Wanderung 15

Volksmarching through Germany and a Cruise to get back.

September-November 2007

Saturday, October 27th - Flight to London.


 

Bob:

It really was difficult to leave Heinke and Gustl because we have so much fun whenever we visit them, but we did want to see London before boarding our ship back to the states. Much to Heinke's astonishment, I think, we did get everything squeezed into our luggage, although we had to use the "expansion" capacity that was built into both of our big wheeled suitcases. Monika also had to squeeze a couple of dolls into the two beer steins we had from our walk in Markbreit, and she stuffed them in head first, which really looked uncomfortable, not to say claustrophobic, to me. I put in a complaint from the doll's point of view, "Please don't stuff me into that cold, dark beer stein!", but to no avail. Not having a layer of 5 dolls taking up space in the main luggage did, however, free up enough space to get everything including most of our junk food (mostly German chocolate) in one piece or another.

Gustl drove us all over to the airport, which was only about ten minutes from their house, and we reluctantly said good bye and trundled off to the Lufthansa check in line in Terminal 2. Checking in and security and passport control all went without any problems, so we had a bite to eat and then read some newspapers and worked on the computer a bit while waiting for our airplane to depart. Surprisingly I had plenty of leg room on the flight to London, so maybe Lufthansa spaces its economy-class seats farther apart than British Airways does. Also, we actually had a "lunch", if you can call a half of a sandwich and a small Twix bar a lunch. Still it was better than the absolutely nothing that characterizes many U.S. airlines and it kept us going for a while.

Monika:

Time for the next part of our kinda planned vacation. We had tickets from Hamburg to London to spend the last three days in London, before taking the big boat back to Miami. So we re-packed again - this seems to be SOP for us, repack just before you leave. I had decided to put a doll into each of the Beersteins (or Frankensteins). For some reason, Bob and Gustl seemed to object to having the doll take a nice nap in a cozy beer stein. But they did fit and the suitcase did close, although Heinke feared for the zipper. We checked email one more time, looked at some of Heinke's pictures, and then it was time to go - by my estimate. But of course, Hamburg airport is not IAD or Washington National. Hardly a line at check-in for Lufthansa or at the security lines, and we didn't even have to take off our shoes. So we had plenty of time to have a bite to eat, before going through passport control to the gate.

Bob:

Getting in through the customs in London was really tedious as we were non-E.U. people and had a much more thorough process as a result. But since that took us so long, our checked luggage was already on the carousel when we finally got there. Then we had an odyssey on the London Underground, also known as the Tube, to get to our hotel. The Tube made a quite different impression on us than the subway systems we had recently used in Hamburg. The trains functioned flawlessly and were always on time in the Hamburg system, but the windows were severely scratched and the view outside was frequently degraded by graffiti. In contrast, the windows of the Tube trains were completely free of scratches and graffiti was relatively rare, but the trains and roadbed were noticeably inferior to the Hamburg system. The roadbed was rough and uneven enough that we were frequently jostled and bumped around, although the seats were quite soft and absorbed much of that movement. The power cables alongside the track frequently seemed to have been patched together in a willy-nilly fashion with cables running at queer angles, which was something I never saw on the Hamburg system. Some of the lights in our carriage flickered off and back on at odd moments, but typically at least 50% were working at any one time so we never actually plunged into utter darkness, thankfully. There were no trash receptacles in the carriage that we could see, and there certainly was waste paper and litter on the floor, but the thing that put me off the most was when one 30-something woman leaned over and quite casually spit on the floor. Yuck! Even though Monika and I have seen drunk and noisy passengers on the Hamburg system (mostly young males going to and from a soccer game), we never ever saw anyone do anything like that and it was rather revolting.

We also tried to keep track of the time as we trundled in from Heathrow, but when Monika checked the clocks at one station, one of the clocks read "3:02" and the other read "3:05", which was rather ambiguous guidance to the actual time. That is in stark contrast to the German train station clocks that are all set by the government broadcast timing signal and therefore consistently give the right time. The Tube was also very crowded in central London. In fact, most of the people waiting to board at several stops were not able to get on the train because there simply no room for them. We accumulated passengers as we approached central London and became so jam packed for much of the journey that there was no way we could have worked our luggage out the door. Fortunately by the time it came to switch to the "Central" line at Holburn station the train had emptied out enough that we could get off.

The process of actually switching to the Central line was made much more difficult by the lack of elevators and ramps at the Holburn station; we were repeatedly confronted by stairs that forced us to fold up the handles and manhandle the luggage up or down the steps. This problem was not isolated to the Holburn station; I noticed a map of stations on the Piccadilly Line and found that only 10 stations out of 23 were marked as handicapped accessible. We worked our way back west through London on the Central line until Lancaster Gate, where we disembarked and once again had to manhandle the luggage up a staircase to get to an elevator that reached the surface. Relieved to be out on level ground again, we turned right and pulled our suitcases about a block up the street to 51 Gloucester Terrace where we found our hotel, the Royal Court Apartments.

Monika:

The flight was only 1 hour 10 minutes, but they still served a kind of lunch - a cheese sandwich on really good black bread. Drinks were whatever, I even saw the stewardess open a champagne bottle. I stuck to coffee, to keep a clear head. Getting into England was as bad as getting into the US, only here we were the "other" group rather than the natives. But the immigration officer was very courteous and stamped our passports and waved us through.

After that the experiment began. I had booked a hotel that was supposedly close to a tube station. We had the address and a rather detailed map of London. So during our flight, Bob had studied the map and the tube stations and routes and figured out the best way to get from Heathrow to our hotel. I was starting to worry about our ability to get out of the train, when it got rather crowded in the downtown area. But luckily a lot of people left before we had to get out to change trains. Walking downstairs carrying two suitcases was barely possible for me, but when we got to our final destination there was no elevator or escalator and we actually had to carry the durn things upstairs. When we got to the gate, huffing and puffing a very nice stationmaster let us out a special gate so we did not have to try to negotiate the turnstiles. Once outside it was fairly easy to orient ourselves, since Hyde Park was on one side. So with map in hand we headed for the hotel. And Bob had picked the right station. The hotel was only a block away.

Bob:

Booking a hotel or pension sight unseen over the Internet always leaves me wondering exactly what we will find when we get there. In this case the street generally looked dowdy but respectable, but I was a bit unnerved by a pile of garbage bags and other refuse in the doorway right next door to the entrance of our hotel. I've experienced rats and other vermin and I do not wish to do so again, so finding stuff outside our hotel that I associate with rats, mice and other vermin was almost a deal breaker for me. Still, we had already paid and I was tired so I decided to give the place a chance. Fortunately, the Royal Court Apartments looked, just like the street, dowdy but respectable on the inside so we checked into room 412 for three nights.

Room 412 turned out to be the "Lady Margaret Suite", a two room suite with two beds in one room and a combination kitchen/living room in the other. Although showing its age with idiosyncrasies of various kinds, our rooms seemed pleasant enough. The stove, refrigerator, TV and most lights functioned although we never did find out how to turn on the reading lamps directly above our beds. One of the outer windows in our bedroom would not close due to a bent latch, but fortunately the newer, inner set of windows by my bed closed completely and shut out the street noise. Similarly, the bathroom was neat and clean although the taps for the bathtub could not quite be turned off, resulting in a steady drip, drip, drip during the night. The assortment of dishes was also somewhat unique. There was one small plate, three soup plates, three cups, a small tea pot, and one teeny cup for eating soft-boiled eggs. We were relieved to find tea bags, instant coffee bags, cream and sugar for our tea and coffee, so it all worked out quite well for breakfast and evening meal. From Monika's point of view, however, having a bathtub was a huge improvement over having just a shower as was true of all the German pensions we stayed at. She took advantage of it each evening to soak and relieve some of the sore muscles accumulated from our walks. For me, most importantly, the whole apartment was quite clean and free of vermin, so we unpacked our bags and settled in.

Monika:

We checked into our little suite on the 4th floor, discovered a refrigerator and decided to go back out to buy food for tonight and tomorrow morning (no breakfast in this place).

Bob:

However, shortly thereafter hunger drove us back out to look for either a restaurant or groceries to make dinner. Fortunately, just around the corner we found not just one but two grocery stores, so we stocked up and returned to our kitchenette for our evening meal. Re-energized after the meal, I finally felt like exploring and we headed back past the tube station to Hyde Park just across the street from it. In Hyde Park we strolled along Long Lake and the Serpentine, a series of ponds curving through the park, as darkness fell.

There were a lot of folks on the walkways with us including young lovers, old married couples, tourists like ourselves, and young single folks. The park apparently closes at sundown, because as we came back around the Serpentine the custodians were locking gates on the entrances to each of the areas. We tried to take a picture of the statue of Peter Pan in the dark, but after that we just came back out through the one-way turnstiles and walked the block back to the hotel for the evening. The television in our room not only worked but it had a 19-inch screen so we could sit across from it and still see quite well. After fumbling around with the remote control and a weird-looking indoor antenna (if it were a piece of modern art, I would label it "Squashed Cockroach # 7), we tuned in a travelogue on Poland made by Michael Palin, which I thought was quite good. Then we turned in for the night.

Monika:

After having eaten we felt ready for some exploration and decided to take a nice little walk in Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens. We walked around the central artificial lake and watched the so-called "wild" life like ducks, geese, and squirrels waiting for handouts from tourists. When it got dark, we were chased out of the park. We were tired enough to just head back to our new home away from home.

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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