Day 2

I landed at Heathrow Airport around 6:30am (GMT) on Thursday morning. The airport was a hive of activity as expected. Heathrow is one of those airports that if you’re not sure of where to go you can easily get lost and it takes a decent amount of time to get from wherever you are to where you are supposed to be. 

Being a British citizen has its perks. It literally took me two minutes to walk through immigration and customs, while the majority of my flight ended up having to wait about twenty minutes. While I was waiting for my luggage to come through, I chatted to an English gentleman who had been visiting his sister(An Aid worker) in Maputo, Mozambique. He was a professor that was teaching at a university in Canada (Didn’t get the name or where).

Even though it is summer here, and fairly warm and slightly humid, the rain and clouds welcomed me to London.

Taxis (or cabs) in London are an interesting experience. The road structure, layout and generally driving itself is something I didn’t really have the opportunity to experience the last time I was here 8 years ago. With the London Underground, the overground rail and the buses, one easily forgets how much of a labyrinth the London transport system is. My brother and I spent most of the taxi ride back to his apartment (which took about 45 minutes) catching up on what was happening back home and how all the family are.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy big cities. I mean, Johannesburg is big, but that is area big and the houses are fairly spread out. London is way bigger (Area), and each house can have several smaller apartments in it (So population size is much larger). My brother’s apartment is really awesome and I was quite jealous when I walked in. The house is situated on a hill that overlooks most of Kent and you can see most of the roofs of the houses. It reminded me of the chimney sweeps in ‘Mary Poppins’ with all the ceramic chimney tops and scattered church steeples.

We ended up going to Stratford to see the Olympic Park, which is still under construction (All I ended up seeing was the side of the new stadium). So we walked around the new Westfields Shopping Centre. It is a beautiful building on the inside, with a slight continuous curve to it that gives the impression that it carries on for days.

I had a bit of a culture shock walking through the center. I am not racist, but in South Africa the cultural and political history has left racial divides in terms of job standards and what people are or are not willing to do. I had forgotten how in London people aren’t afraid to work for their money, no matter what job it is and no matter what race you are. If that meant cleaning toilets, mopping floors in a shopping centre or removing garbage.

It amazes me how trendy and how cosmopolitan London is. I easily heard 16 different languages in my first 5 hours of being here. The majority of people are good looking and stylish and go out of their way to be that way.

While writing this, I am sitting on a blow up mattress in the box room of a quaint house in Dartmouth, Devon. Yesterday evening we met my brother’s girlfriend and caught a train out west to visit her family. I loved the train ride through the green rolling hills of English countryside. We were fetched from the train station and driven through the narrow roads between Totnes and Dartmouth. My brother’s girlfriend’s family is quite interesting and the way they interact with my brother reminded me of how my father used to interact with my mother’s family. But, as I had only slept for 2 hours in 2 days I slowly started become quieter and quieter.