A broken wine bottle, surrounded by its shard and liquid innards alone might be typically British on a Friday or Saturday night in the West End. However, what truly makes this British is the ridiculous “Caution: Wet Floor” “Cleaning in Progress” signs. Now, if you’re an native English speaker or a non-native English speaker, you might be wondering, “Hmm, in my English classes they always told us that the present progressive -ing ending was when you were presently progressing through a task. I see no workers clean-ing at the moment.”

Not so though, here in the land of the Eng! Here, the “cleaning in progress” is quite a different progression to behold! You might think it means simply going into the cleaning closet for a broom and mop, however, here in England, they practice a truly artful way of cleaning. The tube worker* begins by embarking on a pilgrimage to the cleaning closet, passing up the crude sweeping devices, choosing instead the far more sophisticated sign. Because this worker is truly skilled at the art of cleaning and safety, he takes the time to go back to the closet enough times to carry over six signs with a variety of messages for the general public’s safety. Once installing this display, he hurries off to look up all the safety code, to determine who (if anyone at all) was authorized to sweep and mop up the mess, as well as the most efficient means of doing so, what special equipment to use and whether or not there exists a quota on how many floors must be cleaned a night or a processing time requirement that might be gamed.

You might be gathering that the process takes, well, a little time. How much? Well, those fifteen minutes in between leaving the station and returning, well, you can’t have expected the art of cleaning to have been finished by then. Works of such magnitude after all take time. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, it’s going to take a lot longer than those mere fifteen minutes for the British Empire to finish falling.

*Prior to going to the closet, the worker no doubt donned the ultra safety device of a high visibility jacket. By placing this on, he decreased his chances of accidental cuts and poor life choices on Saturday nights by a significant 47.8%.

Last night was another rather enjoyable night in Leicester Square. Many of the theaters show old movies, probably to be more competitive since every theater is carrying all the newer stuff. I read in this events magazine Time Out London that one called The Prince Charles Theatre would be showing The Princess Bride. Since Phil has never seen it, I decided to take him out on a date to see this brilliant old classic. We leave for it, walking over past Covent Gardens and into Leicester, enjoying the ever amusing sight so alike that of Dublin—scantily clad girls in tube tops, mini skirts and hooker height heals shivering while having a smoke outside (Jackets are the refuge of the weak and un-cool, no doubt), the smattering of already-drunk individuals stumbling even though it’s only eight pm and the tourists running amok with their shopping bags full of mass produced treasures.

The theater itself is rather run down in appearance but the price is right, only five pounds each. We head to the basement where the screen and the theater bar are located to grab a Magners cider and our seats. We’re super surprised as we come down the stairs—the place is absolutely packed to the brim. They’ve just starting letting people in so we grab our drinks and seats. The theater is very strange—instead of a pyramid stacking system where each row is higher, the opposite exists—each row sinks a little bit lower. The seats are angled to make up for this, so that you’re leaning back and looking up, and it works, unless you’re a midget and a tall person is sitting in front of you. Luckily my tall person switches seats with me so I’m able to see (thank you Phil!). As we wait, the theater swarms with people and a man announces we’re all to squish in and consolidate to the center if we can, as the show has sold out and no seat may remain empty. What a strange world this is, when a new movie in a beautiful theater fills only twenty seats and a twenty-two year old film fills the entirety of a mangy old theater with a very enthusiastic crowd. If I didn’t already love London, this alone would have been a Cupid’s arrow to the heart.

The film starts. It is old school film, pre-digital, complete with dust and age spots. The sound isn’t as loud as it should be, especially with such an animated audience. They laugh hysterically (one particularly loud woman behind us sounds of a dying hyena) at every joke (“No more rhymes, I mean it!” “Does anybody want a peanut?”), giggle at every sexual innuendo (“Her only joy was her daily ride”), snort at the wondrously tacky R.O.U.S., and cheer loudly when Inigo Montoya finally revenges his father and kills that six-fingered bastard whose name I cannot for the life of me remember. The whole event is distracting from the movie–from the dilapidated theater, to the barely audible movie and the antics of the audience–but I’m having so much fun I hardly care. The audience applauds as the film comes to a close and I can’t help but think that perhaps theaters in the US should get into the old movie business as well—such wonderful comfort food in these old films.

As we pour out the theater, the mood is so light to me. I turn to Phil and ask for his thoughts. I know he’s enjoyed it—I worried during the R.O.U.S. he was either having a seizure and/or wetting himself. He loved the movie he states, so funny but disliked the theater. Too quiet, he laments, with such a loud crowd and the theater was rather gross. How funny, we’ve seen the same film at the same volume and with the same audience but with such different experiences. I am thinking the Prince Charles theater experience probably not the best for one’s first viewing of a film—too distracting unless you already know the bad jokes by heart so that it is no longer necessary to actually hear the dialogue to laugh. I can completely understand his frustration—if I had actually to listen to the film to enjoy it, I would have probably been annoyed. Still, he’s happy despite all this and so I’m happy—a successful date. We walk back down the street, and after a short detour for a couple of drinks (two ales, a whiskey and Pimm’s all shared) head home through the throngs of late night partiers stumbling around (my favorite is the woman who wobbles in front of me at an intersection so that I have to sidestep around her. I glance back and she’s now half-sitting, half-lying on the sidewalk—hmm, a bit too much to drink you think?). Ten minutes out, the crowds are gone and as we round the corner only the lights of High Holborn are left guide us to home.

After a twenty-four hour travel which involved flights in the US, Ireland and Germany, I finally made it to Austria for Phil’s graduation. It was really nice and I got to meet a bunch of his family, including his grandparents and older half-sister. We relaxing in Austria after that, taking a few short trips to Innsbruck, Italy and London over the period. Italy was particularly nice-we relaxed on the beach and in the pool a lot as well as took a trip out to Venice, Murano and Burano. I posted photos on Flickr and Facebook, and you don’t know the links by now, just let me know.

We’ve just settled into our flat in London–moved in on Thursday. Initally moving in was a bit of a nightmare. We got an email shortly before boarding the plane to London that the shower and washer/dryer had just broken. The shower was fixed the same day, the washer/dryer was not. We also walked into a flat that had not been cleaned as was required in the lease. Turns out the cleaners were supposed to come at six in the morning before we moved in but hadn’t been able to get in due to the bottom lock being on. Our first day in the flat was spent watching cleaners scrub down the place and a new washer/dryer being moved in to replace the water-filled old one. The second day was spent having the carpets cleaned as apparently the previous tenant had no objections to smoking in their bedroom, or putting using the carpet to put out cigarettes. Thankfully, the stains all came out with the carpet cleaning. We also spent the second day scrubbing off extra persistent sticky spots on furniture that the cleaners missed. Apparently the previous tenant was some sort of an unwashed heathen who I imagine as having sticky tentacles that spread a goo on everything they touched. After a little elbow grease though, the flat is now clean and sticky goo free.

I really love our flat. It’s the most perfect location in central London. It’s only about a ten minute walk to the London School of Economics (again, ohemgee, did I really get in there?!) and maybe fifteen minutes to Covent Gardens, twenty to Leicester Square, fifteen to St. Paul’s, twenty to the Tate Modern, and on and on. It’s amazing being right in the heart of London (we actually live in ‘the City of London’ even, not one of the little villages/bouroughs that compose London). The flat is very cute and homey–you can see pictures on Facebook now–and we’ve settled in quite nicely. I think it’s going to be a wonderful home for the next year. If you have the means, please come and visit us, we’d love to have visitors.

I still have some time before the semester starts–it begins the first of October. I have registration sometime around the 25th or so, I can’t remember right now. I’m looking forward to starting again–I feel as though I have done nothing constructive all summer and while that was nice to a degree, I’m feeling a little bored with reading news articles and composing mental retorts. Perhaps I should start doing some constructive writing again, but on beautiful rainy days in London, it’s hard to want to do much more than sip on a cup of tea from under a blanket.

So that’s life at the moment, rather slow paced but soon to change I’m sure with the advent of a new school year. At the campus bookstore they have bumper stickers with LSE’s crest that read “I survived the London School of Economics and Political Science”–we’ll soon see I’ll be able to claim the same. I hope everyone else is well–please update me on all your lives as I miss you all.

As a general rule, you should never judge a city, or especially a country, by the run from the airport to your downtown hotel. If you did that going from Heathrow to London, you’d think all England looked like Hounslow.

Jeremy Clarkson, Motorworld

Yes, that’s a pretty painful and pathetic look on my face. I was sure that I had met my end Now that I owned up to my rollercoaster-fears I might as well reveal that my favorite ride in Disneyland was the Buzz Lightyear one:

Isn’t Michelle’s look in that photo priceless? And yes, those are Mickey Mouse graduation hats we’re wearing. They even have our names embroidered on the back!

Apart from some near-death experiences I thoroughly enjoyed our day in Disneyland: There were almost no waiting times at the rides, the deep-fried Monte Cristo sandwich was mind-blowing and the company couldn’t have been better

More from our weekend trip to Californ-i-ay coming up in another post.

PS: Thank you Michelle for taking me there and being my “Number 1″

Our first photo together taken maybe a week after we met.
After a hike in Glendalough, Ireland, we celebrated
with Irish coffees and holding smiles while an obnoxious
Dutch student fumbled with Phil’s camera for hours…

The tickets have been purchased, so now it’s official: I’ll be returning to good ol’ Europe again on July 7th. I’ll arrive bright and early on the morning of the 8th in Dublin, Ireland. Phil will be flying in and meeting me there and we’ll stay there and visit our old home until July 13th. I’m quite pleased we will be able to visit Dublin–it will be grand to walk down O’Connell street or visit Temple Bar again. After the five days there, we’ll fly to Munich and drive back home to Austria. I can’t wait! I think that’s certainly something to drink to.

Also something to drink to, is the fact that Phil will be here in Arizona in a mere 19 days for my graduation. Besides attending the graduation (which will be pretty exciting as President Barack Obama will be giving Arizona State University’s commencement address), we will also be taking a short trip to California to Disneyland and the beach. I can’t wait to soak up some sun and relax with Phil after such a long semester.

Trying to find a place to live in a foreign city, especially one as big as London, can certainly be overwhelming (or maybe just “whelming” – we’re in Europe, after all). Before jumping into the search itself, it’s a good idea to get a feeling for the city – figuring out where to live and, even more importantly, where not to live. London has its fair share of bad neighborhoods that should be avoided. The rule of thumb is to stay north of the Thames – the more west the better. For the uninitiated, iknowlondon.com offers a guide to areas of London. Reliability is questionable at best, but it’s a starting point. Of course, the nicer neighborhoods also come with bigger price tags. To get an overview of average rental prices by area, Gumtree.com’s Rental Index comes in handy. The challenge is to find an area that is A) safe, B) reasonably priced, C) close to the tube and D) sort of close to our universities. Well, the latter will probably remain unfulfilled anyway, as LSE and Westminster are in the heart of London where prices are out of control. So it’s really just a matter of being close to a tube station and within a 30 minute ride to city center.

Now comes the fun part: Going to Craigslist London, Gumtree.com, propertyfinder.com or any other classifieds website and sifting through endless lists of apartments. Oh, the joy!

On the serious side of it though, there’s a good reason for having this checklist, being informed and organized: Value for money is really poor for most London flats. Whereas prices went through the roof in the last years, standards are considerably lower than in Continental Europe. Central or gas heating, double glazed windows or tiled bathrooms aren’t standard by any means. Finding a place that has these “luxurious” amenities, isn’t in a sketchy neighborhood and is within our price range is going to be a challenge, to put it mildly.