Arkansas has a long and proud history of purchasing beautiful and industrious Thai women on the international bride market.
Jamaica has a long and proud history of producing powerful runners.
And the Brits have a long and proud history of raping and pillaging.
From the early iron age, the Vikings and Celts roamed the northern European seas, raping and pillaging those whose villages lay in their path.
Although the war and marriage conquests of Henry VIII were atrocious, the unbiased observer will note that he was only following his raping and pillaging instincts that were in his blood.
So I guess I should have expected the Rape and Pillage Tax #2 when I got off the airplane at London Stansted and was expected to cough up 10 pounds to get me into the city.
I had unfortunately missed the Rape and Pillage Tax #1 levied by the airport currency exchange who used a $1 = 50 pence exchange rate with a 20 percent commission to support the building of their extravagant new company longship.
And you could only pay in pounds to pay for transportation to get home from the airport. Rape and Pillage Tax #1 was unavoidable.
One of our friends from the plane told us he was planning on sleeping at the airport. Perhaps he had participated in a Rape-And-Pillage-Self-Defense course offered by an institution of travel instruction in the civilized world.
When we finally arrived in London, we were worried about additional raping and pillaging as we were forced to walk to our hostel because the 'tube' shut down at around midnight. I followed Jordan as we walked with our backpacks to the hostel. I believe we arrived at the hostel about 3 hours later, walking through some very interesting neighborhoods. At one point on our walk to the hostel, we even saw fresh drops of blood on the sidewalk, with drops heading off down the road where we were headed. As I think about it now, it seems very alarming, but I think we were too tired to care too much.
When we arrived at the hostel, they initially told us that they didn't have any more room. After some gentle persuasion, they finally conceded that they did have room in a 4-bed dorm with one guy sleeping in it. Happily, we headed up to bed. As I lay in my bed, I could feel the springs in the mattress, and counted them in my head to help me fall asleep. It wasn't as effective as counting sheep for two reasons: first, they weren't as fluffy as sheep, and second, there were only about 8 or 9 of them, so it didn't take very long to count them all.
A little after we had turned off the light, our dorm-mate walked in. I was mostly asleep, but was awakened as the dorm-mate's quiet breathing turned into the rumble of an approaching aircraft. It seemed that he had two sleeping breathing patterns. The first was the "I'm going to die" breathing pattern where he would get so much phlegm in his throat and the snore would hang for a few seconds, while I held my breath, hoping he wouldn't give up the ghost right there. The second breathing pattern was the "You're going to die" breathing pattern, which was so invasive and distressing that I feared for my own life. However, I am still alive to tell about it. That's good.
I distinctly remember lying in the 7-spring bed, listening to snoring roommates, and promising myself that after I go home, I am never going to do this again. I hope next time I come to Europe, I have enough money to sleep in a quiet room with a nice bed. (with my luck, I'll have to go back on my word because I'll end up with a wife who snores like a Mac truck)
It seemed as if everywhere we went, we were asked to empty our pockets and sign away the lives of our unborn children. We tried not to think about the exchange rate as we paid 2 pounds for water, or 14 pounds for a cheap dinner.
We saw Wicked, the musical, for the student discount of 25 pounds, which Jordan thought was a good deal.
When I told some old mission buddies from Great Britain that I was coming to London for a couple of days, they tried to warn me, telling me to be prepared to give both arms and both legs for housing. However, despite the fact that London is known both nationally and internationally as a modern UNESCO rape-and-pillage site, the city was teeming with tourists. I especially liked the comparison between the weekends and the weekdays. On the weekends, the tourists came out and it was customary to pass on the right side. People went up the stairs on the right side, and people sidestepped oncoming pedestrian traffic to the right. However, on Monday, in the non-tourist zones, people passed on the left. Interesting.
The next pillaging came when we tried to exchange euros for pounds. We tried to wait until we were in the middle of the city before we exchanged money. Unfortunately, we should have picked out a better place. The place we saw was right off of Trafalgar Square, so we thought it would have pretty good rates. They gave us .76 pounds/euro. That's a pillage and a half if I've ever seen one. The current rate is .87 pounds/euro.
So we were careful on our food expenses. We found that there were some good deals at M&S. One night after dropping a friend off at Charing Cross, we found some sandwiches for a pound. Although they probably didn't weigh a pound, that's about how much they looked like they were worth. It was the end of the evening, and they had marked them down from 2.50 pounds to 1 pound. What a steal. Jordan and I promptly purchased and ate three of them.
Another time, we were walking through an open-air market and found a stand selling pies. They had a couple of big pies that looked like they could satisfy manly hunger, so we got three of them. There were three different flavors, so we got one of each. I can't remember exactly what the flavors were, but they could describe different types of roadkill of the fauna native to the London countryside. I think one was "wild boar", another was "grouse hen" and the third was some kind of cow-like animal. Probably "sun-dried yak". We consumed almost two of the pies in one sitting, but were not impressed. We decided to save the rest for the next day, Sunday. You can only consume so much of roadkill pies in one sitting.
Sunday we got to church and tried to network our way into a housing situation, but with no success. It was stake conference in the Hyde Park stake, so we got to sit in on that. One of the speakers mentioned that the stake consisted of 75% first-generation members. That was amazing to me. They also had members from over 100 countries. Crazy. The second counselor was from the USA, and filled his talk with slightly-modified cliché Mormon sayings like "lay your sins at the savior's footprints." It made Jordan and me smile.
After church, we walked to the Albert memorial and sat in the sun and watched people go by. We eventually pulled out the mysterymeat pies from the previous day and tried to eat them. I started munching on a piece of the yak pie. It was gross. No, it was disgusting. The meat was diced into small chunks about the size and texture of crushed ice, and held together by a tasteless clear gelatin (I hope it wasn't fat..) and spices. It had a rather bland peppery taste, I was only motivated to eat it because Jordan seemed to be eating his. And I was so hungry. After about 15 minutes of trying to convince myself that British people eat food like this every day and are still living, I finally gave up. Repulsed, I told Jordan I was done. A few seconds later, he put his back into the bag, too. We were both just eating it because the other one was eating it.
We tried not to let the pie spoil the afternoon. It was beautiful. It wasn't too cold, the sun was out, and it seemed as if all of London was celebrating the good weather by taking a walk outside. It was a great day to sit on the steps in front of the Albert memorial and look out at the Royal Albert Hall and the people walking, jogging, rollerblading, or biking by. Good times.
To top off the trip, we headed to the temples in London and Preston. For this, we rented a car using "easycar" part of the "easygroup" which owns "easyjet". Driving was ok once you got used to it.. although shifting and right-hand turns were a little tricky. We navigated around the congestion zone in central London and headed south to the temple. Unfortunately, we were confused about the term "bank holiday" and ended up trying to go to the London temple on Monday when it was closed. Instead, we headed to the Windsor castle with a friend named Monty who we scouted out in front of the Westminster Abby who was wearing a BYU hat. Monty was from San Diego area, and drove like he was from there. He camped out in the fast lane, going 10mph over. Perhaps he thought the far right lane was still the slow lane, or maybe he thought he was preventing speeding, but he wouldn't even move for fast cars who would tailgate him..
Windsor castle was definitely the best-preserved castle I've seen in my life. That's probably because there's still royalty living there. The rest of the castles have been impressive, but not kept up.
Of course, we had to pay the Rape and Pillage Tax #178 at Windsor castle for parking, then the Rape and Pillage Tax #179 to get in. After the student discount, it cost 15 pounds.
Even after the raping and pillaging, I am still planning on going back to London, and hope to be able to see several things I missed: the speaker's corner in Hyde Park, the escalators at the Angel tube station, and I missed Darwin's grave in Westminster Abby. We went to an organ concert in the abby, but the ushers shooed us all out before I could look at gravestones. I did see Newton's, but missed Darwin, who is buried in the front-left of the nave.
The things I'll remember from the London trip are:
1) Look Right, Look Left! I almost died because I looked left first. These warnings are painted all over the place at pedestrian crossings to keep them aware of drivers driving on the left side of the road.
2) Just because something has exotic ingredients doesn't mean it will taste good. If food tastes funny, throw it away. Life is too short to eat bad/British food.
3) Watch out for the Vikings and the Celts.. they're still out to rape and pillage!
