London, Take 3

Last weekend Fran and I got on a train and made our way down to London again, this time with the main aim of catching up with Sam and Rachel, who are over in the UK to catch up with their families over here. As always, it’s great to see friends from back home, and we had a great weekend. We started out by purchasing commemorative “Kate and Wills” themed Oyster cards (see below). In the past we’ve gotten by on day passes that came with our train tickets, but as we were in for the whole weekend it was time to become a little more local. While I was purchasing the cards I managed to lose Fran in the crowd, as she went to an unexpected cafe to buy our much needed morning coffees, but soon we were caffeinated and on the Underground.

The whole weekend was fun, but the first highlight (for me at least) was a trip to the Saatchi Gallery. Fran had actually already been with her Father, but she was enthusiastic for me to see it also. It contained a selection of contemporary art of varying degrees of awesome. Two pieces in particular were notable (for me at least). First, a pair of cars which had been in accidents, and had then been contorted into twisted shapes. These were both visually stunning, and also quite thought provoking regarding their nature as people carriers that had been destroyed. Second was the permanent exhibit on the bottom floor, which is a pool of oil or something similar. It expanded the room vertically in a dramatic fashion, and the smell is something else.

That evening we had originally planned to see a show or a play, but eventually this degree of planning failed, and we went to X-Men instead. This was preceded however by a meal in Chinatown. There is a lack of really good Chinese food in Leamington, and it was one of our goals for the weekend to have something a bit better in London. All I can say about that is “Achievement unlocked.” X-Men was OK – it was a solid superhero movie, but really nothing special. I would certainly compare it unfavourably to something like the new Batman movies, and I don’t really feel it was as good as the first Iron Man film either, but the two lead characters were played well, and the setting (the 60s, Cuban Missile Crisis) was fun. It was also nice to see a blockbuster on a really big screen. The Apollo in Leamington just doesn’t really compare. Fran points out however that the cinema had a disturbing smell of gas. I am not sure if it exploded shortly after we left, but this at least is something that the Apollo beats it on.

On Sunday we had a slow day, the most London-y bit of which was a walk through St James’s park. We saw a variety of exciting waterfowl, most of which looked like they would be very tasty (we’ve been working our way through various types of game available from our local butcher). The birds were pleasant, and it was a nice way to spend the last little bit of our weekend with friends. All in all, a successful couple of days.

 

“I’m as confused as you are.”

While I appreciate the great coverage of the country (well the places we have had cause to go to or plan to go to) in the few days we have been in the UK – there have been moments when the British railways seem to be taking notes from our own shambolic rail service in Wellington.

Today our plan was simple – go to Oxford to get Jeremy an NIS number (kind of like an IRD number,) so should he find a job he will be able to pay the right tax. My number requires more paper work (on its way in the mail) as I am not a UK citizen and therefore need to jump though a bunch of hoops. However Jeremy should have been fine. An appointment was made on the telephone and he was instructed to be at an address in Oxford at 9.30am.

Our train was cancelled.

Having bought the ticket and stepped onto the platform on the other side of the ticket gate already when the announcement was made we figured – may as well go to Oxford and see some sights, Jeremy got on his new British mobile numbered old phone and called to see if there were appointments later in the day but was told it was 9.30am or the 12th of November. However just as he got of the phone having been told that if he was going to be late they would cancel his appointment a train turned up bound for Oxford (20 mins late). Not the next scheduled train though – this one was a mystery. We got on and the driver over the intercom informed us.

“Sorry for the confusion, I’m as confused as you are, but apparently we are going to Oxford now.”

Which was excellent – maybe, we thought, maybe we will be able to get there for the 9.30am appointment.

Well we found the address given for the appointment at the Oxford Jobcentre Plus, however this was the wrong address anyway… the desk staff informed us that for some reason (to do with builders) the appointments for NIS numbers were now all held at another office 15 minutes walk away, (and had been there for 6 months now).

“We keep telling the call centre,” they said “but they keep sending people here.”

At the correct Jobcentre Plus we were told that Jeremy had well and truly missed his appointment. Jeremy was handed another piece of paper which his new appointment for the 12th of November. When he came out of the office and met me in the waiting room he showed me the piece of paper with the appointment confirmation on it.

“It has the wrong address on it,” I said. “Yeah,” said Jeremy, “I mentioned that to the woman I spoke to and she said that was the only address she was able to print on the piece of paper.”

It was a little frustrating.

Meanwhile we had a lovely trip over on the Eurostar.

This a a photo of the view – mostly a blur and me wearing my ‘look nice for customs’ necklace and stripy top. The train went very very fast and customs was very straightforward as we avoided the crowds at Heathrow.

Found some Mills and Boon at our local charity store but also reading ‘The Book Thief’ which is proving to be good. Am quite excited by the range and also the general quality of charity stores in this country so far with more tending to be of a similar nature to the Red Cross store in Kilbirnie (or the nicer Sallies stores in the burbs) than my least favourite (i.e. Opportunity for Animals) ones in Wellington which tend to be a bit grungy.

Plans for the next few days are to stay close to home and apply for jobs, visit some local spots and also go to Bath in the weekend and the Jane Austen Museum there. Yay! Jane Austen!

 

Blogging from a Train

We don’t have the internet, so by the time I actually post this, we will no longer be on a train, but it’s definitely novel to have power and enough space (the seats are quite roomy depth-wise here) to use our laptop. This is us, on the train, from the quite average webcam on the computer.

So, we’re now leaving Hamburg – it’s been a pretty sweet week with one hard core Schönes Wochenende smack in the middle of it. Special thanks go out to Bevan and Sarah for putting us up on probably the best sofa-bed thing I’ve slept on (the whole thing folded down rather than there being some kind of random mattress emerging from under where the cushions usually are).

In the past week we’ve been to an assortment of towns (including one UNESCO site! points += 1!), an art gallery, probably the most amazing miniature train location in the world, a castle, the Baltic sea, and a huge number of train stations. Seriously, there are trains everywhere here (it’s great!).

The miniature trains though, were something else. They call it the Miniature Wonderland, and you can see why – they plan to have 20 km of track in the final installation, and are currently about 3/4s of the way there. There is a miniature Las Vegas, a miniature Scandinavia, a slightly less miniature Hamburg, and various other miniature things. They are currently building an airport, which will have planes that actually take off and land. From the short videos they showed, we could not determine whether the planes would actually go anywhere once “in the air” (they were on sticks), but it will certainly still be pretty cool.

We also went on a couple of longer day trips – the first, to Lüneburg and Stade, Fran has already posted about. The second was the so called Schönes Wochenende (a sweet deal that lets you go pretty much as far as you like within Germany for up to five people (or dogs/combination thereof – we did not have one) for 37 Euros), which took us to Schwerin, Wismar, and Lübeck. Schwerin was probably the most immediately spectacular of this, containing our first (but surely not our last) European castle (or in German “Schloss”). It was pretty incredible, with its fairytale spires, plush interior, and a fresh coat of some kind of pale browny-yellow paint.

From Schwerin we rode to Wismar, which gave us a view of the Baltic sea. Both Schwerin and Wismar are in what was formerly the DDR (East Germany), but it’s much more obvious in Wismar. The mix of older abandoned buildings, fish sellers and market people, and some older historic buildings was pretty interesting. It also has (apparently) the largest market square in Germany.

The market square, the baltic, and an abandoned warehouse of some kind:

By this time, what we were really looking for was dinner, which we found in Lübeck (our aforementioned first UNESCO site). Fran had something which according to our Frankfurt-Hamburg Lufthansa in-flight magazine is a speciality of Hamburg: flat fish cooked in diced bacon. I went with the safer option of Wiener Schnitzel. It was a bit dark, so no great photos here :). The whole trip took us at least 200kms (Google Maps claims 280, but that’s by car, and I think we went a bit more directly), and showed us much of the carefree place that is Northern Germany.

Anyhow, we’re now off on our way to Brussels, first on the IC train we’re currently on, and then (from Köln) on the faster, cooler, more excitingly named ICE train.

Done!