Drift Reality > London, England >Arrival in London - September 2005 (Cold, Lonely, and Queued Up)

I arrived into London Heathrow after a restless seven-hour flight from Dulles Airport, during which restlessly toggled between Sin City, Adam Sandler’s remake of The Longest Yard, and Jet Li’s film, Unleashed; while periodically helping the 80-year-old man seated next to me open and shut his folding tray. Needless to say, I was in an absolutely discombobulated state of quasi-reality when I stepped off the plane in my linen pants and t-shirt, apparel brought on by the sweltering DC heat, and was hit by a blast of cool air.

”Welcome to England,” I thought to myself as cold-inspired goose bumps began to appear on my arms.

After walking down a maze of Heathrow Airport corridors, I finally arrived at immigration and was presented with the first queue of my visit to England and it was a memorable one. It probably is a good thing that the first experience awaiting visitors to London is a one-hour long queue because it does a great job preparing you for the first noble truth about London: you will inevitably stand in queue.

After winding my way through the immigration line, I went through to baggage claim where I found my bags awaiting me. I immediately headed through into the general section of the airport and began looking for an ATM machine.

After walking several circles around the main area of the airport, and eliciting a number of dirty looks for the barge of suitcases I was pushing in front of me I finally found the ATM machines. I walked up to the first and was pleasantly surprised to read that the ATM machine “did not charge a service fee.”

“Well,” I thought to myself. “There is one thing about London that is better than the United States.”

Reaching for my ATM card, I realized that the machine was out of service. Looking directly to the ATM machine adjacent to mine, I quickly realized that this ATM machine was also out of service – as was the ATM machine adjacent to that one. I grimaced as my gaze panned right of the third ATM machine, to the fourth and final ATM machine - and the long queue that stood before it. A three-word phrase began to manifest in my mind as I stared at the queue.

Welcome to England.

After another half-hour of waiting in line I looked down at my watch, which read 9:00 AM. After two hours of being in England, I was still at Heathrow Airport.

After grabbing a fistful of bills from the ATM machine, I found myself breathing a few words of thanks to God that I had managed to enact a simple function like getting money from a money machine. While heading to the platform for the Heathrow Express train, I remembered the second noble truth of life in London, a truth learned through countless hours of aggravation and despair during my first visit here: to take nothing for granted.

The fifteen-minute trip from London Heathrow to downtown London was actually quite simple and after arriving at Paddington Station, I made my way through the station to the taxi platform where my third and most ridiculous queue of the day awaited me: the queue for a taxi cab.

As I waited in a line of taxicab riders waiting for a taxi cab driver, I looked to my right and saw that there was a long line of taxi cab drivers waiting in line for taxicab riders. Both lines intersected at the top of the station, where a station attendant was matching riders with cabs. “Welcome to London,” I sighed to myself.

After another twenty minutes of waiting in line, I finally managed to get into a cab. As we headed for the student halls that I am to call home for the next year, I looked at my watch: 10:00 AM. Three hours after I landed in London, I was in a taxi headed for my student halls.

I arrived without further incident and after meeting with the pleasant woman at reception for a few minutes orientation to the student hall, I had a key and was headed to my new flat. The student hall literature had described the student hall and “old, with character.” Being the naïve American that I am, I had though this to mean “old, with character” in the way that a quirky grandparent might be. As I walked through the halls, I realized that what it actually meant was “old, with character” in the way that a crazy homeless man wearing a burlap sack with ketchup on his face is “old, with character.”

Making my way to my flat – an alleged “Grade A” flat, I opened the door into something that looked a little like the apartment from “Coming to America.” It was rather spacious, but the extra space really just highlighted the drabness of the place. Even worse, it had two large windows with broken locks that faced the street in front of the halls. Not only did this insure I could hear every passing car, pedestrian, or dog; but I also felt about as safe as a freshman girl at a frat party.

The room was spartan to say the least: There were two old bookshelves, a wardrobe, a desk with a chair, and a bed that was the size of a box of kleenex. Even more disturbing (and I’m not joking here) was the lack of a DSL connection in the room. I realized with horror, that the “Internet Connection,” the hall literature had boasted of, was in reality a dial-up connection.

Laying down on my new bed with my feet dangling over the edge, I thought about how I had woken up in spacious bed that morning, in the newly rennovated three-bedroom townhouse in Northwest DC, owned by my parents. After taking a hot shower, I had eaten a pastry from Starbucks while browsing e-mail in my gorgeous sun-lit office. I literally felt like crying.

After feeling sorry for myself for an hour or so, I pulled myself to my feet and headed to the reception office where I requested a different room. All that was left was a “B Class” room facing the courtyard, which I gladly accepted.

The new room was actually half the size of the first, but with slightly newer furniture and more importantly, a good degree of privacy and quietude. After unpacking a few things, I plopped down on my bed and shut my eyes and fantasized about my life in DC before drifting off into a deep sleep.