I am back and better than ev(almost a year ago when I was mercilessly uprooted from my organized and classy European lifestyle to a global pandemic that demanded my immediate return home and I was so disheveled and sad about what happened but felt bad talking about it because “Kim, there’s people that are dying” so I couldn’t bring myself to continue writing on this blog because it just reminded me that I’m on the border of Indiana and not in Copenhagen, Denmark or having the opportunities I was supposed to to explore Europe and just generally life felt like a simulation)er! 

I know the thousands of people who read my blog were waiting for this post with baited breath, so relax everyone, it’s here, you can start breathing again, welcome back to my blog for TRAVEL WEEK PT. 2: London! England!

I decided to go to London for the second weekend of the first travel week, and what I would soon learn would be the only travel week during my semester abroad, as my friend Priyanka was studying in London for the winter trimester. So not only would I be able to visit London for the first time, but also I would be able to see my dear friend, which would be cute and cool.

I mentioned this in my last blog post 10 years ago, but I had great expectations for my very short stays in both Amsterdam and London. Although I would only be there for a short weekend, I made sure to ask anyone I knew who lived in London at some point or another, what should I do!? Not realizing London is ummm,, huge and has like 3 different airports and I also still had an essay to finish writing for my core course so. Anyways… 

I’m gonna try to recount this experience the best that I can because… it was 10 months ago.

Friday, February 28

The Airport

  I don’t remember much about my process of getting to the airport, but what I do remember perhaps too clearly was my negative experience at the sushi train, Yo Sushi. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what happened because I’m a bit embarrassed, but in summary I had a bit of a misunderstanding about how the food items I was impulsively grabbing off the train were priced. All I really want to say about that is, if you’re on a budget, Copenhagen and sushi is not the iconic duo you’d like it to be. Also if you’re spending a lot of money on a single meal, you should actually be full after doing so! 😦 I do have to pat myself on the back though, for not indulging in an airport haircut–which seems really enticing when you’re traveling alone, being the main character in the movie of your life with no one around to humble you. Except I guess, the bill for airport sushi in my case.

I guess an element of cultural significance I experienced at the airport was that my travel date was right after Brexit. So instead of going through only the general luggage and identification processing at Kastrup as one traditionally would pre-Brexit, I had to go to the separate terminals, and have my passport analyzed and what not. My host mom had advised me to arrive earlier in anticipation of these extra, new stipulations. 

Arrival

My friend had kindly bought me a ticket for the Stansted Express, which I boarded upon arriving at Stansted Airport and got off of at my stop, London Liverpool Street, where she picked me up. We took the tube back to her study abroad living quarters, which was situated really beautifully. The surrounding area was how I’d always imagined London would look and feel like.

The left was the view outside the bedroom window, the right was around the corner on the walk to the bus stop. I thought it was a nice name!

After dropping off my luggage, around early afternoon, we went to a café around the corner. Later, we took the tube to grab a bite to eat. We decided to eat at a restaurant in the Southbank Centre called Ping Pong which had Chinese cuisine. I can’t remember what we ordered, but it was a wonderful value for the amount of food we received, and I thoroughly enjoyed the dining experience. It was greatly appreciated following my earlier experience at the sushi train. Our meal, among various food items, notably offered dim sum in the traditional bamboo steam baskets. 

On the left is me at the café, on the right is Priyanka at Ping Pong.

After dinner, we took a walk across a bridge from which we could see the London Eye and skyline. We walked from the Southbank Centre to the Tower Bridge, the tourist portion of which was unfortunately closed off upon our arrival. We also saw what seemed to be a coyote lurking around which was slightly scary! Yet, it was a lively night to walk around and see crowds outside of pubs, the drunken patrons stumbling around. After walking around a bit and looking at buildings we didn’t know the names of, we boarded a bus back to our living quarters to rest in preparation for my only full day in London. 

Saturday, February 29 

A funny thing I remember being excited about when I booked my flight to London was that, like in one of my grandma’s favorite movies “Leap Year” starring Amy Adams, I was going to be in the U.K. for the date of leap year. And if I were to travel to Dublin, then I could propose to someone in accordance with Celtic tradition, although my significant other was in Galesburg, IL at the time.

A not funny thing is that I woke up on that Saturday morning feeling pretty awful. My nose was stuffy, I was congested, and worst of all I had a horrible sore throat, that actually made me intermittently lose my voice. So I guess a quick gallivant to Dublin and an arbitrary engagement wasn’t in the cards for me. 

In a weird way I felt like certain things in London were foreshadowing the impact COVID would soon have. I guess in this small case, like it would continue to in a more drastic way over the next months, my personal health demanded I significantly reduce my expectations. It’s actually so strange to look back on this condition I had come down with. In that, if I were to have gotten that sick anytime in the last 10 months, I would have spiraled into a hole of COVID anxiety. It’s weird to look back at this time and think about how little anxiety I had at all toward not feeling well. According to wikipedia, the known case count in London this particular day was at 40, something I hadn’t even thought to be conscious about at the time. I knew the coronavirus had gotten to London but it still seemed like it was under control, and no huge ordeal. Even if I was conscious of the exact case count, I would’ve considered the number low from my uninformed-about-epidemiology standpoint. I didn’t know it at the time, but Denmark had also gotten its first confirmed case just the day before I left for this trip. This is all when COVID was still ‘the novel coronavirus’. I guess I feel weird and slightly guilty in a way I didn’t expect to now as I ready myself to describe how I went out in public despite feeling unwell. All my life, being sick was often a matter of sucking it up, that you should continue to go about your day and your duties unless or until you absolutely cannot. I had never really thought much about my sickness affecting others whenever I left the house, besides an avoidance of touching people in any form. So while I recount the events of the day, I think it’s important to reflect that if I had known then what I know now, I would have done things differently. I think this is an area of my life that I look at drastically different as a result of the past year.

After having some light breakfast and getting ready, Priyanka and I traveled by bus to the Saturday Portobello Market, the one recommendation I had that we actually had the time and means to fulfill. Though I didn’t have much spending money, it was really lovely to see all the things the market had to offer. It was a sunny day and the people were bustling busily all down the street. We stopped in a few souvenir shops to pick up postcards, and I also picked up some scented oils to wear. Somewhere along the line it began to rain, so we ran for cover into a cafe. It took us a few cafes, actually; many of them were full of other people who had a similar idea. I ordered some kind of latte infused with some type of mushroom, and had a pastry. We both let our beverages warm us up and started penning out some of our postcard messages. After the rain calmed we sifted through some thrift stores, and walked over to the rainbow houses of Notting Hill at golden hour. Here, we had an obligatory photoshoot. 

The newspaper in the bus window felt like another foreshadowing of the virus, eerie to look back on.

We were growing tired from all the walking and the cold, and decided to head back to our quarters. We intended to visit the Tower Bridge later on that night, but with my feeling unwell I wanted to stay in bed, which Priyanka graciously understood. While I stayed in bed writing an essay I still needed to turn in, Priyanka picked us up food from Nando’s and some souvenirs that past Londoners had asked me to bring home, in particular PG Tips tea. We ate our food and called it an early night. 

Sunday, March 1

There’s really not too much to recount about the last day. Priyanka and I woke, had some food and got to packing our things in a classic, jump-on-the-suitcase fashion. I was headed home, and she was headed to stay with family for her week-long break. She walked me down to the station and got me on the train I needed to be on, then we both said our goodbyes and went on our way. Probably the scary part of the whole bit was I almost missed my returning flight around midday because I got caught in a line of faulty carry-on luggage. I thought it must be some sick error sabotaging me, only to look in shame when the airline security pulled either a deodorant stick or roll on sunscreen out of my bag. I had forgotten those counted as liquids. I apologized, grabbed my things and ran to my terminal, luckily with a bit of time to spare. 

I’m really grateful not only that I got to visit London but that I also got to see another familiar face while being so far from home. It was quite a bummer to be sick, but in retrospect I should have dressed more warmly the weekend before in Amsterdam. I had tried to make a decision whether I would try to travel a bit during the first travel week break I had, or during spring break. I’m glad I ultimately decided to ~‘seize the day’~ and travel sooner than later, because if I had chosen the latter (i.e. traveling in April) I wouldn’t have been able to travel at all outside my program. With all the things that could’ve gone better during an abruptly abbreviated study abroad, I’m really grateful I got the opportunity to see these other parts of the world for the first time, even if for a short while. 

Fin