10-28

Day 5 (I'm going to have to figure out a way to do this quicker--each day is taking more than an hour to write about)

We got up insanely early today to make our first train at 6:15 to the main Stuttgart station, then found ourselves stuck waiting for a train to Paris, which was delayed.  But once it arrived, it was fast and quiet and comfortable.  It was one of those crazy trains (that Ozzy sang about), going about 313 kilometres an hour.  We were in an upper deck section with five other strangers, including two young couples who kept fondling one another.  Seems pretty neat.  One of the girls was the absolute spitting image of actress Alicia Vikander, except that she was speaking German instead of, what, Swedish?  

Seriously, if I took a selfie with her and posted it online, 98 out of 100 people would think it was her (assuming 100 people at random know who Vikander is).  Something that didn't suck, but approached it, was that Germany still requires that people wear facemasks on public transport, and on the international destinations, they require the thicker, heavier masks (N-1?  M-1?  A-1?  F-U?).  

I shouldn't complain, since a lot of people have had to wear masks for years (and there were times when even I would wear them for three, five, seven hours in a day), but I have become spoiled, and the kids sitting next to us with the roaming hands weren't wearing theirs once we got underway, and I was jealous (for more than one reason).  But the moment we crossed from Deutschland to France, EVERYBODY pulled off their mask, and we shared this combined moment of relief.  That was neat.

The train trip was short (Emily had brought a deck of cards and we played for a while), but our stay in the City of Lights was even shorter.  We were in Paris for, what, ninety minutes?  We ate lunch at Five Guys Burgers (where Jeff makes it a tradition to always go), and then we got on a train to London (had to go through Passport Control again).  But we're coming back next week, so I'll put a pin in Paris.  It was an immense relief when I could suddenly speak in the native tongue of the people around me, and I tried to make myself useful by lifting the luggage of old women and children in the line around me.  

Paris train station

Hurry up . . . and wait.

I wasn't going to include this shot from the line to the trains headed out of France, but the girl behind me's dubious/annoyed face sort of obligated me to put it here.

Then we were on yet another train, heading out of France.  There was a long stretch when the train went through a tunnel and everything was black out the windows (it was miles at least), and when we emerged, Jeff said, "You remember how you always wanted to go through the Chunnel?  Well, you just did."

The London train station was big and pretty and surprisingly clean.  There was a statue of reunited loved ones that made me feel something.

I had packed up Emily's big backpack (in Europe they have these backpacks the size of Artoo-Detoo, and she lent me hers so I could put my clothes and laptop in it) and carried it off one train and on to the London Underground (or the Tube, as locals apparently call it).  I had seen it in movies like AMERICAN WEREWOLF and SKYFALL, and heard folks say "Mind the gap" before, but experiencing it was very different.  Turns out that the tube is pretty clean, very well organized, and attended by riders young and old, attractive and not, speaking in multiple languages, but always in quiet tones.  I like London.

Normally, I'm not too thrilled with pictures of me, and there are some from this trip where I look at my absolute worst . . . but this one's pretty good.

We saw the famous buses (as well as the iconic telephone call boxes), and took a ride on one (the bus, not the phone box).

One of the errands Emily had to run was to go to the post office, where I saw this amusing sign:

I still feeling sick, so we went to a British grocery store, where I bought some decongestant, but the manager had to be called to okay it, because that sort of stuff is restricted there (my guess is that kids abuse it, or just as likely, there was a fear that they WOULD abuse it).  

The only thing we had scheduled for this day was a Jack the Ripper tour.  Years ago, Jeff and I had seen a miniseries (probably by the BBC) about a dude who worked as a tourguide for Ripper tours, and I remember thinking it would be fun to go on one of those.  Jeff's son had had the same idea, though, and they had gone a couple of years ago.  It seems this has been the case with practically everything I've wanted to do, from going to Disneyland, to seeing the Eiffel Tower, from Venice to going on a Thames tour in London.  

Even so, I gotta put that out of my head, right?  My niece was jealous of the Ripper tour, because she's all into True Crime documentaries and such nowadays, so I got her a t-shirt.*  Our tour guide's name was Rob, and he did a fine job.  Being a guide on something like this would be an attractive job (since I have no fear of public speaking, a morbid set of interests, and am able to memorize fairly well).  However...

The tour itself was pretty extensive (about two hours), and involved way more walking around than you would ever believe (I don't think I'll count it as exercise for the day, but I totally could). 

Rob didn't have a microphone, but he could speak loudly, and was wearing a hat.

Basically, he led us around Whitechapel, pointing out the locations that are still standing from those days, and describing the stuff that's gone . . . as well as where the bodies were discovered.  It might be considered ironic that I didn't want to go in any torture museums, but I did want to walk around Whitechapel and listen to a guide talk about mutilated women.  But you forget that I am evil.

Not everything worked.  It being the Halloween season, there were a half dozen other Ripper tours going on at the same time, and you could tell there were spots Rob wanted to go that we couldn't, and moments he had to improvise or kill time while waiting to go next.  

Afterward, we all met in a tavern that has stood in Whitechapel for three hundred years, and most people grabbed a beer.  I wanted to pester Rob with questions, but I think he was tired and ready to go home (he told me he also does Buckingham Palace tours, and those have been just as busy as the Ripper ones, with what he referred to as "the changing of the guard").  The guy I bought the t-shirts from has written a whole book on Jack the Ripper, and I now regret not picking up the book and having him sign it, since it was cheap and there's a very slight chance I'd read it one day.  But I didn't know what sorts of things I'd run into in the days to come that I'd want to spend my money on** . . . still don't.

Hey, it's the Gherkin!

We were staying in a London hotel, all three of us in the same room (with three beds), which is a bit inconvenient (I've been told I snore, and Jeff and Emily certainly do), but probably makes for a more interesting experience.  I'm used to Motel 6s and Comfort Inns (that's all I can afford, and even then, I complain), so anything with clean sheets and a comfortable bed is appreciated.

*They had two styles to choose from: one here the ripper was holding a bloody knife, and one where the Ripper is holding a half-naked woman with her throat cut.  While I'm a bit leery about the first shirt, there's no way I'd dare wear the second in public, so I got two of the first.

**And there's always the chance that Jeff will say, "Hey, I'm not buying you any more meals or four dollar Cokes from this point on."  And man, those four dollar Cokes sure do add up.