Capital Weekend

The Knitted Olympics

As I sit on the train back to Leeds, listening to Train Guard Ben make his onboard announcement and some kid  make self-centred statements to his mum & grandma (I shouldn’t be annoyed as at least he’s articulate for his age but he has an inappropriately trendy haircut for an 8-year-old and a whiny transatlantic accent), I’ve decided this would be a good opportunity to do some wittering of my own, for this weekend I’ve had a rather good time in London, with plenty of cheese, and some artificial facial hair for good measure:

Katie & Viv’s beardy birthday

I will focus on a few highlights of the weekend, starting with a trip down Carnaby Street, no longer a hive of swinging indie hipsters but full of trendy chain stores. The reason for my visit was to find a boutique where my friend is due to have some of her things stocked. It’s a lovely crafty shop in Kingly Court (just off Carnaby Street, where all the independent boutiques appear to have migrated), full of wool and embroidery paraphernalia and a few cute designer bits and bobs too.

Indie Shopping Experience

Of course to get there I had to walk down Carnaby St, and what should I walk past but AN ENTIRE SHOP OF IRREGULAR CHOICE SHOES! For those of you who may not not know, I have a veritable collection of Irregular Choice shoes at home, that alas I can’t wear much anymore – but they are still my FAVES! They are ridiculous, frivolous, shiny, feathery, girly and joy-inducing, so of course I had to go inside, have a little dance to The Bangles with the shop girls, and see if I could find something my stupid bad back would let me wear without crippling me again (the perils of age, bad posture and a nomadic desk job dear friends):

Poetic Licence at Irregular Choice. Check out the Carrier Bag!

After that, I did something I never normally do, especially in London, and went to see a show, while Katie was busy doing some training for the Olympics (she’s stewarding not competing so don’t worry, she’s not leaving it a bit late to get in to shape!). I took myself off to the Savoy, to see Danny DeVito in The Sunshine Boys, persuaded in no small part by his appearance flirting with Charlotte Church on the Graham Norton Show the other week (not in a weird way, honest). I can’t think of anyone who does harrassed yet loveable Italian Noo Yoiker as well as he does, so the role of proud, grumpy, hasbeen Vaudeville star Willy Clark suits him to the ground. His timing’s just priceless, and to watch Danny bounce off the other players and see his HUGE grin at the end of the performance was priceless too!

The Knitted Olympics

The last highlight of my weekend was a just short walk from Katie’s house to seek out the already-mythical Knitted Olympics. Somewhere in deepest darkest Walthamstow, somebody – with clear pride and skill – has taken the time to knit an entire garden FULL of Olympic athletes, all competing in different sports, set up in their front garden.

Olympic Scenes. I like to think the pool on the right depicts the diving (for the benefit of @guyatkinson)

And word’s getting round – just as we were standing there for 5 mins taking photos, another 3 lots of people came to marvel at the details. If you’re up on your athletes (which I’m not) you can even tell that some of them are meant to be specific people from the numbers on their shirts, their strips’ colours and the sports they’re participating in. This wonderful knitter has also kitted out her or his garden with flags of the Olympic nations, a huge Olympic flag in their front window and a knitted set of Olympic rings.

Knitted Long Distance Kenyan Runners

There are Kenyan marathon runners, Turkish pole vaulters, Australian sprinters, beach-Volleyballing lovelies and so many more.

Knitted Beach Volleyball lovelies, swimming – and winning British stars!

If you look closely enough though you can see where their loyalties really lie as there are two British athletes, one on the podium claiming her gold medal and another taking a lap of honour swathed in a Union Jack. The best thing about the Olympics so far!

Trying to Make Sense of the Senseless – #UKRiots

Well I can’t very well not mention the devastation that’s gripping the country at the moment. I won’t say much on the topic –  there’s nothing left to say, and everything left to say, and I don’t want to bore you by repeating what’s been whirling through everyone’s minds since last Friday. Apart from anything else, fellow Icelandophile Paul Sullivan of the Matador travel blogging network summarises what’s been going on, really bloody well here. Do give it a read, it’s made me feel like there is still common sense in the world.

Matador Network on the Riots

There is of course lots of speculation on why the “yoof” of the UK are destroying innocent people’s lives & communities. Is it lack of a sense of future? A lack of family and community values? A lack of education and discipline? People are suggesting National Service as a solution to these seemingly overwhelming issues, but here’s an interesting perspective on this issue, from the Guardian’s joepublic blog back in 2009, which might certainly address the sense of community and society so many people are despairing exists any longer.

But for now, my thoughts go out to all my friends and yours in London, and everywhere else where the riots have hit, who are on an emotional rollercoaster just trying to go about their daily lives. Tears, worry, fear, frustration, bewilderment, devastation, pride, defiance, and more. It’s heartening that communities are coming together (one friend lives where the local Turkish community are guarding local businesses; the twitter #riotcleanup has been a triumph of community spirit), and that like another of my good friends in Manchester, people are refusing to give up the cities they love to a bunch of thugs.

However long this lasts, and whatever the aftermath holds though, it isn’t going to be an easy ride. Stay strong Britain, and stand tall.

London-Istanbul by train – The geek version

I know some of you are fact fans, and some of you have asked me how my trip from one end of Europe to the other, has compared cost- time- and distance wise with alternatives like flying, or UK transport. Well, like all good “making-of” reveals, let me tell you!

Here is the map of all the main stations we travelled to and from (the most easterly one is actually Sabiha Gokcen Airport – obviously not a train station, but I’ve included it for completeness as I had to fly home to get back to work). I’ve not had time to link them up via railway lines, but you get the idea. If anyone geekier than me wants to do this for me then please let me know!

Click through for interactive google map of my trip

Transport costs have also been interesting, and have become much cheaper the further east we’ve come. I’ve put the cost of all our intercity tickets here, in local currency and converted into sterling, so you can have a look for yourself. The cost per mile really does drop compared to the UK even in Western Europe, and even though it works out more expensive than flying from London – Istanbul (my flight back with easyjet came to around £55), it’s still cheaper and quicker than flying city to city, and yes it’s true, more convenient and more fun. Our total intercity transport costs between London and the Airport in Sabiha Gokcen were 213.30 GBP.

Intercity Transport to Istanbul!

You feel like you’re still in control of your journey, you don’t have to check in hours in advance, remove your belt and shoes for the x-ray machines and say goodbye to your luggage, there are no clinical departure lounges to get bored in, and you get to see a lot more of the world and the people that are just as inquisitive about it as you are. Oh and if you get a 1st class sleeper car on the Bosfor express you can pretend you’re in an Agatha Christie novel!

All our train planning was done with the help of the man in seat 61 – an incredibly extensive and precise train travel information site maintained by a former rail service QA worker. While you can look up train times direct at Western European train companies’ websites (DeutscheBahn is pretty comprehensive), firstly it helps to know which train companies to go to, and also to have the information in English. (I came unstuck in Austria when I hadn’t understood the German small print on my print-at-home ticket – which turned out to be just the ticket reservation form which I should have exchanged for my ticket before leaving the station, so got stung for an extra €20 on the train).

You can also book through rail ticket agents like raileurope, which we found very useful for timetable information, but as agents you would end up paying their booking fee too, and a lot more overall. Seat 61.com has in particular been utterly invaluable for information about the last leg of our journey and we would never have known how to get from Romania to Turkey, or have an idea of how important it was we got our Bosfor Express bookings right, until we’d arrived in Bucharest, if it wasn’t for the detail on there.

Interestingly, our local transport costs (city trams, buses, tubes and taxis) were cheap compared to the UK too – and here’s what we spent in both local currency and converted to Sterling again.

Local city transport

To keep costs down we stayed in hostels at a cost of approx €10 a night each – as it was February though even though these were in 10-bed dorms, we often got the room to ourselves. A different story I’m sure in summer though! Couchsurfing is another great way to visit people in different places and stay low-cost, and if we’d had more time to plan in advance, we would have tried to have a couple of nights at least on someone’s sofa using this scheme.

Guide book-wise I used two Berlitz city guides to Vienna and Brussels, and Lonely Planet’s guide to Eastern Europe (although I found the Rough Guide to Eastern Europe a lot more readable, and it included Turkey unlike Lonely Planet). Because it covers so many countries, the information is brief and itinerary based, so again with more advanced planning I would have taken individual country guides (maybe on a kindle like Dave did, as long as it was charged!), but I find all guide book information hard to take in anyway so I just grabbed something I knew would give me basics to find my way and then find out where to go from tourist information and importantly, chatting to hostel staff and the people we met on our journey.

I’d definitely do a big train journey like this again, my only regret being that I didn’t really have much time to do it in – 2 days or less at each stop is nowhere near enough, not to mention exhausting. But I look on this as just an excuse to go away in small spurts more often!

A First Class Accident

TEA

I’ve set off! Despite the obligatory mysterious-cut-finger-that-won’t-stop-bleeding, the last minute oh-my-god-i’ve-forgotten-something paranoia, and a shit-is-that-the-time-we’ll-miss-the-train moment, I am indeed on the train to London. From London tomorrow (the stunningly ornate St Pancras International to be precise) I will be catching the Eurostar to Brussels and via various stops over the next 2 weeks, making my way to Istanbul.

The most interesting thing that’s happened to me so far (we’ve been going 44 minutes) is the discovery that I have accidentally booked myself a seat in 1st class. This means several things. Firstly, and most importantly, it’s hilarious. I’m here with a giant rucksack I can hardly carry, walking boots and a bobbly lopapeysa I bought from a charity shop in Reykjavik, and I’m surrounded by perfectly coiffured people with very plummy accents, very expensive jewellery and/or rugger shirts, with Louis Vuitton luggage, all reading the business and politics sections of The Times or catching up with iplayer on their ipads. They all do seem I must add, very nice, even if topics of conversation include a good natured discussion about whether the free cups of tea the very-polite-but-obviously-trying-hard-to-be-on-his-best-behaviour attendant is serving us comes with fresh or UHT milk, and the dizzying conundrum the answer launches us into, vizaviz whether we should use the free (UHT) milk provided, or go black, or use our own (fresh) milk…..

Which I feel misses the point entirely. IT’S A FREE CUP OF TEA!! And mine is delicious! *does a happy dance*

The downside of this 1st class compartment is that there are curtains on the windows. No doubt it’s the height of luxury to be able to decide whether to shut out the daylight, but it’s impossible to pull them back fully, which means there are only 4 seats on the carriage that have an unimpeded view of the drizzly fields of cows and sheep and commuter villages on this glorious British February Sunday. The seat I am in, needless to say, is not one in a blessed position, although I can catch a glimpse if I turn my head 120 degrees behind me. So I can’t really complain can I?

I think they must know I’m an impostor.

To St Pancras!