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The purpose of this trip was different than my other trips, it was for work, but I added some days to get a feel of life in the UK.
Flixbus from Amsterdam/Schiphol to Brussels. From the little that I saw, so possibly not representative, it looked like a nice city with nice nature in various places. It was unlike what I saw earlier on the bus ride, i.e. parts of the outskirts of Antwerp and industrial areas before that, that are uglier than what I've seen anywhere in NL. At the trainstation there was a layover so I had a look around and it was curious to see 4 soldiers. i've never seen soldiers at any train or bus station in NL... I asked them about it and they told me this is standard practice for 2 years...
Then bus to London.
Passport checks were way faster than at the border of Poland-Ukraine, 20 minutes or so each.
The bus then went into a special carriage for cars and buses for the crossing of the channel tunnel.. It was quite strange to feel movements of a train while sitting in a bus...
Walking trom the Victoria coach station, I saw in the evening several bicycles with headlamps with laser bicycle projection symbol (in green) on the road. The next day I read a bit in a magazine in which coincidentally a man wrote about having had several accidents from pedestrians not looking out well enough. For London such lamps may help because of esp. the long duration of traffic lights being on red. I will expand on this topic elsewhere as it may be related to the issues with traffic lights: See my bicycle light site.
I walked quite a lot as usual: 6km first day, then 12 km on the 2nd day, then 22 km 3rd day, about 18km 4th day. Almost half of the 3rd long walk was in the evening and I saw again several bicycles with headlamps that project a green bike picture on the road about 10m ahead of the bike. While walking, the long duration to wait on traffic lights annoyed me and I suppose it annoys everyone, as almost no pedestrians wait for the traffic lights to go green...
The hostel is close to Hyde park, and it's interesting how many big parks there are in London. On most days it was snowy so hard to get an impression of what it is like in Summer, but Hyde park is spoiled by the noise from cars all around it.
Imperial war museum:
Some nice exhibits are: V1 and V2, Spitfire, Sopwith Camel. But there was no Jagdpanther tank! Bummer! Instead there were 2 stupid exhibits on the ground floor: some car wreck from Baghdad and another uninteresting vehicle.
Wednesday evening I went to a pub called Bayswater arms, to try some traditional fish and chips. It came with green pea mash, curry sauce and tartare sauce.Vinegar is always available on each table as I saw after asking about it because it was not delivered with the food. The fish was excellent, the chips with vinegar are suprisingly not bad at all, although I prefer what we eat in NL, i.e. chips with 'fritessaus' (chips sauce), which is similar to mayonaise, but a bit sweet and a bit creamier.
In the pub some guy was talking to a woman, and one of the subjects was scams, perhaps because she is possibly from Nigeria (well known for scams), not sure, in any case he started saying how scamming is not easy and that otherwise everyone would do it. Uhm, no! That is an immoral way to live and most people are not that immoral. Further scamming is not hard it's just knowing the right things to do and say. It's a particular form of manipulation. The nigerian scams started out written in English with lots of errors, and that this is in some sense smart because those who don't immediately throw away such an email are more likely to fall for a con. However, this was without doubt not intentional, the scammers were just lucky in that this works. This only works of course if you have enough responses, i.e. if there are enough responses that way then it is effective in that you need to do the least amount of work to convince such people (of sending money, making some 'deal'), but in any case these people never did anything very smart, they just tried and found what works and what not. it's evolution in action... later on he paddled back, possibly from some things she said (I didn't hear what) and that perhaps scamming is easier than he said. I felt that this guy was just some bullshitter engaging in idle chit chat, which I hate. My impression of a pub is that it's barely different from Dutch cafes but with more emphasis on food and more people go to pubs in the UK than people in NL go to cafes, for the purpose of social intercourse. Both usually involve drinking alcohol but in NL drinking is a more important part of it. In both cases I don't see the point, as I don't like alcohol, it's noisy, and people are generally engaging in chit chat which doesn't interest me.
Thursday: This trip I was a bit unprepared on what to go see except for Tower bridge and the Imperial war museum, so I asked at the hostel and I was recommended to go to the British museum. Ah, of course, good one. I went there esp. to see Egyptian artefacts. Also interesting are Greek and Roman artefacts (pieces and a video of where they fit on the Parthenon) and statues. Possibly the most interesting was to see the Rosetta stone in reality. Though this could be better, they really should make changes to the lighting, but that's not just an issue there, the lighting (colour) should be changed everywhere in that museum...
I read a quote on a plaque somewhere in the centre of Londen, while making a long walk, and it was surprising to read it there as the quote was by Nikita Khruschov: I think it was: politicians will promise to build a bridge even if there is no need for one. Note that he is the guy who hammered with his shoe on the table in UN. Surprising to the other politicians, but this showed that he was a real person, instead of the fakery in all other politicians.
Aha, found it: http://www.azquotes.com/author/7985-Nikita_Khrushchev
"Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think. Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river."
Last day in London, Friday:
I got an old style 10 pound note in change from some shop. I found out about it on Thursday, when a Tesco didn't accept it, they said it had been replaced, though I was told elsewhere that it was still valid and should still be accepted. Well, Tesco didn't accept it. As I wanted to do some final shopping at a Tesco I went to a bank to exchange the note: First to Barclays and they didn't want to exchange it unless I had an account with them, which I don't as I'm a tourist. I then went to Santander where it was exchanged without problem. The security guy said "well, that was easy", and I agreed, no hassle, which is a nice change from the standard behaviour of banks. So, thumbs down to Barclays, thumbs up to Santander.
I visited Holland park which is nice, but again as it was snowy, hard to get a good impression.
Just before I was about to go to the Victoria coach station for my trip back to NL, I got talking to a Russian tourist in the hostel, and I asked him what life there was like in his view/experience. He told me that from ca. 2008 up to 2014 things were improving, but the sanctions hit Russia very hard (despite claims to the contrary, see further). Prices of lots of products increased because the value of the Ruble dropped quite a bit. He said that the taking of Crimea with force was unacceptable, and that you can't really deny that Russia is involved in the Donbass area in Ukraine. He further said that most people voting for Putin are in government employ and there of course there's pressure to vote for him. I asked about the local production of foods, as I had read on the Dutch news site nos.nl twice (once a few months ago but a very similar article already appeared more than a year ago) that the Russians had "learned to use their brains" and made a lot of products within the country. This is in principle good, as it's bad to be very dependent on imports, but he said that with food the prices have risen even with products made locally as it's basically a monopoly. This firm, I'm not sure whether it is state owned, presumable increases prices just because they can, which means more food products might get grown in Russia itself, but the Russians are not profiting from that! (except of course the owners of the companies...)
On all my walks I looked around for shops and supermarkets to see in particular what kinds of tea and muesli are available. I found some nice tea in a specialist tea shop but not much in any other shops.
Many nice old style buildings, but too close to those are new style building that are either ugly or just don't fit with the old style buildings. I like it in any case a lot more than in NL! I was surprised that there is not that much choice in tea, but then I didn't find any large supermarkets. I suppose this is caused by the price for land being too high, which means you probably need to travel to the edge of London to find a really big supermarket with a large selection of, well, anything.
I was asked about people in the UK, and of course I have only a limited experience but long ago when I watched TV it was either BBC or ARD/ZDF/WDR. Dutch TV is/was rubbish but that's not the only reason to not watch Dutch TV: I don't like the personality of people in NL (they are crude, disinterested, stingy). The feeling was confirmed again that in the UK people are quite different. People in the UK are far more courteous, and more interested. The difference is very clear in women. Someone asked me whether women in the UK are ugly! :) Well, the reports on weight are that IIRC ca. half of the people in the UK (or was it half of young people?) are overweight, but I didn't see this at all, also not in young women where it is most noticeable. This is possibly related to the area where I stayed (people in lower class areas eat more junkfood and get fat), as I stayed near Hyde park, a wealthy area with embasseys. So to me the British girls/women whom I talked to in various places and esp. in the hostels in London and in Budapest are very feminine (except one Indian or Pakistani girl in Budapest, simply because of personality). For me the most physically attractive women are from NL (for me only original inhabitants, not import) but they are not feminine and you notice this strongly when they are 25 or so and older, then women in NL are completely uninteresting, the natural youthful female attractiveness is gone, possibly made worse by their behaviour and dressing which is not feminine. There is a clear difference in this respect with the UK, the tremendous overuse of makeup by some women as shown in the TV series "Snog, marry, avoid" is an example of that. In NL women are almost not women anymore, indoctrinated with the nonsense that they all must work, must do the same as men and there should be the same number of women as men doing a certain job (of course that argument is only made about some jobs, such as politicians and managers, it is never made about e.g. roadworkers!), as if the meaning of life is in work... More to come on this topic elsewhere...
Last modified: 2018-3-31