United Kingdom

It is quite unbelievable to think that I was in London last weekend this time, getting quite cold, when I'm now sitting in Cape Town after a (half-a-)week's work behind me and dying of heat. In all honesty, this is just not cricket - arriving from 5 or 6 degrees in London to 38 degrees on Wednesday!

I haven't flown through Heathrow for a very long time so I didn't know what an absolutely plainful experience it had become! I really don't understand the security measures which they take in London with the liquids being in seperate plastic bags, etc... Especially as "medical" liquids are excluded from the 100ml upper limit maximum as one can just put the "naughty" liquid (whatever could it be even?!) in a contact lense fluid bottle (mine is 355ml and they let it through) or medicine syrup bottle, etc.

Then, having to basically undress at the scanners is just as silly: putting everything from shoes to hats (belts, jackets, what not) into various plastic bins, with hand luggage, laptops and liquids going in other bins through the scanners while one waits in basically only on'e socks, jeans and shirt to be able to re-dress again (no mean feat in winter with all the coats, etc!).

I think that in future I will try and avoid flying into and out of Heathrow and rather take the Eurotunnel train - it is much more convenient in terms of the station being centrally located and with all the security checks, takes just as long (if not shorter!) than a short distance flight in europe.

The flight itself from London to Frankfurt was quite ok but the long-distance flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town was not very impressive (service-wise)! This was the 4th time that I've flown with Lufthansa and I've now made a conscious decision to avoid ever flying with Lufthansa if it is possible... The air hostesses are actually not only unfriendly but straight out rude! I had a 60+ year old english gentleman (literally and figuratively) sitting next to me who (after the "in-flight entertainment system", if one could could a miniature screen in the front of the cabin that, was down for an hour) asked from the air hostess what is wrong with the system and was told basically to shut up and stop bother her as the more he bothers her the longer it will take to fix (ie, no, sorry sir, we're trying our best, or anything like that).

She later came past again while I was having one of those typical long-haul-flight-chats with the man, leaned into our personal space in the middle of our conversation and, in a very rude manner (nearly child-like) told the man that "see you should just have been patient". Unfortunately for the poor man, he indicated to her that he was busy with a conversation by holding his open and in her direction when when went through a bit of a bump and he touched her without meaning to. The resultant scene was actually extremely embarassing with the air hostess going on about how she wouldn't stand for "dirty old men" to touch her and what not...

Normally I would have intervened but in the current day and age it is actually quite risky to make scenes on planes as one could possibly quite easily be locked up under some stupid terrorist type law for unruly behaviour or something.

Luckily the old man was quite tame and just meekly kept quiet and the air hostess (actually, now that I think of it - it was the "Purser") finally lost her steam.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, the food the normal airline kind (although having dinner at 2:30am SA time and breakfast at 10:00am SA time is a little bit weird) and passed quickly thanks to the help of my drug dealers (med-student friends) who supplied me with a sleeping pill (the only way in which I can catch some shut-eye in the cramped quarters of an economy class seat).

I had a very warm (pun intended!) welcome in Cape Town with Dirk and Judy coming to fetch me at CPT International (dankie julle twee!! ).... Now, but 4 days later it is really hard to think that I was running around in London a week ago this time. All in all I would call the holiday a great success, I had a great time with all my friends all over euope (thanks to all of you who might read this!!!!!!) and have come back to SA revived and refreshed for the next 6 months of work before I head off to Sweden to do my master's degree (August 2007).

This blog will die down now for quite some time again (nobody wants to read boring lawyer stories in any case, even less than boring holiday stories!), maybe only every now and again reporting on my Sweden plans.

Thanks for reading the blog up to now!

Till next time!!!
/hs

My last days in Sheffield passed extremely quickly, with a really nice and relaxed chinese dinner at Louby's place, philosophising over a bottle of wine on the Wednesday evening. Thursday was actually quite a busy day - I did all my washing, started packing, went for a walk in Sheffield to collect photo evidence that Sheffield is not as ugly as everybody made it out to be, had dinner at Rachel's place (her mom made us another traditional english roast - YUMMY!) and finally a quick drink Louby's local pub the Thursday evening, before catching the coach on Friday 19 Jan, back to London. Before I knew it I sat back in Victoria station with the Sheffield trip all behind me.

(Chinese dinner - sitting on the floor just like the Chinese do)

(Photo evidence 1 - Aldred Lane)

(Photo evidence 2 - Peace fountains)

(Photo evidence 3 - Winter gardens)

As Jacques works during the day I had some two hours to kill before going to meet him at the Blackfriars tube station. I spent my time in a nice little Italian restaurant where I, for the second time in London (the other time being when I went from Victoria station to Sheffield), I was quite embarrassed to see how young South Africans (obviously on a working holiday visa in London) being being rude, arrogant little brats. They were openly discussing how stupid the person working behind the counter was (it was in Afirkaans but it was very obvious with them pointing and laughing at the poor guy behind the counter, who just trying to earn his living) in a very rowdy and loud way. I must say that if I was a Londoner or Englishman I would've been severely irritated by these "foreigners" invading London.

Ok, that was my rant - back to the actual travel blog. I met up with Jacques and we went to his apartment in Putney, opposite the Putney common, to drop off my stuff. I must say that he did a really good job in finding that apartment - it has a view over the Putney Common (open area park), a garage (!!!! yes, a garage in London!), on-suite bathroom, is furnished, 4mbps broadband internet, etc etc.
As 19 Jan was Jacques birthday we went out on a walk in Putney to explore (he only moved in in his apartment on the Sunday), where we had a really nice dinner in a very cute little Italian restaurant (one really can't do burgers on a birthday!), after which we went and checked out the Eight Bells pub close to the Putney tube station. I had a really great time catching up with Jacques as we were working quite hard at the end of 2006, trying to finish everything off in inte and never got round to seeing each other in either November or December.

Saturday was again a busy day as I helped Jacques with some household goods shopping (it is quite a procedure to buy all these house things of which you never thing, from dishclothes to bath mats to microwaves) and then met Louby at Paddington station. Louise and I have had this "discussion" about the crown jewels in the Tower of London which England "stole" from South Africa back in the days when SA was a colony of England - and the deal was that if I ever would get to London that we would go visit the Tower of London together. So, we set off to the Tower of London by black (blue actually, but who would ever know!) cab, courtesy of Louise, past the Buckingham palace and the Houses of Parliament. After paying the wopping entrance fee of 15 pounds (we actually only wanted to see the diamond, not buy it!), we made our way over to the jewel colleciton. I think all the other tourists there probably thought that we are quite weird tourists, racing past all the antiquties just to see the sceptre with the Cullinan diamond in it (see the wiki on it here - by the way Louby, according to Wikipedia the value is over two million pounds sterling for the diamond!).

(Tower of London of course!)

(And proof that I was there......)

From the Tower of London we met up with Jacques in Oxford street, had some drinks and then dropped Louise off at the station for her trip back to Sheffield before visiting some colleagues of Jacques for the evening. Jacques' apartment is really well located with bus 22 and N22 (which starts at Picadilly Square) stopping right in front of his house, which avoids the whole issue of the tube closing down at 11o'clock-ish. The nightlife in London seems amazing, although obviously something which one should not try to experience with rands earned on a tiny salary! We walked around for a while in the area of Picadilly square, did some midnight shopping at the Virgin Megastore and then took the scenic bus ride back to Putney. A very nice day filled to the brim with events indeed!

It was not as if Sunday was much more of a rest day however as Jacques and I spent the Sunday investigating the sales in Oxford Street (Harrods, etc) and also did some more household shopping (bedside lamps, etc). By 16h00 we were both completely exhausted and went back for a nice relaxed evening at Jacques' place before the start of the week.

And so my last day arrived, raining, wet and grey in London - just as it should be! I lugged all my stuff over to the left luggage storage, booked it in for a rest at Victoria Rail station (for future ref, 6 pounds per item per 24 hours) and then went to the Tate Modern, my favourite museum in the world. I spent about 4 hours in the Tate Modern, took a leisurely walk over the Millenium Bridge, to St. Paul's cathedral (past the very impressive international headquarters of the Salvation Army and interestingly enough the headquarters of Old Mutual in the UK).

(The Tate Modern from Millenium Bridge)

(The Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern with the current Unilever exhibition)

(Millenium Bridge in direction of St. Paul's)

After some gadget-browsing in Tottenham Court Road, I went and collected my luggage and headed for Heathrow - my month-long holiday had come to its end, much faster than I wanted it to...

ps- Sorry for the absence of photos... all the photos are on my laptop at work, so check back later this week for the photos

And for those of you who thought that the visits to Germany and Belgium would be hard to beat I have some news - Louise and Rachel did just great doing just that!

I am in Sheffield now, thoroughly enjoying my real holiday - sleeping late (10 hours per day, I can't even think of when last I managed to do that! must say the darkness here makes it very easy to sleep so much!!), lounging about, reading loads, channel surfing, web browsing, running at least an hour every day, etc. All those time-wasting things which you never get round to doing in "real life". (No photos of that!)

Anyway, also some about my actual doing stuff here....

I arrived on Thursday night at the Sheffield bus station where Rachel was so kind to pick me up... After spending some unplanned time at the local petrol station and discussing the benefits of a RAC subscription, we were off to the West Street Live pub where we met up with Lou to watch some friends of Rach playing a gig at the pub. It was nice to see the two of them again, although a little surreal maybe - felt like I could just step out the door and be back in Leuven.

Friday itself was an introduction to Sheffield; met with Louise and Rachel for lunch and after that spent the afternoon exploring Sheffield centre. I don't know why everybody back in SA warned me against Sheffield being ugly and dirty - in my opinion, although the city centre is not very large, it is actually quite nice with the peace fountains and the winter-garden and the walking-streets. Unfortunately the weather was not so good so not many photos were taken, will probably do that tomorrow, so might then add a photo or two here.

The evening we went to two bars/clubs (I think Rachel's locals? Is that right Rach?) called Reflex and Flares (80's and 70's styled music respectively). I must say - the english women are a lot more "forward" than the SA'n version... I have never before been approached (read "groped") by three women in one evening. Interesting experience to say the very least...

The next morning I was surprised to actually find in-bed service of coffee in Palace d'Aldred after which we set off for a tour of the Peak District.

The first stop was Chatsworth - the estate of the Duke of Devonshire. We tried to walk a bit closer to the house to take some photos but the grounds were very muddy and skwishy (well, nothing compared to our countryside walk probably).

(House of the Duke of Devonshire)

With that we headed for Bakewell, a very picturesque little village in the Peak District, known for its traditional "Bakewell Puddings". After our afternoon tea Lou invested in some Bakewell pudding for me - it has a very amaretto type flavour and is very sweet, probably not my favourite pudding but, as they say - when in Rome...

(Bakewell town centre)

We then made our way to the Middleton where Lou's mom lives and where we were going to spend the night. The scenary on the way there was really unbelievable (gotta see it to believe it kind of scenery) - I really don't understand why the English wanted to leave that all behind, get on a bunch of ships and try and conquer the world whilst they have all that beauty right in their back yards.

Lou's mom lives in this really idyllic setting, with stone cottages set against beautiful green rolling hills. Lou's mom received us very warmly (literally and figuratively ) with nice tea in front of the fireplace and then later some red wine (actually quite interesting, it was a sparkling australian shiraz, something I have never tried before and it was surprisingly nice, even though it was australian!).

For dinner we went to "Ye Olde Gate Inn" in Brassington - this really quaint little pub with candles and fireplaces and old exposed timber beams which started somewhere in the early 1600's (I can't remember the date now, can only remember it was BEFORE 1652, ie, before SA was even found by the european explorers). Louise and I have been talking about going to this specific pub way back in 2004 and so it was really cool to finally get to go there.

(Ye Olde Gate Inn - Lou and her mom)

The next morning Lou and I went for a walk through the english countryside like proper Englishmen (yes, that's me!)... It was really great to see the countryside by foot, walking over fields lined with holly and bramble like I've always read in the Enid Blyton books when I was younger. It was very wet though and extremely muddy at places - think ankle-deep mud... (my shoes are still not the same after that). Despite Lou's best efforts to get us lost (my african explorer instincs saved they day!) we found our way to the little village of Wirksworth, had some tea at a teahouse and explored around the village in the churches and windy old lanes around the town.

(The views from "Black Rocks" - our starting point)

(Lou getting her feet wet)

(And me getting stuck some holly)

And still it didn't stop (see what I mean with it topping my other visits in the events department ) - when we got back to Lou's mom she had prepared a proper english roast for us for dinner with yorkshire pudding, roast beef, roast potatoes, gravy, etc. It was a shame that my camera's batteries were dead as describing the meal in words doesn't really do it justice...

That basically brings me to the end of the really eventful weekend...

The rest of the week was really nice and relaxing as I said above, with Monday night having dinner with Lou and a colleague of her's at Nando's (yes, Nando's! really cool that they have Nando's here as well I thought, so we went there for dinner to inject some SA'n culture into the evening). After dinner I wanted to take the two of them for coffee but interestingly enough that is impossible here in England. It seems that all coffeeshops close their doors at latest 7pm and after that all english only go for alcoholic drinks...

(Can you believe it - a Nando's!)

Last night was an easy evening - I made dinner for Louise and Rachel (bacon-cheese filled chicken fillets, with no recipe.... quite pleased with the result seeing that I did it all by myself) and then went with Rachel to a very gothy rock pub in Sheffield to watch some friends of hers who play in a band called Highway Child (playing music of the Blues Brothers). I must say, I was really impressed with them - they are very talented...

And that brings me to today.... So, finally up to date with my blog for a change... From here I go to London to meet one of my best friends Jacques (who moved there at the beginning of this year), don’t know if I’ll write much again till then– the last bit might only be from SA, who knows…

Till soon