A Savage Nation

There are many things you may "know" about England; some of them are correct: scones and clotted cream are great, people speak with fantastic accents, it rains a lot, London is a beautiful city, the Queen is old; some of them are not correct: people are classier (than the US), most people speak with fantastic accents, bathrooms are sensibly warm, the tube is great.

What you (and I) did not know, but is demonstrably true, is that Brits (or perhaps just Englanders, or, barring that, just Londoners) will fight for a bargain.  Literally.  Last weekend American Apparel - the rather offensively-run American retailer - had a rummage sale in a slightly shabby part of London known as Brick Lane.  2000 people attended and, as you wouldn't expect, since it's just clothing, that there was a riot, which injured 10 police officers.  Of course.  Why wouldn't there be?  If you're viewing this on email, click here to see the main post, and the video: http://thirdcultureworld.blogspot.com/

Welcome to England, please reclaim your baggage

As I got off of the plane this morning, exhausted because I chose to partake of the airplane meal service instead of sleep, I noticed a sign on the way to immigration: "Baggage Reclaim," it announced, roundly slapping my American sensibilities and telling me one thing - this was a foreign land. In America, you only need to claim it once!

In all seriousness, even on my first day in England, there were plenty of things to notice. Sadly, I'm tired, so I can't elaborate more than to bullet them out. Also, I cannot find the list I emailed home. I think that the work computer believes I’m a spam address now. Great.

• Almost everything physical is small. There are exceptions of course, such as the monstrous mega-mall near my house, but in general it holds. The rooms are small; the cars are small; the people are small; the portions are small; the houses are small; and of course
• the tube is small. The tube (London's Subway) is really small. The fares are not. The trains are like the smallest trains on the New York City subway (the IRT, or numbered lines) made 2 feet narrower, and the highest point on the inside made to be 6'6" precisely. And I do mean highest point, because from that highest, center point, the roof slants downward at least a foot and a half to the doors, a mere 6" away. Okay, I exaggerate, but it feels like 6". My first thought was that I finally understood the image of underground railways as sardine cans. I found myself physically shuddering when the train arrived after my interchange. Not only that, but the doors guillotine closed after a few friendly warnings (which everyone heeds), and they have the indecency to make you step up about 8" into the trains. People will tell you "but they're so clean and efficient!" This is entirely beside the point - the reason they are so clean is that otherwise nobody would ever get on them for fear of catching meningitis. Efficiency is added incentive for the few unconvinced stragglers. If you have any doubts, then consider for a moment the spectacle of the platform announcer. In other subway systems people actually try to get onto trains, so announcers are unnecessary other than to inform. In London they need a patron to coax you into them, and to soothe any fears, like children on a field trip to the dentist. “Please step all the way into the train… yes, get on the train, yes you really should, go on, step on in.” You could say that they’re just reminding people to be polite, but then why do they do it when the trains have nobody even standing in them?
• People say "cheers" at really inopportune times. I sold someone some dollars at the current exchange rate to get sterling without paying a bank markup, and was bode farewell with "cheers." How do you respond??? "You're welcome?" But they didn't thank you... how about "thanks?" No... that's not quite right, because then you're thanking them for saying "cheers," which heaven forbid might elicit another one. And not only are "thank you"s replaced, but so are other farewells. I'm not sure I'll get the hang of this.
• The elevators have light-bars inside of them to warn you when they are closing (red) or tell you it’s safe to enter (green). They go down both sides of the inside of the door, so they are invisible when the door is closed. Most strangely, everyone obeys them – I only saw one other person stop a closing lift door. I see now the true purpose of the subway guillotines.
• The grocery stores are shockingly inefficient. American (e.g. big, bad, and carbon intensive) grocery stores have open pit and closed wall freezers for frozen goods, closed refrigerators for some milk and dairy, and then rectangular open fridges for some other goods. I always thought those were bad. My experience here (which I am told is replicated elsewhere) is that the they don’t even bother trying – the refrigerators just release cool air onto shelves of produce and milk, which mingles with passing (warming) customers, and the other air in the store. There is no attempt at insulation. The freezers, fortunately, were more sensible (wall-freezers over pit-freezers), but I was still horrified.[Having moved back to America... I was wrong]
• London black cabs are icky. I say this based entirely on their external appearance, but really, they’re very ugly, so I must be right.