Bump.
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More pictures and stories coming soon!
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Lots of photos were taken by the others so hopefully they'll have the energy to upload them.
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When I have access to a computer without time constraints, Ill be sure to post a few of the pictures I took. Some of them are pretty epic.
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With everyone's permission I'd like to add this (and any other pertinent past OddTours) onto one page/site.
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We haven't seen much of these as of yet. At least, not in a way that's accessible for OWF members generally.
But fear not: I have content to contribute with!
Upon the Event of OddMeet4A of London, 2010
written by dripik
Friday, 3rd September
So the day had arrived when I would travel to London. The occasion was unique in a number of ways. First, I have never been to London without an overzealous tour guide telling me – the group, for that matter – where to go, what to look at and such. Travelling with an organized group is fun, but rather restricted and rushed. Also, you can’t really interact with people living in the respective country when you’re to follow the umbrella or flag or whatever the tour guide is holding as a beacon for the group. Second, this was, ever since I was 4 years old, the first occasion when I had the opportunity to sit on an airplane – and also the first time when I was flying somewhere by myself.
The flight was to leave from Budapest to Gatwick Airport around 6:00AM, so I got up around 3:00AM, got ready and left to the airport. After being checked by security, who, after me placing all metallic objects in a box, still found something suspicious on me, so they asked me to remove my shoes and searched me. Not finding anything, they let me through. I had to wait for quite some time until gate 20 finally opened, and after the usual airport commotion caused by people leaving their tickets home or, for some reason, not being among the booked passengers, I finally got on the plane, taking my seat by a window.
The flight was cool, despite that I haven’t had any proper experience in travelling on a plane from beforehand. Weather was clear, so I could identify some landmarks of Budapest during our ascent. Just as I have heard from various sources before, business class is indeed curtained off from the rest of us mortals. Apparently, the meagre sandwiches that we received from the flight attendants would have upset the wealthy sitting “behind the curtain”, or maybe they just didn’t want us to see the cabaret show that went on at the front part of the plane. Either way, I enjoyed the flight and got to Gatwick alright.
(This was made on the day I came back home, but it's the same concept)
Gatwick Airport is huge. Getting from Arrivals to the train station is a good enough adventure worth of at least 30 minutes; I saw a lot of new things. This was the first time I encountered the moving sidewalk, inside the building/bridge that arched over the area where the airplanes rolled out to the runway. I considered the sidewalk a bit of a posh thing – something that takes you forward when you could just walk? – so I walked next to it instead (this mentality got me far through my stay in London...). After checking out, where the clerk asked me, in a rather good attempt at Hungarian, whether I came from Budapest or not, I saw that there were shuttles that take people from one section of the airport to the other (I kind of expected that I’ll have to buy a ticket for taking the shuttle as well, but I was in for a pleasant surprise).
So I’ve reached the train station of the airport: after buying a Travelcard, which allowed me to take a train to London, Victoria Station and go anywhere in London after that, I got on a train and left Gatwick. The ride came with the usual crying-kid-with-helpless-mother combo, some backpackers who were discussing what CCTV stands for, and the generic train crowd, but it was good. After arriving to Victoria and finding my way out of the station, I set off to walk towards the direction where I suspected Leicester Square to be.
Upon beforehand agreement, I knew that the first of the three people whom I was to meet that day was Splat, at Marylebone Station. Just to be safe, I provided him on the previous day a description of how I would look like on Friday, should I fail to recognize him in a crowd of new arrivals at the station. Before getting to Marylebone, I took a walk from Victoria to Leicester Square, determined to find a fish-and-chips shop I visited when I was in London several years ago. Since I couldn’t find it – last time I saw the shop was 5 years ago, it could have been replaced with some other business – I had to reside to fast food; though I’m still uncertain about fish and chips being fast food or not, so it might have not been a great betrayal of my original intentions.
My search for the shop took some time, so after I was done with my meal, I went to Leicester Square Underground Station and had my first Tube ride. It wasn’t as difficult to get to Marylebone as I originally expected – coming from a city that has only three underground lines which all meet at the same station, the Tube map was quite unnerving at first. Once I got to Marylebone, I took a long walk around the station, seeing that I was about an hour early for the arrival of Splat’s train that was supposed to arrive around 2:00PM. After I had enough of the identical white houses with their mysterious basement doors in the neighbourhood, I returned to the train station and sat down on a round bench, where I could see the arriving trains. Around 2:00AM, I decided to go a bit closer to the security gates, just to have a better view of people arriving. I had a feeling that local security personnel were eyeing me: foreign-looking guy with a backpack standing around at the train station is probably something to be suspicious of.
Not long after this, probably among the second wave of arrivals I saw from there, appeared someone whom I suspected to be Splat, so I waved at him to check, and I was right, he was indeed Splat. After him buying lunch at a pastry shop, we left the station and began our long journey towards the centre of London. We agreed that it would be best if we aimed for Liverpool Station, where Max the Mug was to arrive at around 6:00PM. Friday was not the proper OddTour Day, so to speak: Splat was to leave for his sister’s place around 5:00PM, so he would not meet the others that day, but on the following one instead.
The long journey to Liverpool Station was spent with talking, mostly. And of course, walking: taking the Underground would’ve meant us getting to the train station too early and having no particular thing to do or see there. Along the route we took, we noticed a sign pointing to Camden, so we decided to look for it, although we had no idea how long it would take on foot.
During our way towards Camden, I remembered that I expected this meeting to be a bit awkward, but it wasn’t as strange as I expected. In my case, the core of the problem was me not being a native English speaker and not hearing proper English in everyday use up to the point of OddTour4: I had difficulty understanding people in general. The other thing I realised was that most people were cool about it and had the patience to repeat themselves, so I got by.
After walking on towards the north of London for some time and not finding the famous Market, but only a row of improvised fruit and clothing stands in one of the streets, we decided to turn back and carry on towards Liverpool Station (note: those who attended OddTour 4B did manage to find Camden Market, so they could tell what the place is like – it was just me who missed out seeing that particular area). During our journey, Splat found – or scavenged, as I put it at that time – a map of London that was lying on the ground nearby some benches not too far from St. Paul’s Cathedral, so we no longer had to rely on the maps that are placed on almost every second street corner of the city. We went on, had a look at the cathedral and after a bit more of walking we reached Bank Tube Station. From there, Splat went on to his sister’s place, while I carried on to Liverpool Station, where Max the Mug was to arrive in an hour.
(St. Paul's)
When I got to the station, I realized that the 3-hour walk was perhaps a bit more than what I’m used to, so I decided to look for a seat. Not succeeding in finding a free one at the station, I left the building and looked around in the nearby streets. After wading through the groups of people who gathered in front of a nearby pub and being stunned by the skyscraper-ish buildings nearby, I found some benches in a quiet place not too far from the station. After a few minutes of rest, I had realized that I didn’t know what Max looks like, which would’ve been quite a setback in finding him in a train station full of people going about. Since I had the number of all the others, I sent Max a short description of my appearance – similarly to the one I sent Splat the day before – and went back to the station shortly before 6:00PM.
For a change, there was a free seat: I sat down, thinking about how I would cope with the following days if Friday had already been this physically demanding. After ten minutes of staring at various things around me, including the floor, someone called me by name nearby. I looked up and saw Max, who apparently managed to find me before I even started to look for him in the crowd, although I’m not sure how much success I would’ve had in that. We went outside the building to talk about what to do next – if memory serves me correct, Max called Hobo at that point, asking him about the time he would arrive to London (‘round 7:00PM, King’s Cross). So we took the underground to get to King’s Cross Station: we tried to find free seats there, but the train station was crammed with people. So we left the building and took a walk in the immediate area, looking for a bench, without much success. By this time, Hobo was about to arrive to the station, so we went back – he kept updating Max of where he would be when we get back to the building. Eventually, we found Hobo in the street between King’s Cross and St Pancreas, and after greeting one another, we left to find something to eat.
Hobo proved to be the Ultimate Source of Knowledge About London. Relying on his experience and his Smartphone, he could list a few dozen restaurants and pubs in an instant. In the end, we went to a place that was somewhere between a pub and a club (no idea what the place was/is called, wasn’t paying attention to the name). There we each had a meal and a drink, talked for a bit and analysed the picture of a French monarch entering London in a parade kind of way – this picture was hanging above our table, and the description was misspelled. After finishing all this, we left the pub and decided to go to the hostel we booked a room at.
With a couple of Tube line changes, we finally arrived to New Cross via the Northern line. This was somewhere after 9:00PM, so it was a rather dark welcome to Lewisham. We’ve all been wondering what the hostel was like – we only saw a couple of pictures on the website, none of them about the rooms, of course. The area wasn’t exactly encouraging either: closed-down shops that have been graffitied all over, broken wooden fences behind which all sort of mysterious stuff – mostly garbage – have been sprawled out... These sorts of things.
As we turned around the corner of a busy street, the figure of the hostel appeared in the distance, right next to the roundabout at the end of the street. It looked pretty much like it was on the photos, but it didn’t help much in us appreciating the sight. Behind the building was an old double-decker, probably serving aesthetic purposes, with an overhead railway looming in the background. People were chatting and drinking in front of the pub (the hostel was above it, three storeys high), and the sound of a band preparing for a performance could be heard from inside. The ideal place for resting after a long day, really.
(The hostel building)
We went inside, and after taking care of the financial side of our stay, we all received our cards with which we could enter the hostel area, and the key to good old Room 3. Upon reaching the first floor, we were greeted by an explosion of colours from the graffitied walls of the lobby. In Room 3, we found two iron bunk beds, an iron railing neatly propped against the wall (most likely belonged to one of the beds), an old television set between the two tall windows and a small dustbin. After packing out, we all told Room 3 how much we hated it, but we accepted the situation eventually.
(Room 3 in daytime)
Not much has happened after this point that day: Max made a bunch of photos of the room, got accidentally roundhouse-kicked on the shoulder by me as I was clambering onto the ladder of my bunk bed, I explored the first and second floor of the hostel, finding that it was mostly deserted, and Hobo rattled the bunk of Max for his annoyance. As we settled down to get some sleep, we realised that the shutters of one of the windows didn’t close properly, so the light coming from the streetlamps outside hit Max’s bed, and was generally not welcome. Max came up with some improvised shades to make sleeping a possibility. So everything was set for resting, more or less. Then the band started playing downstairs...
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That was the first day as I remember it. Splat has already written a short summary of the events of the following day. If any of you present on 4A feel inspired to write up something similar or completely different about our adventures, feel free.
