everything's not lost.

i’m back from london since tuesday evening but didn’t find the time to write my summary. yesterday, i uploaded the pictures to flickr and now i’m about to recapture that weekend.

arriving.

our flight left on saturday evening 20:00 and including the bus ride from london stansted to liverpool and further to great portland street, where we spent our first night at ISH we arrived at about 23:something. ISH was OK and we had a room with 4 beds for our own. only thing is, we didn’t get to bed but called Michi to ask what she was up to.

party-time

turns out she was at a private party. and told us to come along, including directions on how to find there. finding the house was the first real london assignment since we had to take the bus and had to figure out the bus system on our own. by trying to fight the right bus we learned that not every bus stop on one side takes the same buses and that we can’t hop in on the wrong side even if the driver only turns around at the corner to pick us up on the other side. then, we had to find the right bus stop exist which was a very lucky guess and we kind of found the house by accident.

in there were a few students from around the world but i can’t tell if anyone was a local. the house owner was from Sweden, his roommate from France and there were people from Switzerland, Italy (Hi Fabio!) Germany and the USA (“texaaaaas!“) – all in all it was fun and the people were really nice. we spent most of the time making fun of Michi because she acquired that very weird Standard German language no fellow Austrian should ever speak – she completely lost her accent… brrrr… but there is still hope: she’ll return to Austria soon, the question is for how long!

after the party was over (around 2 am) we took the bus back to the city and tried not to get lost finding our way back. whoa did we fail… an hour later, we went to bed.

riddles

the morning started very confusing – and i’m not talking about hangovers i didn’t have – but because of that:

seriously, what. the. fuck. i didn’t get it.

regent’s park

as we got up quite early we left for a walk in regent’s park.

yeah lot’s of squirrels, though only two different squirrels are features on the pix above.

after walking around in regent’s park and looking for another tube we came out at the camden market. pretty cool, lots of stuff and lots of food.

bumping into hollywood stars

on our way back to leicester square (through chinatown if i remember correctly) we noticed a barrier and by that time, a car came around the corner and drove past me.

“Oh, Dustin Hoffman.”

it was Mr. Hoffman on his way to the premiere of his new movie Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. good thing i still had my canon 70-300 usm is on my eos 400d to compete with the paparazzi!

he was actually so close at times that my lens couldn’t focus because of the minimum focus distance of 1.5m! he did look like a nice person and spent a lot time signing and posing with mobile phone cameras.

the press people probably got a few nice pictures as well. at least they also had fun:

that really was perfect timing and thanks to 300mm and being larger than the other people around i managed to see a lot! back home in Austria i found this on vcdquality.com:

11/25/2007 CAM Mr Magoriums Wonder Emporium *XViD*

there’s a cam rip from the very day the movie opened. i don’t know where the movie was captured, but i so hope it was the same cinema as the premiere, how cool would that be? haha…

being a tourist

next stop should have been St. Paul’s Cathedral as it has been recommended on the night before for a great view, unfortunately, it was sunday and i couldn’t go up since it was “a day of prayer”. most probably a good thing i didn’t go up since my feet killed me that evening and the two days after that.

continuing the tourist tour, we went to the London Tower where Werner was kind enough to make a tourist picture for me:

and i got to take more tourist pictures of the Tower Bridge.

even more walking and going with the tube we got out to see the London Eye

and the not so Big Ben. really, I had thought it would be bigger than that.

the weakerthans

as it was already 18:00 we made our way back to head for Astoria 2 where we saw The Weakerthans live in concert. security was tight and i left my backpack with all my camera equipment (body, 18-55, 70-300, speedlite) with the security who locked it up. the bouncer had quite the better arguments:

“i’m not comfortable leaving my stuff – i won’t take any photos!”
“or i could just refuse to let you in”.

bouncer: 1. kwentin: 0

inside, the location was really nice – cool stage, enough space and even a great view from the bar down to the main hall. we had a drink, rest our feet and only went down to the front before the weakerthans appeared on stage.

and fuck did they rock! unbelievable! i liked their music a lot before, but now i love them on a whole new level. they were really entertaining and the crowd appreciated it. i’m actually kind of glad that snow patrol on the same evening was already sold out – not only did i save a lot of money but i don’t think snow patrol could have possibly been the better gig out of these two!

what really made the whole concert even better was the smoke-free ambiance. never before have i been to such a well ventilated show. smoke-free. and i didn’t sweat at all, quite the contrary to shows in Klagenfurt. Austria should really, really become fully smoke-free in public places as well.

got myself a shirt after the show. yeehaaawww.

recap: we were up on our feet since about 9 in the morning and travelled the whole day, did i mention my feet started to hurt?

the couchsurfing experience

anyways, we got the tube to head to Notting Hill to find our couchsurfing host Steve, who kindly offered to host us a while back. Steve turned out to be a very nice guy, which i could already figured out after emailing with him. he replied to my request to the couch request in the “london – requests for host” group in september 2 hours after i posted it. really fast. we had a drink and a nice little chat for a while and got to bed. Steve had to work the next day but we all slept until 9am, very relaxing. warm shower and out and about again.

even more tourist stuff

coffee/muffin breakfast and on to Trafalgar Square.

on to changing of the guard and through St. Jame’s Park to Buckingham Palace. even more squirrels. there were none of the traditional guards with the funny helmets anywhere to see but i made a picture of one of the security guards with his MP. some people can’t sport heavy weapons:

he really doesn’t look like he’d be able to harm anyone.

on to Tate Modern

where werner got recruited for Scientology

inside, there was a huge crack on the bottom of the turbine hall, an installation said to reflect the gap between people.

so i had to call the picture “mind the gap”. i can overuse stereotypes. wuhu.

on our walk we decided to give the tower bridge at night a try and i made a multi-exposure image (HDR) with my camera:

even more stars

on my neverending quest for more food we got back to Leicester Square again and stumbled upon the next opening night – The Magic Flute by Kenneth Branagh who you may know from directing and starring in Frankenstein.

i also managed to mistake some random guy (Peter Moores) with Michael Caine just because he (Caine) was featured on the big billboard above the cinema and i first thought the premiere would be for “Sleuth” instead of “The Magic Flute”. but the bald head and full beard could have been for his next role, really…. damn. DAMN. DAMN!!! yeah i did some shots from far far away with my speedlite, but only because all the other paparazzi went crazy on that guy as well. :D

finale

with me being hungry we went into Friday’s to get something to eat and then Michi joined us for a Mojito. back to Steve, another drink, another chat, finally some rest, another warm shower, another walk into the city. some english breakfast.

Werner and me spent our last half day in London with visiting the National Portrait Gallery and the Photographers’ Gallery, having a final drink with Michi and a student friend and getting back to the airport for our flight back home.

the end

i’d really like to come back to london some time because i really enjoyed being there. the whole smoke-free law really is a plus but it really is a bit expensive. i didn’t care for these few days tough. couchsurfing was great as well – not only did we have a place to stay but also got to know and got to speak to someone new. i look forward on more couchsurfing experiences.

and starbucks is really as aggressive as on that one episode of the simpsons. you could practically see from one starbucks to the next! still, they have nice brownies.

hmmmmm brownies!

…. that whole post just took me more than 2, almost 3 hours.
there is another one to come soon, but i won’t spoil the shocking surprise :[
chris, werner, shut up! :p