After one week of acclimatization in Zurich it was time to leave the country again – destination London. Friday night I took the train to Basel to catch my flight there. Sitting in the lounge and checking cool architecture and fashion magazines (Zurich airport is crap compared, they don’t provide you with all these cool magazines, you have to be lucky to get the daily newspaper) somebody was calling my name. I looked around and I saw this blond girl smiling at me – it was Stephie, an old friend I met ages ago in France during French studies in Antibes Juan-les-Pins. What a surprise! We managed to get seats next to each other and had chats about good old and recent times and some gross white wine. She is doing this internship in art banking (haven’t heard about that before) and was telling me about her experiences and I of course shared mine from Russia. In London I got a warm welcome by my girlfriend; it’s some time I haven’t seen her… all excited we went to her dorm in Knightsbridge. Saturday was a lovely day, the sun was shining so we decided to do some sightseeing. We started in Covent Garden (with a vegetarian breakfast in Neal’s Yard), went to LSE, continued on Fleet Street, crossed Millenium bridge, decided not to go to Tate gallery (though I had to mention million times that it was built by Herzog & de Meuron, our Swiss star architects) and ended up in Borough market. I love such food markets. Ok, Borough market is more this posh place with all these delicatessens from all over the world, full of wealthy visitors and tourists but it is still great and I couldn’t get enough to go around and take pictures. It looks like one of these markets where Jamie Oliver goes to get stuff for his creations. In case I end up in London one day , I will be around in these markets on the weekends… Sunday morning big breakfast with Rösti I brought from Switzerland then Camden town. Another cool market though I didn’t like the clothes section that much but the food and antiques stuff was great. A good place to get some pieces of furniture and cool accessories. In the evening we met a friend for shisha, mint tea and a chat about life. Later Iranian food for take away… reminded me kind of my stay in Turkey, as food is similar. Colbeh is a great place to discover Iranian dishes, ask for the fresh bread to accompany the delicious curries and kebabs. On Monday I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where my girlfriend is doing her master. It was a very interesting and contemporary session about nuclear weapons and proliferation. During the session we went through the instructions for the use of nuclear weapons published by the Bush administration – it was astonishing to imagine that there are still thousands of officers out there that do daily planning for a nuclear war or the use of weapons of mass destruction (not only in the axis of evil!). Before the lecture we had a drink at the student union and I was jealous that we don’t have such a relaxed place (with big bar) to hang out at my university. After the lecture I met Nicolas, one of my Zurich boys, working in London for the past couple of months. I got a brief introduction into investment banker life (sorry private equity) in the city of London and I visited his flat that is nicely located but when asking about the rent I was shocked – London is just fucking expensive! For the rest of the week we enjoyed the being together, checked out some great food (first time Pakistani (go to New Tayyabs in Islington and try the lamb chops), Malaysian (in China town) and South Indian (Ravi Shankar restaurant rather boring for me), went for more markets (Chapel) and saw "Cabaret" (listen to the most famous song: "willkommen, bienvenue, welcome..." check out the samples in the upper left corner) a musical that plays in Berlin before WWII – about sex, politics, sex, love, sex, sinful lifestyle, sex, Nazis, sex, Jews and yeah about sex… the master of ceremony made me like the musical very much.
Friday 5.30am it was once again time to say goodbye, I continued to have sweet dreams on the flight to Basel.
No comments:
Post a Comment