A Typical Day in London

I wrote that title, then remembered that there is no such thing as a typical day in London. Even when you think that this has got to be the most normal day so far, you'll see something crazy, like a man walking down the street with a huge fishbowl in his hands, full of water and a plastic plant but no fish. Or a man carrying a swivel chair upside down above his head to protect his face from the rain. Or a little girl in a unicorn costume riding a bike. Even without these sightings, no day is like any other, because there are so many places to go, so much to see and do, so many people to cook food with. However, here is my attempt to make sense of it.

Wake somewhere between 8 and 10 am, depending on how late I was out last night and how early my first class is. Make peanut butter and nutella toast and a cup of tea to enjoy as I pack my bag for the day's adventures. If I have class, I walk the mile or so to campus - past five parks. The sidewalks get more and more crowded with students the farther I get, until I actually reach campus, where it's a good thing that cars are banned, because they wouldn't be able to get though anyway. I head to either pharmacology, medical sciences, biochemistry, or the anthropology building for my anthropology classes. Almost all of them take place in miniature lecture theatres (yes, they call them theatres) that hold about 40 people. I take copious notes during a lecture or I participate in the random, scattered discussion of a tutorial. Between classes, if the weather is nice, I sit in the park to eat my sandwich or do some reading. If it's rainy, I head to the anthropology library and try to snag a table where I can get some work done.

If I don't have class on this day, I plan an adventure: visit a museum, explore a new park, find a coffeeshop and people-watch, pick a destination out of my guidebook and try to find it sans map, do some errands, get some schoolwork done. These adventures always include long walks and almost getting run over by a motorcycle or cab, and usually also include picture-taking and getting slightly lost in London's mess of streets. (I'm finally getting the hang of it, though, and I've even given directions to people!) Sometimes I have a companion or two, sometimes I don't.

After my last class or the end of my adventure, it's time to head back to the hall - stopping at Unique 24, our neighborhood convenience store, if I need anything for dinner. On Tuesdays I go to The Arc to meet friends for 2-for-1 pizzas (plus a football match on the telly), and on Thursdays or Fridays I usually go to Marta and Monique's flat for dinner, where we are guaranteed good food and lots of people. It ends up that I rarely eat alone - even if I'm back in the hall, I'm cooking with flatmates and friends from elsewhere.

After dinner, I try to get some schoolwork done, but often end up surfing the web for cheap plane tickets to far-off destinations, and talking to my friends about where we should go next weekend. Of course the majority of these plans never happen, but it's good to dream.

On weekends, after dinner, we head out to a pub or, occasionally, a club. Clubs in London are Not Cheap, but they are famous - think Ministry of Sound, Fabric, etc. Last weekend we went to Egg, because it was German techno night and my two Germans friends are diehard fans. How to explain the club? Huge, with lots of staircases running in different directions connecting different dance floors, fog, lights that made shapes in the fog, laser disco balls, hundreds and hundreds of people dancing, a floor that vibrated with the loud music... Fun night, but definitely not something you can do all the time, especially if you routinely stay till 4am.

I hope this gives you at least a vague sense of London - but it doesn't include all the other odd adventures, such as eating a traditional English breakfast, visiting a friend in a hospital that looked like a hotel, going to a Russian film at a film festival, going to a play about fairies getting entangled with members of parliament...