Berlin Bound

I'm off to see Hitler's bunker.

Blogging resumes on Friday...

Turkey Goes To War

I'm a few days delayed in posting this, but Turkey has mounted a large invasion of northern Iraq.

Estimates so far are that 151 Iraqi Kurdish fighters have been killed, while 17 Turkish soldiers are dead. Turkish war planes and helicopter gunships are pounding the Iraqi countryside.

The Americans tried for a long time to keep Turkey from launching such an invasion into the relatively stable and peaceful Kurdish territories, but the Turks have had enough. The invasion follows a long period of bombings and guerilla battles between the two sides.

Here's a short video clip compiled by the Guardian. The streets of Istanbul look a bit more hectic than when I was there, don't they?

Feb 2: Art Schmart -- Where's The Guns?

Day two in London!

The weather was cloudy and cool, but that wasn't such a big deal as we were planning on spending it inside museums.

I had been told about plenty of nice art museums in London, but I had my sights set one place as my top priority: the Imperial War Museum, which is arguably the most important military history museum in the world. After that we were going to head to the National Gallery, a prestigious art museum.

Our first task, though, was to find our venue for Les Miserables, which we were heading to that night.

We took the tube to Piccadilly Circus, the center of a ritzy shopping neighbourhood.

After walking down Shaftesbury Avenue, which is the main theatre district in London, we found our place.



Descending back down into the tube, there was a huge poster:



We already have discovered it! Boo yah!

Eventually we found the Imperial War Museum, with the help of a little old English lady who suddenly gave us directions without us either asking or telling her what we were looking for. At least she didn't try and hustle us into a carpet shop afterwards.

You know you're at the right place when you see two gigantic cannons aiming straight at your head. This ain't no Rembrandt gallery!




This museum is absolutely enormous. We spent over an hour in the first room, a collection of large military equipment from around the world.

On the right side of this first picture you can see a big green rocket: it's a V2 rocket, hundreds of which rained down on London during the Blitz. A product of Hitler's secret weapons program, they were essentially the first cruise missiles. While they didn't cause huge amounts of casualties, they were terrifying and unstoppable. I had heard about them, but couldn't believe the size of the real thing.




The museum gradually became quite busy, and so we moved on to the third floor where a massive Holocaust exhibit was set up. I don't know for sure, but I think we probably spent somewhere between two and three hours in it.

Suddenly it was 2 in the afternoon, and so the National Gallery wasn't looking too likely.

We spent another hour on the bottom floor of the museum, which is set up like a giant maze and covers every major conflict of the 20th century. There were also two floors of exhibits plus a special D-day room that we skipped. Again, I can't tell you how huge and impressive this museum is. I could have spent all weekend in it.

As it was, we had to rush to get out of there in time to go for supper before the play. In hindsight we should have been a bit more disciplined with our time. It's not that the museum wasn't worth it, but we ended up spending practically the entire day inside one place!

Lindsay spotted the Rainforest Cafe, a restaurant which is set up to feel as though you are actually dining inside a rainforest. It comes complete with palm trees, crawling vines, fake thunderstorms, and animatronic apes and elephants.

We ate our supper beside two gigantic elephants who would start stomping and trumpeting every 20 minutes. It was pretty funny. (We have video of it on Lindsay's camera.)

For dessert we ordered a sundae that was almost as big me.



We had a bit of extra time before the play, so we wandered the shopping streets.




Les Miserables was great. While I probably had a bit more fun at the Lion King, this one was a completely different genre and I enjoyed it in a different way. I've heard that the London theatre scene is second-to-none, and I have no reason to doubt it.

Anyway, spending the entire day at the IWM meant we had an extra full schedule for our last day...

Feb 1: Walking The Thames

Lindsay and I met early in the morning at the Brussels South train station to catch our Eurostar train to London. It's a 2 hour trip, going through France and then under the English Channel.


View Larger Map

It was really nice to be able to do the whole trip without planes. It's so much less hassle, no delays, and the stations are all right in the city centers.

The Eurostar terminal in Brussels...

And arriving at the brand new St. Pancras station in London.




As I said before, I was extremely excited to be going to London. With a population somewhere in the neighbourhood of 8 million, this was by far the largest city I had ever been to. We spent a long time narrowing down our list of things to do and see; three days was not nearly enough time to take in all the attractions.

We exchanged our euros into pounds. It really sucks to give over a 50 euro note and get 30 pounds back. This wasn't going to be an inexpensive trip.

Our first task was to take the tube over to our hotel. The nearest station was King's Cross.

I remembered it as the place where on July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers had met up and gotten on various public transit lines. Within a half hour, three subway trains and a bus had been blown up, killing 52 people.

Kinda crazy to be standing there.



The tube system is pretty incredible and convenient. You can really get anywhere you need to go within minutes. Once again, it makes you realize how bad we are back home at public transit.




We got off at Finchley Road station and started walking up a busy road. Notice the fences; we later realized these are the only way to stop Londoners from just running across the street whenever they damn well feel like it. If by some miracle a pedestrian in London is actually crossing at a crosswalk, he really couldn't care less what colour the traffic lights are or whether a wall of traffic is bearing down on him.

As with bikers in Holland, pedestrians in London would be killed in Canada within minutes.



Our hotel in London was quite pleasant, situated on a pleasant street in a pleasant neighbourhood. I still like the one in Istanbul the best, but this one was nice.




We set our bags down and then took off to explore the city.

Our first stop will be no surprise to anyone who knows or has spent any amount of time with Lindsay: the Beatles Store and the Elvis Shop, right beside each other on Baker Street.




Inside the Elvis shop was a slightly overweight guy with slick, greased back hair and a half-open leather jacket revealing his chest hair. He was talking to an older police officer--wait, I mean a "bobby"--when we came in. After a minute the cop turned to us.

Cop: Hey, doesn't he look like Elvis? (pointing to the clerk)

Lindsay: Yeah, he does!

Cop: Isn't it striking? He looks just like him! He's Elvis, isn't he?

Lindsay: Yeah, I guess so!

Cop: Hey, do that thing!

Clerk: (impersonating) Thank you! Thank you very muuuuch!

Cop: Isn't that great?

Lindsay: It's pretty great!

Cop: Where're you from? America?

Lindsay: Nope, we're from Canada.

Clerk: Elvis was in Canada! (points to an Elvis "live in Canada" album)

Lindsay: That's funny!

Cop: Isn't he great? (pointing at the clerk again)

It went on like that for a while. It was our introduction to English cheekiness.

By the way, I can't tell you how strange it is to suddenly be in a country where everyone speaks English again. For the past four months I've been trying to avoid conversation in shops or having to ask if people speak my language; it was quite odd to realize that you could walk up to anyone here and just starting talking to them.

After that we went to scope out our venue for the evening. We booked tickets for two theatre shows in London: The Lion King and Les Miserables. We eventually found the Lyceum Theatre where the Lion King was playing.




Afterwards we walked down the street towards the Thames river. I grabbed a sandwich and Lindsay grabbed a humous salad (disgusting). We sat down in a nice park to eat amidst statues of great English poets.




I believe that one is Robert Burns.

Then we started walking along the river. I caught sight of a London landmark: the Millenium Eye.




It's the tallest ferris wheel in the world. We never went on it; it's 25 pounds a ticket.

Then, up ahead, I glimpsed an even more famous landmark:



Ah, Big Ben, you're probably saying.

WRONG, you fool. That's Victoria Tower. Big Ben is the bell inside.

(Oh, fine, we'll call it Big Ben for convenience sake, but don't accuse me of getting the facts wrong.)




Big Ben is part of the British parliament buildings. Across the street is another famous London sight: Westminster Abbey.



But more on the Abbey later.

Here's looking down the Thames from Big Ben:




We crossed the river. I took this picture on the bridge, looking back at the parliament buildings.



We started walking on the other side of the Thames, back towards the Eye.





It was very sunny out, as you can see, but it was really windy so the walking wasn't as nice as it could have been. Regardless, the city is absolutely beautiful. It's hard to get a sense of it from pictures.

This is looking way down the river towards the financial district, the skyscrapers of Fleet Street.




We kept walking....




We sat down for a cup of coffee and then decided to cross back over the river and head back to our hotel. We took the Millenium Footbridge, which eight years ago had to be closed immediately after it first opened because it was swaying so badly. It reopened after some reinforcements.

At the far end you can see the dome of the gargantuan St. Paul's Cathedral.



If you look in the distance here, you can spot London Tower Bridge.



At the foot of St. Paul's Cathedral.



I found a neat old momument: it's dedicated to the firefighters--the 'grimy heroes'--who died trying to put out the blazes during the Blitz (when Hitler bombed the city relentlessly during WW2).



Back down into the tube...



And then we went to the show.



The Lion King was pretty neat. The costumes for all the animals were really inventive and incredible to look at, and the music was great. Although, in my opinion, if Mustafa and Simba are really such noble animals they'd abolish the lion monarchy and allow the jungle inhabitants to elect their own representative government. I hardly think that the gazelles, for instance, rest assured that a Lion Royalty rules with their best interests at heart. The play never addresses these fundamental themes.

But more on such notions when we get to Buckingham Palace.

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