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Published: April 3rd 2011
Last Summer I spend 3 weeks in London. This is my Blog about it.
I have to admit I always feel a little bit scared when I come to a new big city like London. Probably it has something to do with the fact that I am living in small cities for over 30 years. I am sure many of my friends will not believe it but I felt somehow worried before we arrived in Heathrow. I know compared to my other travel destination like Bangkok, Hanoi or Lima - London is just around the corner and the people are not so much different than the German.
Yes I knew by myself there was nothing really to worry about!
The first challenge we had to face was to find the tube at the London-Heathrow Airport.
Everywhere there where signs for the much more expansive Heathrow Express but where was the tube ?
We must have looked like greenhorns who come the first time to a city.
To hear the strange English (was it really English ?) of the other traveller did not encourage us to ask them for the way (I guess this is a strange German
habit).
Finally we found it by ourself but the sign for the tube was small and well hidden.
I got more relaxed when I finally understood the London Transportation System or better said the way to pay for it.
First you have to make a decision between an Oystercard and a travelcard but even if you chose the travelcard you need an Oystercard.
Confusing ?
Yes that the way it was.
For Ana we bought a travelcard valid for one month. Later I noticed that this was more expansive than the flight with Lufthansa from Frankfurt to London and back to Frankfurt. No one said that London is a cheap place.
I started to enjoy London when we were finally sitting in the tube (London Metro) and I noticed the mixture of the people from every corner of the world.
In our first tube there were young Japanese lovers, a young tired girl from Thailand, many people from South Asia, some coloured people from Africa or from the Caribbean Island and everywhere you could hear Spanish and Polish. So already this little tube was like a mirror of the United Nations.
I
am sure if you wait long enough you might hear every foreign language in the London tube.
And the best thing was as I later found out that it is always like this. What a gift!
London is a paradise if you like to watch people.
To see al these people coming from every corner of the world reminded me of a warm summer rain pouring down on dried-out earth.
On our first weekend in London we went to a street carneval called Carneval del pueblo. It was only 3 station from where we stayed, for London this was just around the corner.
As the name already suggest the Carneval del pueblo is organized mostly by citizen from Latinamerica.
Officially there are 250000 citizen from Latinamerica but they guess that the real figure is close to 500000. So London is also a big latinamerican city. You can hear Spanish really everywhere, there is actually no bus, no tube, no restaurant, no book store where there is no native Spanish speaker. Probably I spoke more Spanish in London than on many trips to Spain. It was really unbelievable to see so many native Spanish speaker.
The
second weekend we went to a South Asian Festival and some weeks later we saw the Thames Water Festival. It looks as if there were a festival at every weekend. Probably for Londoner it is never difficult to find a reason for a festival.
I don't think that there are many cities in the world where you have an latinamerican Carneval on one weekend and the next weekend a South Asian Festival.
Thank you London!
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Carneval del pueblo
