woken by giggles and a flash, as a passing pair of travelers took a picture of us sprawled on the floor with our bags. They explained that they had once been stranded and had crashed in the exact same place we were crashing.
We were later roused by a policeman who wanted to see our passports and boarding cards to ensure that we weren’t terrorists or hobos, since we clearly fit those profiles, as fairly well-dressed, relatively clean-cut Caucasian males and Asian females are well-known threats to public safety. The policeman seemed suspicious that we each only had a small backpack, even after we explained that we were only in town for a weekend trip. I resisted asking him how much he packed when he went somewhere for the weekend, and whether he packed like a girl, as that seemed like the kind of suspicious question that a terrorist or hobo might ask, at least from the perspective of a British police officer.
Came straight to the office from the airport, and while I was sitting at my desk, bleary-eyed and zombie-brained, I received a spam SMS from my cell phone company offering me one million free SMSes for 30 francs (about $24), as long as the SMSes were sent in the next three months. It sounded like a good deal, since that’s about how much it costs to send 150 SMSes, until I realized that I send most of my SMSes for free online, so I don’t send 150 SMSes from my phone in three months, and who sends over 8,000 SMSes per day (to hit 1,000,000 SMSes over 120 days)?
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