Well I’ve successfully left California. So it can have that earthquake now. You know the one I mean.
Sorry, was that in bad taste?
Anyway, I’m here in London. Right now it’s my second day, 7:40am. It wasn’t difficult for me to convert to London time because I didn’t sleep on the plane over here, and thus was up for 27 hours straight by the time it was regular bedtime here. I’m in a café having a coffee. There’s actually no free internet that I can find, so I’m writing this as a Word file and I’ll open up a blog and post it later.
Well, the flight was very smooth. They had something like 60 movies and 50 TV shows to watch, so it went by quickly. Getting on the tube and over to Central London was very easy. There was something already familiar about all of it—maybe from movies or just from being in other big cities before—so the weirdest part of it all was how not-weird it was.
After checking into my hostel and dropping off my stuff, I went out for a walk by myself. Apparently the police don’t like this, because… well, I’ll tell you the whole story:
I was walking along the Thames, looking around at everything, when suddenly two big guys come up behind me, display something that they said was a police badge, and started digging in my pockets. They were dressed in street clothes, and I don’t know what an English police badge looks like (for the record, it’s a tiny piece of paper that anyone could easily print out and scam tourists with). They had pulled out my passport and wallet, and I was afraid I was getting robbed here by some random people pretending to be police, so I struggled and asked people on the street if these were really policemen. Apparently, they were, but they either pretended not to believe that I didn’t think they were policemen, or they were just a bit stupid. Personally, I think that they just didn’t want to appear soft, so they continued to talk to me like I had done something wrong, even though my stamped passport, driver’s license, plane ticket stub, all proved that I was an American who arrived here two hours ago.
As far as I can figure from what I overheard, there were two kids who were maybe stealing stuff from tourists, and the police thought I was a third member of that party because I was alone and looking around at stuff. They said that I was looking around to spot the police, which is silly considering that the police don’t wear uniforms (this was later confirmed by a sign I read that said that un-uniformed police were monitoring the area). As I said, I think they didn’t want to appear soft, so they basically said something like, “We know you’re lying but you can go.” I’m pretty certain I saw in their eyes that they didn’t want to admit their mistake. To an extent, I can understand, because I imagine that there are probably several British youths who would lie and be wily—but, the cops were still jerks.
I know that this was a bizarre incident and I don’t believe it to be indicative of London or the police here. I’ve written it all out now and would like not to think about it anymore.
Oh and I forgot to bring my camera out while I was walking around so I don’t have any photos yet. Today I’m going to meet up with some people on an online vegan forum that I’ve been a member of for a long time. We’re going to go to Camden Lock Market and eventually to the pub. I’ll bring my camera for that.
Other than the cop thing, I’ve felt very comfortable here. Probably because it’s so international in London, with so many people visiting and also a lot of people who live here that I don’t feel like the only one figuring things out, while at the same time the casualness of how the locals deal with the tube and walking around gives me a sense of how I’m supposed to behave around here.
Oh, and it’s not very cold here at all. It’s almost exactly like Bay Area weather, except for the looming clouds.
