It is a Sunday evening. As I type this journal, I am sitting in my flat in West Kensington waiting for my freezer-burned chicken to thaw in a pot of warm water, wearing my new Underground-London’s subway-map boxer shorts and wrestling with the washer and dryer combo in my kitchen. Much of my life in New York is the same as in London: I still cannot cook, I am always wearing boxer shorts and I’m not entirely sure I ever learned how to properly do laundry. There’s just one small difference – I am in London. It is incredibly hard to believe that I have already been here for a week and a half! In all honesty, a good amount of my time here has been spent buying groceries, going to class and drinking pints. But I have been doing my best to approach London like a wash-up (British slang for sponge), absorbing every ounce of my experience.
I would like to formally state that the person who told me London was a cleaner New York was simultaneously right and wrong. They were right in the sense that London is a gargantuan city, much like New York. London’s population exceeds 11 million people, and its Underground spans over five zones in the city. The Tube is perhaps the cleanest place below ground I have ever visited. The tiles are white and shiny, the rails glisten in fluorescent bliss, the rats are all wearing bonnets and hoop skirts… anyway, it’s quite nice. But, I have to say, what New York lacks in sanitation, they make up for in insomniac bliss. All Tube stations close at midnight, making a late-night adventure home nearly impossible without breaking the bank. Mostly everything shuts down in the early evening, and I cannot alleviate my 2 a.m. cravings with impromptu runs to Ram’s Deli. New York is, and always will be, “the city that never sleeps.”
I think the most overwhelming aspect of my time here so far, and the most staggering difference between London and my home in the Big Apple, would have to be the way people treat each other. I have heard the words “sorry” and “excuse me” in the past week and a half more than I have ever heard them in my entire life; most of them coming from complete strangers. One night, I got separated from my group and managed to find a woman named Sara, who walked me all the way to my Tube stop and made sure I got the right train home. On my way home from class, I passed a family walking hand-in-hand out of Nando’s, a popular restaurant here in London. I watched as the mother and father ambled across the street with their two toddler children in tow to hand a homeless man on the street a full meal they had just picked up. I can already tell that the people of London value compassion and love over nearly everything else (besides, perhaps, a good pint).
The phrase “no worries” has become commonplace–as an apology, as a greeting, as a simple exclamation. In a city just recently armed to the teeth against threats of terrorism, “no worries” has become a mantra among Londoners. No one here lives in fear of what might happen – Londoners spend too much of their time loving and living to ever let fear get in the way. It is a quality I admire immensely in the British, and a quality I hope to acquire before I return to the States (well, that and maybe a British drummer).
