London, England - Hannah and I went to London this weekend. Hannah had work there and will stay on longer. I came to enjoy the weekend with her. We arrived later Friday and passed out in our hotel, the Hoxton, which has a trendy hipster vibe. It was conveniently located for our purposes in southwark, near the Tate. The Hoxton has clean, new, comfortable accommodations that are on the snug side.
The Mother Tongue
There is a certain measure of relief that comes when you return from a country that doesn't speak your native tongue to one that does. In Switzerland most people speak English, but I always prepare my crappy German for the unlikely eventuality that someone does not. When entering shops, I think carefully about what I want and how I would ask for that using the most boneheadedly simple grammatical phrase that matches the limitations of my German. Even if the salesperson speaks English, there's a decent chance it's a rough English, so I'll have to simplify my language a bit, dropping the idioms and the complex grammar and vocabulary. I caught myself doing the same thing in London, and then was relieved when I realized I could "crack on" (if you will) with dependent clauses and participles and - when I was really starting to feel my linguistic swagger returning - imperatives! "Get me the bill!" "Take me to my hotel!"
That linguistic frolic came to an abrupt - if brief - halt Saturday morning when Hannah and I approached a hotel cleaning person and asked if she could deposit some items in the trash for us. When we explained that we had a bag of trash we wanted her to toss, we received a blank stare. Several synonyms for trash produced a similar frustrating result until I pulled a stale apple core out of the bag and she exclaimed, "Oh! It's shit!"
London's Nooks and Crannies
We last visited London a year ago, so relatively recently. At that time, we had a whirlwind trip, hitting all the major sites over five days. The nice thing about this trip was that we didn't feel any urgency to do that, having so thoroughly canvassed London last time. We got a late start on Saturday and spent the day wandering around neighborhoods and making up plans as we went along. London is a great city for aimless exploring because it's huge and there is little evident urban planning (claim not thoroughly researched). The chaos compounded over the eras, splicing together various architecture and types of buildings (industrial, residential, retail) and creating a mess of narrow alleys, criss-crossing streets, over/underpasses. All this results in intimate urban nooks and crannies that you can happen upon and discover. This morning, on the way to our early lunch, we wandered South from the bustling pedestrian paths on the Thames and through a quiet narrow alley of pristine turn-of-the-century brick row houses. On the corner, an old English pub was serving Thai food with pints. At the end of the alley, we were shunted around a corner and under an old and disused industrial gantry system, covered in graffiti, which briefly created a more claustrophobic and cavernous space. Then we emerged on a larger thoroughfare with modern buildings, chain retail outlets, and red double-deckers careening around.
The Tate, Briefly
On Saturday afternoon, I briefly stopped by the Tate for an hour while Hannah went back to the hotel to relax, as she is recovering from a non-coronavirus flu-like virus. Here were some things I saw: (1) a two-story tall mock neoclassical sculpture of a Greek goddess, sitting atop a sea of sculpted sharks, with fountains of water pouring forth from her breasts and jugular; (2) a model of the ancient Algerian city of Ghardaia, sculpted out of couscous; and (3) great views of the city of London from the top of the Tate.
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| Modern Interpretation of Classical Statuary |
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| Ghardaia, in couscous |
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| From the top of the Tate |
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| More from the top of the Tate, the Shard in the distance |
The Eats
H and I quite like the eats in London! H will now regale you with you a description of some of our meals: Bubala is like an Israeli restaurant with the feel-good whims of Los Angeles that has been plopped into the heart of East London. Pastel clad. Shimmering tabletops flecked with gold. Indeed, Instagram fodder. We began with a procession of dips (one of Hannah’s main food groups). Thick labne, so thick a spoon could stick straight up, doused in olive oil, cloves of garlic confit, and herbal za’atar; hummus with brown butter tinted a magnificent paprika orange; and pumpkin tirshy hit with dehydrated olives, Aleppo, and, yes, more oil. We swooshed a long, leathery piece of laffa bread through each bowl until not even the oil was left behind.
Blues crooning in the background, bottles of natural wine lined up like sergeants at command, Ducksoup has some of the most soulful cooking. Like a treasured sweater, it’s somewhat tattered around edges, well loved, well lived in, and with gobs of flavor—labne with a nubbly seed and nut dukkah; salt cod amid a tangle of calcots and green olives, velvety and deeply morish; pork cheeks that seem to collapse with a glance; and artichokes swimming in spring garlic chickpeas and parm.
Cyrano de Bergerac
Lastly, Hannah and I saw a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, with James McAvoy playing the title role. If you don't recall, Cyrano is a comic tragic hero who dismisses his own chances with the object of his affections on account of his large schnoz. Instead, he channels his affections into love letters he produces on behalf of a more comely but dimwitted compatriot named Christian, hoping to live vicariously through their budding romance. We quite liked the performance, which took some liberties with the original French text: making the female character more strong and independent, and playing up some of the more tragic elements and pulling some of the sappy sentimentality out of the original ending. Much of the poetic word play and jousting from the first few scenes were done in the form of rap, which was a nice modern touch. Plus, James McAvoy did an incredible job delivering lengthy poetic soliloquies. I would recommend it, but we saw the last performance!
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