Last weekend, I’ve been to London. And yes, I took the above picture there, on Edgware Street, Paddington, Westminster, which is the only place so far where I have seen a Chinese doctor advertise in Arabic.
Actually, the whole street looks more like Pakistan than England, especially in the evenings when the air is heavy and sweet from the smoke of the hookah – and just to make it better, they have a restaurant called Beirut Express.

After spending a brief two days there, I can say that I like London, although it has it’s downs as every city – for example the hotel I stayed at was not too good. WiFi was expensive but useless, lucky I got a refund. The room was incredibly small – but clean, and that’s important – and the stairs was so steep I could not believe it, so, even if they don’t mention it on their homepage you better not go there if you have problems with narrow, 60 degrees steep stairs. And the “all rooms have wireless access” bit is true if you are not above the second floor. The breakfast was good though, and plenty.

I am admittedly not the best tourist in the world, I simply cannot go and visit sites, museums, and so on, so true to myself I started to roam the streets of London, going to shop at Sainsbury’s for Skittles, looking around in Borders – now that was a rather, erm, brave look around, but what can I do, 4 floors of books and DVDs, I simply broke down in the end -, eating in a backstreet pub, riding on the Tube, walking around the Hyde park, checking out the phone shops, and just spending time

And if we are talking about phones, the phones in London are way cheaper than in Hungary, and the monthly fees I saw are not higher either, so London is a mobile phone Mekka. When I go there next time, in a month I think, I will get my new phone from there, it costs half as much as here.

What I really did not like, the only thing that actually made me scowl was the charity lady – as a dear friend from London said, a “chugger” or charity mugger – who was pushy, rude, whining and downright greedy, and simply could not understand why I don’t want to give her “paper money” – 10 pounds, for which I can have 3 or 4 decent lunches here -, not even for the “poor kiddies” on Children’s Day.
But you can run into the same kind of people everywhere, so I put it down to general human traits.

An interesting I noticed was that wherever I went, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, I always ran into some big construction projects.

Yes, in London too. And not only this, but even the Tube is under work, Victoria line is being improved and rebuilt. So if your city needs some development or construction works, invite me, and I will bring it along.

The other thing I noticed is, that London is big on signs. One of the most popular was the “For Sale” and “To Let” signs on homes and offices, but I think that’s only because of this mortgage crisis, which thankfully did not affect me as I have no mortgage.
The other kind of signs were the ones that told people how to behave and that they are watched all the time, like the following ones:

Apparently working at the transportation company is not the safest of jobs in London, and there are no private moments in a London citizen’s life because there are tons of CCTVs everywhere – note that they admittedly does not really work as expected or at least their effect is not substantiated, but it’s good to know you are watched.

But my favourite sign was this one:

A complete spy network. Don’t know what would have they done if I called the number to tell them I saw two officers of the MET cross the street when the traffic lights were red, and I find it suspicious that the people whose job is to keep the law and rules break the basic rules of traffic. I guess they would not have found it amusing.

Actually, if you think about it, this whole thing is not funny.

But these are just weird things I found in the City, and can’t really shadow the fact that I liked it a lot, there are really nice places, like the Royal Park, the National Museum, the Westminster Abbey, and the streets, where you can see a house from the 18th century right in front of a modern office building, the old and the new mixed rather haphazardly.

I think the only thing that caused me real problems were the traffic – when the cars are coming from the wrong direction it is really frustrating -, and the total lack of free WiFi. I went to Wetherspoon as
I was told they have free WiFi, but as my luck runs, that was the day when it did not work. And I did not want to pay up 5 pounds for 30 minutes on the T-Mobile site.
And all I wanted to do is send one e-mail with an attachment, but no way.
And what is most surprising is that so far the only airport i visited that gives you completely free WiFi – not free to connect and go to the page where you can pay for the use of the net, but free as in you can browse, surf, chat and it does not cost you anything – is Ferihegy in Budapest, Hungary, the country where broadband access is not widespread.

So, to cut my rather lengthy post on my visit to London it was an experience. And a good one at that. And the most important lesson is that next time I will not expect anything more than a 2m by 2m room from a Bed & Breakfast hotel.

1. June – rest and relax
2. July – prepare to move
3. August – in England, preparing for new job or looking for one.

I would like to put the emphasis on the first point, June. Rest and Relax.

Now, what my summer ended up is something like this.

1. First half of June – work in Bulgaria
2. Second half of June – one week rest, one week preparation for new work project
3. July – working on Project A
4. August – working on Project A + starting at new job.

If I look carefully, the Rest and Relax bit somehow vanished. Same with the ‘in England’ part. But I cannot let it go this easily, so this Friday I will fly to London for 3 day, just to see what this England is about – and yes, I know, London is not England. Have to suffice for now, though.

So I will land at Gatwick on Friday, in the early evening, go to the hotel in Paddington, and next two days will be spent looking at the city, inspecting pubs, trying some ale and so on. And of course, taking a heap of pictures.

And then Sunday evening, flying back home. So a short England+vacation rolled into one. Not one month, but I will enjoy it to the fullest.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the gains certainly outweights the loss of the one month long vacation, but I feel that I certainly need a bit of R&R time for myself.

Plovdiv is as far as I remember the 3rd biggest city of Bulgaria, and the inner city is really nice. Not huge, but it has a nice park, a walking street, some Greek and roman ruins, and some nice restaurants.

Plus, this is the place where you can find some proof that Bulgaria has some Japanese ties, at least, there is a samurai in the park.

I don’t know what he is looking at, but in retrospect I think it was the weather. Because as sunny Saturday was, all Sunday it was raining. And raining. And raining.

So I spent all my day in the hotel, but at least, hanging out on Twitter, reading blogs, reading a book, sleeping. And not going to visit something around the city.

Of course, on Monday the weather got sunny again.

10 years, or even 2 years ago it would not have bothered me. They were taken in Barcelona, see, they look good, and I wish I was back there.
But now, I just sit here, staring at the map, trying to remember where did I take this photo? The thing is, if you put me down in Barcelona, or Madrid, or Paris, I would find the place again without fail, but now on the map it is rather hard. And what good is a map if you can’t place the picture at the exact right spot?

In May I’ll go to France to visit a friend, and I am sure I will make a lot of pictures again, and this time I want to know where I take them, so I could place them on the map. For that I will need a way to record the GPS coordinates to the photo, but I don’t know how to do that. I don’t own an expensive camera which has a function like that, all I got is a Canon PS A530, and hopefully I wil own a Nikon D40 by then, but neither of those have a built-in GPS, and I don’t know any gadgets that can be connected to them.

Is there any sensible way? Anyone got a tip?

No, it does not annoy me that I have to let them handle my packs, and that I will have to wait about 40 minutes just to get it back when I arrive – ok, it annoys me. I planned to leave the airport right away, that why I had only hand baggage, but that’s not that annoying, what really, really annoys me is they have no standards for the handling of hand baggage. This same bag, with the same amount of stuff was a hand baggage when I flew to Sofia on this trip, but now, on my way back it’s not a hand baggage. It turns out that some airlines draw the line at 5kg, some at 8kg, some at 10kg and some at about 12kg. So you can not be sure whether your baggage is hand or not.

That’s plain stupid. Please, stick to one measurement both in size and weight.

It is always a heartwarming thing to read about airplane accidents before going to the airport. I know, nothing to worry about, still.

On the bright side there is some hope that we can read blogs on the airplanes in the future.