london lost

A wonderful week in England and nary a pound left between us. Exchange rates are a nasty thing, especially when you earn the currency of what is now a third-world country. Sigh. But that didn't stop us from enjoying plenty of cask-ale'd pints and pasties (although I insist in calling them pAYEsties, much to the chagrin of the locals, but lost on the Polish shopkeepers.)

I've visited London about half a dozen times, and I'm still not sold. Sure, it's congested and fast and dreadfully expensive, but so is New York -- and I crave the drug that is NY constantly. Not so much London. Granted, I've been either dead tired or utterly jet-lagged on most of the visits; other times I've been passing through, spending a cheapy evening in a Victoria Station ramshackle hotel or sitting in a pile of flaky pasty crumbs on a Southern train snoozing my way to Basingstoke. (Yes, I have friends in Basingstoke. I once held up a whole immigration queue out of the Chunnel; the on-duty Brit immigration officer couldn't believe I had written "Basingstoke" as the destination on my immigration card. "Oy!" he bellowed, gesturing other officers over for a peek. "Looky here. She's going to Basingstoke. No one goes to Basingstoke!" And so on.)

But plenty of people go to London, and say they love it, since there's theaters and art and museums and all sorts of lovely-jumbly things. I want to love it too, I think, but am not sure which end to start wooing. Perhaps the fault is that I don't know a soul in the city, and without a local's wisdom, London is just like any big city, impersonal and mobbish. Or perhaps I'm just getting older, and my patience for mob scenes is past. Take Berlin, on a Saturday. You can ride a bike through the center of town, blindfolded if you like, since there's hardly a soul around. A stroll along the river bank is just that, not a fast-paced exercise in human-pinball physics. I like the ghost town, and probably would like it better if it had proper Indian restaurants on every corner. Which brings me back to London. Or will, as soon as I can afford the plane fare. Social crankiness aside, my tummy has the last word when it comes to city attachments. Baked beans for breakfast? I'm sold.