Muttering Small Talk at the Wall

Well I'm in London. Not that I expect the internet to be a big part of my trip, but at least in this hostel, it is proving very difficult. I just typed a longish entry and it all got erased, and I can't upload pictures. Hopefully this will change.

In a nutshell, London greeted me in a slightly unoriginal way: overcast skies and drizzling rain. However once its joke was spent and my feet on Eurosoil, it stopped and it's been rather beautiful in the upper 60's (F). I stole a ride on the Gatwick Express into downtown London because I found a forgotten ticket in the printing machine. Omen! My current hostel is located in the Soho district, and it's absolutely one of the hippest places I've ever seen. Marvelous architecture, little black London cabs giving merry "beeps!", fashionable people in droves, no less than five independent record stores within two blocks. And I mean RECORD stores. I was in my room with the window open and on the busy street five stories below, I heard somebody blasting "Sweet Home Alabama." WTF? I have to say I had never been happier to hear the song though.

The main difference between this town and somewhere like Charleston in America is not that people have British accents. It's that people don't speak English at all. I've heard that London thinks it's the capital of the world. There's about a 50% chance someone on the street speaks English. Today I just walked around Soho with my enormous backpack and tried to be a local: I sipped tea and read on a street corner, I bought fruits from streetside vendors, I sang along to The Verve in a coffee shop. I shared dinner in the kitchen first with a Swedish mom and daughter and then with two German ladies. I think now I'll teach myself some chords on my ukulele and get my first sleep of the last couple days.