Across the Pond

(by Peter Hoskin)

So now I’m over here in a foreign country where they speak a foreign language and eat foreign food. Germany is GREAT! I just wish I could speak some German :) Here’s a quick sum-up of my trip to London, before getting to Deutschland.

I left Canada two weeks ago and flew across the Atlantic to London, with my good friend Brendan Coady. We were going to spend four days in the city and then continue on to Germany at the end of the week. The trip had been in the works for months and it had finally come! The first event: New Years Eve!

We got to London in the morning, made our way to the hotel and then got downtown in the early afternoon. Checked out some tourist attractions like the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square and the Big Ben, and then we wanted to get a good viewing position for the fireworks. Yeah we had a good spot, right on the Westminster Bridge, literally under the fireworks! The only drawback was that we had to wait close to 6 HOURS in the downtown.

 Later on, gates were set up to prevent too many people from getting into the bridge area, so it was a good thing we were there early. We walked around a lot, saw Westminster Abbey and the London Eye, ate some food, until Big Ben finally struck 12! Definitely worth the wait - the best fireworks I HAVE EVER SEEN!! And also the biggest crowd I have ever been in, getting out of the downtown took us another 2 hours. So after being stuffed into the tube and paying an atrocious amount for a taxi, we made it back to the hotel and crashed, ending a pretty crazy 40 hour day!

The next 3 days Brendan and I saw a lot of really cool things! We hit all the big “must sees” in London:  Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and lots more. 

But we also tried some things that were maybe not super famous, but were interesting to see. We went to the Design Museum, and coming from engineering it was high on my list of things to see… well I should have done some research. I can’t say that modern jewelry and crystal-art are my cup of tea, I was hoping for some cool inventions or devices… oops. Then we went to the Tate Modern and saw even more modern art. So. Much. Art? Two things I found really interesting were the Transport Museum, which detailed the history of public transportation in the city, and the London Bridge Experience. That was a really cool tour that explained the famous London Bridge from when the first one was built until the current bridge was opened. I think we got to see everything we wanted to, except the Chelsea-QPR football match. We also made a list of things that surprised us about this new city and country. Here are a few of the points:

• It rains a lot

• Roundabouts go clockwise, and have traffic lights
• Peter cannot understand people with accents
• Pigeons in London = Canadian Geese in Waterloo. They’re everywhere!
• A cooked burger is pink in the middle.. even when you ask to have it grilled again, it’s still pink
• A free continental breakfast is always best the first time
• Modern art is ridiculous

• Brendan does NOT like heights (we climbed the monument!)

• Peter does not like dark scary places (ha! the London Tombs)
• Londoners are all under 6 feet, sorry 183 cm, since the Tube ceilings are so low. I hit my head more than once
• There is always a “way out” but never an exit
• Everything is old (well, except for the modern art)
• Everything is expensive, even toilets cost money some places!
• It still rains a lot

It was overall a grand time, a great start to the 4-month-long Euro trip! Then we packed everything up again and hopped on a plane to Stuttgart, Germany and continuing adventures :) I wish that Jae Han could have joined us for this time, but he was delayed.. but he’ll be over in just a bit!

First impressions of Germany are coming soon!