Four Goals, One Wedding, No Sleep

Okay...  so after two weeks of non-stop social activity, I have come to realize that I am not, as I had hoped, a Golden God of limitless pluck.  What I am, in fact, is frickin' exhausted, Mr. Bigglesworth.  

Socially speaking, I'm pretty sure I've done more in my first two weeks in this city than the last two months prior to my departure from the US.  It has been vastly enjoyable, uplifting, and...  I feel like I've been run over by a train.  Multiple times.  I'm not kidding; I barely have the strength to type right now.

That said -- given the chance to replay any of it, I wouldn't change a thing.  It's been great catching up with friends, checking out the city, meeting new people.  Aside from the daily after-work quick-drink, highlights from this week included my first football match ("soccer" is a blasphemous word around these parts) -- a veritable Arsenal score-fest at the impressive Emirates stadium -- and the wedding of my close friend Gaby to her longtime boyfriend Jon in Cobham, an affluent little country town about an hour and a half south of the city.

It really hit home exactly how strongly people here feel about football, or as people seem to call it, the football, in a surreal moment this week when I posted the following innocent (and clearly naive) status update on Facebook:

"Adam Svoboda is going to the Arsenal game tonight."

Within 10 minutes, I had seven messages and two phone calls from various English folks, both here and abroad, demonstrating their feelings about this in no uncertain terms :

- Clearly you have fallen in with the wrong crowd.

- Enjoy the game.  Arsenal are a shit team.

- What in God's name is wrong with you?

And my favorite:

Arsenal!?!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

It got even weirder on the night of the game, when we headed up to Emirates and I noticed a small sign in the window of the pub where we had gone for a bit of quick pre-gaming...  "Home Supporters Only." I asked my friend Fritha, season ticket-holder and self-described 6-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10-fan, about this, and she regarded me with a look that said-- how do I accurately describe this -- "uh, like, helloooo, y-AAAAhh!" in roughly the same way an in-crowd 15-year old would disdainfully answer a dumb question by one of her parents.  Apparently, the segregation is taken very seriously here; beyond the pub policy (which I'm told is ubiquitous), the stadiums have separate entrance for away fans, who are parsed away from the home fans before and after the game by a line of police, arms locked.  These are safety measures, I'm told -- and flashing back to the reactions of my friends to my Facebook update earlier, it was not difficult to imagine that they actually made a lot of sense.

Not an Arsenal fan?   Fuggedaboudit.  

Emirates is supposedly one of the nicer football stadiums, and although it's hard to make out in the crappy picture below, it really is an impressive structure.

View of the pitch.

The game was fantastic.  This was an early-season qualifier for the Champions League, against FC Twente -- Arsenal dominated, controlling the ball probably 80% of the time against the Dutch team and putting the ball into the net 4 times before the final whistle.   But I have to be honest: as a guy used to seeing American sports in American places, a couple of aspects of the evening jumped out at me as much as the game itself.  First, the songs and chants, which were all much more complex than, say, the standard American "sha-na-na-na, hey hey hey, goodbye" -- but which everyone in the crowd seemed to know by heart, from the most grizzled fans down to the youngest kids.  Second, the stadium was clean - not a stray piece of litter anywhere as far as I could see.  Not sure how they accomplished this, but I would strongly encourage the management companies that look after our stadiums in the US - who I'm sure are all reading this blog right now with rapt attention - to take a page out of the English playbook on this one.  Third -- and this really was Twilight Zone weird -- even the men's room was nice.  I mean, I wouldn't volunteer to live there for a month or anything, but the space was clean as a whistle, didn't reek of death (or worse things), and wasn't covered with the nasty, biological-warfare grade funk that seems to coat every surface of men's rooms in stadiums and most other high-traffic public venues I've visited in my life (I am thinking specifically here of all of my favorite bars in NYC).   

Of course, none of the above-mentioned niceities might have been possible without the fourth and most extreme difference I noticed: no beer, or alcohol of any sort, was on sale inside the stadium.

This difference also accounts for why, after the game, Fritha and I were still sober enough to mug it up a bit.  

The game was mid-week; by Friday, I had barely -- and I do mean barely -- recharged the batteries enough for the next big outing, an event which one colleague aptly referred to as "The Social Event of The Year": the Gaby Gully-Nee-Bolton Wedding Extravanganzapalooza.  Now, that may sound a little superlative, but it's actually a pretty accurate representation of what went down this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Surrey, beginning with a massive Friday night session at the - um - rustic local Hilton where our group (Chris, my roommate, and friends Claire, Fritha, and Jacqui) set up shop for the weekend.

The wedding was held Saturday, and I'm pleased to note that despite the fact that our previous evening had ended in the not-so-early morning hours, we were all able to pull ourselves together pretty well prior to the ceremony.  

Claire and Fritha lookin' all snazzy

Chris, Sharon and Jacqui in the churchyard

The beautiful old church where the ceremony was held.  It dates from the 1600s.

The blushing bride and groom, directly after the wedding

Following the marriage, the wedding party headed to Gaby's parents place for the reception.  It was fab - flawless service, great music (during the cocktail reception, a fellow played gypsy jazz guitar) and a spectacular meal, featuring some outstanding speeches by the bride, groom, and their respective parties, which broadly ranged in topic from the abnormal size of the groom's head throughout his life to Gaby's well-known and terrifying Category-5 tantrums.  Ultimately, though, I think it was Jon that won the Line Of The Night prize:

"When I asked David [Gaby's dad] for Gaby's hand in marriage, his response was, 'Are you mad!?!'... this was not exactly what I had been expecting..."

The party went on into the wee hours, and amazingly, Gaby and Jon kept pace with the guests, dancing, drinking and laughing in a superhuman display of energy after what had undoubtedly been a joyous but exhausting day...  Perhaps they got their second wind after chowing down on some roast pork --  or to be more accurate,  a full roast pig, which had been cooking over an open fire for hours during the afternoon reception and through the formal sit down meal.  It was a great finishing touch, and absolutely delicious besides.

Jazz Hands at the reception.

Claire and yours truly.

Ready to roast.  I don't know what your name was, big guy, but you were delicious.

We returned home Sunday fat, happy, and utterly beat.  As I sat with Chris drinking a cup of coffee at a little cafe overlooking the river, we talked about what a great time we're having in this country, batted around some ideas for the next big adventure, and even came up with an idea for that very afternoon:

Get back upstairs, dump the bags, and go to sleep.  Which is exactly what we did.

A Glass Of Wine To The Head

Notwithstanding the fact that it's only Sunday morning, I think I can safely award the Classic Moment Of The Week trophy -- which I have just come up with on the spot and which, in disappointing point of fact, consists of nothing more than a blog mention ( a blention?) -- to my new friend --let's call her Mrs. X.  

The story goes thus.  Friday night, a few of my work friends and I headed to Rocket, a nice little bar around the corner and down the stairs from our place of employment, for what was deemed to be a "quick drink" to celebrate the start of the long weekend here.  Somehow, despite our best-laid plans, the quick drink went on a little longer than intended, and before we knew it, the London midnight scramble was beginning -- this, for those of you not familiar -- consists of thousands of people, in variegated states of intoxication, speed-walking from every closing bar, pub, cocktail lounge, watering hole, and hole in the wall to the nearest Tube station in a frantic and -- due to the aforementioned variegation -- sometimes comical attempt to make their last trains home prior to the Tube shutting down sometime around 12:30.  

We -- myself, my colleague F, and Mrs. X, had left the bar and were in the midst of our own speed-walk down  the street.  Mrs. X had somehow smuggled a full glass of wine outside, and drank as we went along, resplendent, regal, and highly animated, describing with sweeping gestures  some important point or other to F up about 10 feet ahead of me.  Suddenly, Mrs. X noticed that the wine was finished, and very offhandedly, flung the empty glass - hard - into a small alley we were passing by, all the while continuing to chat with F.  Instantly, there was a horrible shattering sound, followed by a vehement and emphatic string of expletives from a poor guy on a moped, whose helmet (which he had just put on, thank God) had caught the flying glass full-on, before it exploded into about 5,000 tiny pieces.  

Moped Man: "WHAT THE F!$ING F!*K, YOU F&*#ING B*!#H!?!?" 

Mrs. X: "Oh dear.... um....  sorry.  I didn't, er, see you there... " 

The girls continued -- at a noticeably expedited pace -- on into the night; it took me a few minutes to catch up, as I first had to peel myself off the pavement where I had keeled over in hysterical laughter.

Shockingly enough, this in itself was not the highlight of the week.  That honor instead goes to my action-packed Saturday.   The weather was nice (read: not pouring and with a sunbeam actually peaking through the cloud cover for a few seconds once every hour or so), so I grabbed the camera and went out for a long walk along the Thames River Walk.   Even though Canary Wharf itself is still new (its construction began only in 1985) the sense of history along the river is tangible and quite unlike anything I've experienced in the States.

Canary Wharf from a distance.  My apartment is in the smaller of the two yellow buildings, visible slightly to the left of the boat.

A little inlet in the river.  While this looks like a ditch running through, it's actually just low tide - if you look closely you can see the green waterline on side of the retaining walls.  I was amazed to learn that the tidal movement of the Thames can exceed 30 feet.

The Grapes pub, nearly 300 years old, known as the Six Jolly Porters Pub in the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend.  Dickens sang to customers here as a child.

An interesting building along the River Walk.

On the way back, I swung down by the docks below my Canary Wharf apartment to poke around and strolled into the Docklands Museum, which happily was offering free admission due to the Bank Holiday.  The permanent exhibits offer a truly impressive overview of the history of London.  Beginning in 50AD when the first Roman port of Londinium, was built near present-day London Bridge, all the way through the development of Canary Wharf in the mid-80s, the exhibits showcase the amazing growth of the city around the Thames, with separate exhibitions on the earliest origins of the city and its struggles through centuries of attacks by Gauls, Saxons, and Vikings, the development of the first great bridges nearly 1000 years after the founding of the city, the influence of the sugar, whaling, and slavery trades, and much more.  Definitely well worth a visit for anyone in the area.

After a few hours' downtime, I headed out to Chelsea -- thankfully without any Tube delays, a minor miracle considering this was a weekend -- to a little gastro-pub called the Anglesea Arms to meet my high-school friend Mary Helen, whom I hadn't seen in a number of years, and her husband Jonti.  The couple were just back from two weeks in Ibiza, Spain, and Italy, and I was very lucky to catch them; they were just stopping back to the UK for a couple of days in prior to embarking on 6 more months of travel, culminating in a relocation to New York (they've been living in London for the past 4 years).  We had a great catch-up session, and MH, who has been working in food media, passed along some top-notch food recommendations which I will surely be writing about in future blog entries.  Thanks MH -- and make sure you give my regards to Corner Bistro and Shake Shack when you touch down in NYC!!!

MH and I mug it up.

Touchdown

In the sparse few minutes I've had between being in the office, and being out of the office but drinking like it was my job, I think I've actually somehow taken the first tentative steps towards settling in to my new home in Canary Wharf.  To wit: I unpacked 2 out of my 4 bags; I went grocery shopping; I bought a cell phone (or "mobile," to use the local parlance, equal emphasis on "MO." and "BILE.")  Tomorrow, if I am feeling particularly ambitious, I will pick up the phone and call one of my company's relocation officers, who will then go off and set up a UK bank account for me.  This will be largely a symbolic act, seeing as there's nothing to put in for the next few weeks; still, I'm giving this strong consideration, as doing so will be another piece of kindling on the already five-alarm sense of self-satisfaction I feel regarding my newfound Gitter-Doneness: Lo, I Have Accomplished So Very Much In My First Four Days, Just Like a Big Boy Would!

Canary Wharf is nice, albeit a little far off from what most Londoners would call "civilization" (read: any good spot to meet up and have a drink)   There is plenty of history to the area, though: for example, we sit right across the river from the original East India Company warehouse, and this is the neighborhood where Jack The Ripper made his name - there's actually a Ripper museum about a 3-minute walk from my place, and although I have not yet been in, I hear it's excellent.  Oh, and I stopped in at a 500-year-old hole-in-the-wall pub tonight, about 10 minutes up the river walk.  It was about the size of a shoebox, and aside from my roommate Chris, his girlfriend Beth, and myself, other notable patrons have included people such as Charles Dickens, who was a regular. 

Steak pie - typical pub fare.

 

Work is quick a 10 minute jog on the DLR (Docklands Light Rail), while every material thing I could possibly need is 5 minutes away, tucked into some nook or cranny of the sprawling and maze-like mega-mall surrounding the Canary Wharf tube station.

The apartment itself is a typical two-bedroom corporate: boxy and efficient, with the notable exception that the showers seem to have been designed somewhere in Dante's Sixth Circle -- no shower curtain, no glass, water everywhere, and the lever which controls water flow and temperature is so cunningly placed that even the slightest movement while showering causes one to bump it with one's leg, resulting in (a) scalding heat, (b) freezing cold, or most frequently (c) turning the water off entirely.   Otherwise, no great shakes... The place is done up in muted corporate colors, and richly furnished with Ikea's most luxuriously mid-ranged tables, chairs, and couches.  The view, however, is pretty neat - we overlook the Thames, and sit at one end of a large, grassy courtyard, of which a new Nobu restaurant, a glassed-in pool, and the Four Seasons hotel are the other main occupants.  Here are a few snaps from around the house this weekend:

View of the courtyard from our balcony at night.  Four Seasons on the left, Ubon by Nobu in the middle, Thames on the right.

A couple snaps of the living room and bedroom.

The water view is particularly nice.  Today, two tugs manoeuvred a gigantic cruise liner up the river.  It absolutely dwarfed everything on either shore as the tugs ferried it through...

Aside from the first little explorations of the immediate surroundings, most of my impressions of the city have been gathered, as alluded to earlier, in my several nights out in various parts of the city.  Yesterday was Chris's birthday, and to celebrate, we headed to the Duke of Wellington, a pub in the Notting Hill neighborhood where Chris worked during a summer in London 10 years ago.  The beers were good, the live music (courtesy of Davin, from South Carolina, and his guitar) was excellent, and between florist Orlando Bloom (who actually looked a little bit like Shaq) and the carpenter who argued economics with Chris for a good forty-five minutes, the conversation was pretty consistently entertaining.   And, we were even able to mug for the following amazingly kick-ass photos, courtesy of the admiral's hat that the girls in the below photos were, for reasons beyond me, carrying with them.

El Capitan and the crew

El Capitan 2: I Am Not Happy And I Am Wearing Funny Glasses El Capitan

First and Final Musings From the *Right* Side

One last Aristotle of Pig's at the Rub-a 'fore I hit the Frog and Toad.

Okay.  The last beer has been polished off, the bags are mostly packed, and I've got through at least 43% of my Moving To London Critical Red Alert Checklist of Things to Do Before You Move To London Checklist.   I figure I'm ready as I'll ever be to hit the road.   

This is a good thing, as my flight departs at 10:30PM tonight, roughly 15 hours from now.   

What's not quite as good a thing is that somehow, sometime between now and then, I need to obtain a Visa.  My crack "visa facilitator" Ravi assures me that it will be ready for me at 5PM sharp at his office in Manhattan; however this is somewhat cold comfort, given that this same Ravi was the one who directed me to leave work in order to drag my ass 2 hours out to the nether-regions of the Bronx so I could get my fingers printed (part of the Visa process), but failed to tell me the facility was closed on Mondays.  Needless to say, that little trip did not end well.  

Still, new country, new adventure... Gotta be optimistic.

Which brings me to the blog.  I've been told more than once that I possess the particular, apparently grievous character flaw of being unable to stay in touch with anyone, ever, under any circumstance.  I don't need to be told that this flaw pisses off my friends and loved ones to no end, and I don't expect the situation to improve as the result of living on another continent. So I guess this blog is a preemptive olive branch of sorts - my hope is that it will  allow me to share my experiences with my friends and family, while allowing me to do something I know I *am* capable of - namely, burning a lot of time on the internet.  

Being that the inagural posting is a special occasion, I decided to get up early - really early - to trot around Hoboken and snap a few photos before I leave.  I suppose this was done in equal parts because (a) I am leaving in a few hours and it would be nice to have a little visual recollection of where I've lived the last four years, and (b) I wanted to play with my new, fancy camera setup.  So long, Hoboken, it's been good...

A couple of skyline shots showing the construction of a new pier on the Hudson.

Washington St., center of town

A semi-interesting door, and the neat little fire house a block over from my apartment.

    

Dilapidated sign.

By the way, for those of you not inclined towards Cockney Rhyming Slang -- namely, all of you -- that line at the top translates roughly to "another bottle of beer at the bar, before I hit the road."  I know this because my colleagues, Muqu, Amy, and Amanda were kind enough to give me a little booklet of said Slang, which I'm sure will prove to be of use sooner rather than later. 

"Excuse me, Stewardess?  I'll have the Loopers with me Jim Skinner!"

Haha, yes.