the fog lifts

I escaped from London much like a child running home to her parents from sleepover camp. But boy is it great to be back in the land filled with litter, graffiti, ugly industrialism, and a multitude of grungy Yankees. But I have no regrets. So I have to explain why I left London early (because “I simply felt like it"), and I didn't get to experience Jewish life in England, and I missed out on the opportunity to hop on a train and explore another part of Europe...But instead, I got to spend my last weekend-off in a area where the sun comes out, and in company of my family and friends as opposed to indifferent, drunkard classmates (or some people my father knows in Golders Green)...

My overall impression of London was that it is refreshingly clean, architecturally splendid, historically rich, most convenient, too expensive, and I found the British folk to be surprisingly pleasant, refined, and their accents charming, and if only the sun shone on the that part of the earth, London would be lovely, but as it stands it is the 2nd most miserable city I’ve ever encountered.

Some random notes on London:

• I could never find a garbage can when I was looking for one, yet the city is spotless
  
• Harod’s is worth visiting
  
• British folk actually use words like “flabbergasted”
  
• The homeless are extremely aggressive, except when they're not
  
• Day after day after day, the gloomy weather persists
  
• The public transportation system is fantastic, by far better than any other I’ve ever used
  
• Some of "the tube" lines are really far underground which require super long escalators
  
• “Down the Block” is an Americanism which will not make sense to the average Brit
  
• If you ask a Englishman if he knows where Big Ben is, he will not reply, “Yes I do,” and keep walking. In fact each of the half a dozen or so times I asked for directions, I received most courteous responses
  
• “Mind the Gap” as opposed to "Stand Clear of the Closing Doors"