Notes on London Airports! I have now tried all of them (some of them admittedly only outbound) so I feel that I have stuff to say. There we go.

Heathrow

How big: One of the biggest in the world.

Amount of silly walking around: Moderate. Actually good when you consider the size of this airport. The only exception is getting to/from train or the Tube. That is a proper hike.

Transport to/from the airport: Airport of extremes. Heathrow Express (15 min) or Piccadilly Line (60 min). Heathrow Express is awesome but actually only goes to Paddington (so you have to do another 45 min on Tube if you don't live close to there) and stops at midnight, so if you are particularly 'lucky' with immigration, you have to take the Tube. Picc Line has the advantage of running even after midnight (at least on Fri evenings) - but can someone explain to me please why about 1/2 of the trains from Heathrow end in places like Hounslow West, Osterley etc.? How many people, on an average Friday night, go from Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3 to Hounslow West?

Immigration: Incredibly bad. By far the worst experience so far. Worse than Schiphol, and that airport is my sworn enemy. Expect non functioning biometric gates and 1km long queues (to show the returning British citizens a warm welcome perhaps?)

Toilets: Fine (9/10, definitely would pee there again)

Other facilities: Posh. Maybe even posher than that.

Wifi: Exists but requires signing up, therefore half way to bollocks.

Worst experience: Arrived by the last evening plane from M. the other day. The plane was delayed, we landed ca 11 pm. I spent more than 1 hour at a queue for the immigration checks. Result: I missed the last Heathrow Express. Had to go by Piccadilly Line, all the way to the city, on a Friday night. At first (up to zone 3) it was all right, then it started to be really dodgy. Dodgy but probably safe, because all the people were so drunk they could not harm anyone but themselves.

Overall satisfaction: 5/10. Don't like that much.

Gatwick

How big: Moderate. Has two terminals, North and South, linked by a little DLR-like train.

Amount of silly walking around: Excessive. Considering the size of the airport, it's absolutely insane.

Transport to/from the airport: Funny. A bit idiotic. There are trains to London Bridge or to Victoria. If you want to go to Ldn Bridge, you can use your Oyster, which is good but a bit expensive. When buying tickets (for example because you have a railcard), you have to basically know who operates the train you intend to take - so in theory you have to go, pick a train in advance and check who's running the thing. It's not that tickets valid for every train are too expensive - they do not exist. Also, during the weekdays, you can get to/from Gatwick in 40 min. However, during the weekends, the trains suddenly change into a train which, if you put a stick in the ground with a handwritten note on it, the train would stop there. So it takes a solid hour to get to London. (Not counting in the time you wait for the trains, which, with the popular game of biggest delays, can be considerable.)

Immigration: No complains. Took me less than 3 min every time I went there.

Toilets: Could be much worse (7/10)

Other facilities: Okay.

Wifi: Probably exists but I've actually never tried.

Worst experience: They lost my bag when I went to Amsterdam. The bag just stayed there at Gatwick. Which I find pretty pathetic.

Overall satisfaction: 5/10

Stansted

How big: Moderate. A bit like Manchester Airport.

Amount of silly walking around: Reasonable.

Transport to/from the airport: Stansted Express. So far so good, I love this train. OK, it costs £16.60 and takes 50 min from Liverpool Street, but name a cheap train to a London airport, I'll wait. I've taken Stansted Express several times and every time it was on time (actually a big deal in this country, trust me). Not like some other trains which stop all the time or don't even start moving 'due to shortage of staff' or for some similarly stupid reason. Also, the train stops ca 3 min from the airport terminal and all the stuff, which I find cool.

Immigration: No complains. Took me less than 3 min every time I went there.

Toilets: Fine (8/10)

Other facilities: Okay.

Wifi: Probably exists but I've actually never tried.

Worst experience: None. And that's why I like this airport so much.

Overall satisfaction: 8/10. My personal favourite (for now).

Luton

How big: Moderate.

Amount of silly walking around: Moderate to low.

Transport to/from the airport: Disaster. Travesty. There is a train (from London St Pancras / Blackfriars / City Thameslink), but that only goes to Luton Airport Parkway. And then you have to take a bus which, in about 10-15 min, takes you to the airport. The problems are obvious: i) The bus is always late, and always stuck in some traffic, no matter what. ii) You cannot stack a trainload of people with huge bags into a bus. You just cannot. iii) You have to buy train tickets to 'Luton Airport', not 'Luton Airport Parkway'. If you don't, they make you pay £2.40 or something for the ridiculous bus. On your way back, you have to get your train ticket from a pair of lousy machines just after you leave the airport - expect a lengthy queue of tourists who have no idea how to operate our super-intuitive ticket machines. iv) The people using this particular airport seem to be more stupid than at the other airports. They are apparently not intelligent enough to use a bus in any reasonable way, to board so that someone else can also board, to leave the bus quicker than in 15 minutes of total confusion, tripping over own bags, tripping over other people's bags, pushing people, etc.

Immigration: No complains. Took me less than 3 min every time I went there.

Toilets: OK (7/10)

Other facilities: Okay.

Wifi: Probably exists but I've actually never tried.

Worst experience: On my way to R., the airline staff checked our boarding passes and made us all stay in one big room with no facilities other than a drinks vending machine. It was early morning and there were several babies and small children, and there was nowhere to sit (not even for mothers with babies), and the room was too small for a planeload of people, so it was also quite crowded. So some kid started crying out of annoyance (which in my opinion was totally justified), and then the other kids joined in, and basically everyone was pissed off, and then the plane - which was the first morning plane - was 30 min late, so it all added up to a very cool beginning. (To be fair, I am not sure this is the fault of the airport. It may well be the shitty airline, Wizz...)

Overall satisfaction: 1/10. An airport to avoid.

City

How big: Small.

Amount of silly walking around: Zero.

Transport to/from the airport: DLR. It's zone 3, which is both unbelievable and awesome.

Immigration: N/A (only outbound flight so far)

Toilets: Fine (7/10)

Other facilities: Okay. They are tiny, but they have coffee and sandwiches and blueberry muffins, and what more do you need.

Wifi: Probably exists but I've actually never tried.

Worst experience: For some reason planes that would suit me seem to avoid this airport. What a shame.

Overall satisfaction: cannot be assessed because there are not enough flights to/from LCY

Southend

How big: Tiny.

Amount of silly walking around: Zero.

Transport to/from the airport: Train. Takes an hour but takes you 2 min from the terminal.

Immigration: N/A (only outbound flight so far)

Toilets: Fine (8/10)

Other facilities: Okay. There is coffee and sandwiches and even a restaurant and a bookshop, so you can fix everything there.

Wifi: Probably exists but I've actually never tried.

Worst experience: Nothing in particular.

Overall satisfaction: 7/10

Yesterday, I was flying above Europe (in a plane), and thinking. I was returning from an event which, for me, was quite an experience. I have met some European people there. Including one guy. And this guy, well, it's difficult to describe, but I guess we may become friends or something. Because we were there to do a job together, and we did, we were actually quite successful, the cooperation between us was very smooth, and it just feels like we have certain things in common, we share certain opinions, and, you know the feeling, right?

OK, so I was in this kind of mood. Something really good happened during the day, it all went very well, and suddenly I am in a plane, coming back home (with an amazing vision of landing at, like, 23.30 local time at Stansted and getting to bed at 2 am, duuuuh), and I am thinking. About life and stuff. And I realize that every trip to Europe brings me closer to the moment when I leave the UK.

Why. Because I miss Europeans. I miss normal European conversations, normal European human interaction. I mean roughly this. Usually, when I talk to a European, after few hours max I know all important stuff. I know what they like, how many kids they have, where they live, and which football club they follow. When I talk to a Brit, well... let's just say that for little more than 7 months now, I have been sitting next to a colleague (we are less than 2m apart), and I think he has two kids, because he has a picture of two kids on his desk. But I am not sure - as far as I know, they can be cousins/nieces. Because we never get any further than 'Hiya, you all right'.

See the contrast? In Europe, I meet someone next to a coffee machine, and we talk about walking dogs and world championship in skeleton and family affairs and the advantages of going to work by bike (or whatever random stuff is on our mind). In the UK, we say 'morning'. If they are particularly talkative that morning, they say something like 'it's quite cold outside'.

I know the reason why I came. I know why I still stay here. And I already know why I will leave one day.

The interruption after resumption of this blog is mostly due to my temporary relocation to Den Haag (The Hague; 's-Gravenhage). I will not talk about the reasons (apart from saying that I am here for an internship); I will share some funny facts about the Dutch and the Netherlands instead.

So.

I am a proud owner of two different bank cards. One of them is Visa and the other is MasterCard. Neither is accepted in the shops here - they insist on me using Maestro or some weird Dutch Giro card. Like I had one!

There is a beach here in The Hague. The sea looks very cold and also somewhat dirty (...sandy beach with a very long difference between high tide and low tide), but nevertheless there are people bathing, surfing, and sailing. Which looks cool.

There is not a single free public toilet on the beach. Which in my opinion is a shame.

But there are kites on the beach. Well, kites. Some of them are absolutely huge, and look incrdible in the air.

There's also a pier on the beach. And dunes. And a harbour. And if you walk a bit away, fish handling facilities. The Dutch word for fish? Vis. You can see it everywhere there.

I have seen Meisje met de parel aka The girl with the pearl earring. Btw, this is one of my favourite paintings! If you take a closer look at the painting, you can see that a) she looks like she had no teeth, b) the pearl actually looks quite metallic, and not like a pearl at all, c) she has white dots in her eyes which project above the plane of the drawing (if you know what I mean), and this makes it look not like a masterpiece, but like a cheeky thing. :)

There's a cat somewhere close to the place I stay, because it makes catty sounds. :)

The trams in the Hague are, erm, funny. When it rains, they are late. When anything else happens, they are late. They are just generally late, and that's that.

You can get an anonymous OV-chipkaart for riding the trams (and also trains in the whole country, which I consider quite clever). The tram tariff in the Hague works like this: you pay some boarding fee (...about 0.90 eur), and then something like 15 cents per km. If you change quickly enough, you don't pay the boarding fee twice. I find this ridiculously complex, and I only wonder how come that the British are not doing this. (Because the British love things which are insanely complex.)

I am killing my congitive bias here. There is a Polish shop nearby. I know the Dutch beers, so I decided to try the Polish ones. Before, I was reluctant to try, because I was a bit like, meh, Polish beer is no good compared to Pilsner Urquell. But now I've tried and I quite like it. :) My fav Polish beer so far is Perla chmielowa (orhowdoyouspellit).

I don't sleep very well here, probably because I am learning awful lot every day.

I actually do some pretty good aikido here, with a friend of mine who is a total kick-ass. I like her classes very much. :) Do you know these muay-thai, kick box, wing chun etc. guys who claim that aikido is not a real martial art because it's soft and fake and stuff? I would like them to practice with this lady. I am sure she would kick their ass 1000%.

They do good cheese here. Also, the French cheese tastes better here than across the Channel. A fiver to the person who tells me why!

The water pressure is not great. It's even worse than in Manchester (and that's something)!

There are killer stairs in my place. They are ladder-like, and they have no railings on the 'open side' (the one away from wall - where you can actually fall down). Health & safety, people!

Few shops accept Visa or MasterCard, they all want to see Maestro. OMG facepalm. :) Obviously, if you want to reload your OV chipkaart, you also need Maestro - meaning that the only place I can recharge is Den Haag Centraal. I tried elsewhere, but it ended up with me having to persuade a receptionist to pay for me with her card, and me giving her cash. O_o

Who invented this language, I don't know. It looks kinda Germanic but not quite, and it's just very funny. And it sounds even funnier than it looks!

The Hague is a nice city (especially on the second sight). However, for a Londoner, it looks like post-zombie-apocalypse. After ca 10 pm, there's nobody on the streets. Nobody. Nobody.

There is this place, Scheveningen, which is said to be a 'test city'. During the war, the Dutch were able to tell who's German based on how they pronounced the name of this place. If they pronounced the German 'Sch' (instead of 'sk'), they were clearly Germans, even if they pretended to be Dutch. Very handy if you have spies everywhere!

It is said that in Holland, nobody uses curtains. Well, ok, they don't, but they use these stickers on their windows which make the windows only translucent, not transparent. They probably call it privacy, but I call it cheating.

Bikes. Bikes everywhere. What's more Dutch? :) :)

Northern talk v London talk: that is something worth a very serious scientific research. :) People in the North tend to talk differently from the Londoners, and it's not just a matter of accent.

What I haven't heard since moving to London:
- ta (instead of thanks or thank you)
- easy peasy
- pants (instead of trousers)
- dinner (instead of lunch) and tea (instead of dinner)
- brew (for tea - drink)

What the Londoners seem to use far less than the Northerners:
- fair enough
- cheers

What the Londoners say and the Northerner would never say:
- pudding (meaing dessert - it was explained to me that it comes from posh boarding schools - so an institution poor Northerners don't even think of attending)

I think there are more words / expressions to follow. :)

O-O-OK, maybe one more thing I wanted to talk about. The obvious one. The Obvious One.

So. Last June 23rd, on the referendum night, I went to sleep as usual in our little cosy Manchester flat. I briefly woke up at around 4 am and wanted to happily go back to sleep, but then - I realised - The Results Are Coming. Suddenly I was wide awake. And checking BBC, obviously.

By 6 am, it was clear, the result climbed over 50%. The husband also woke up briefly at that time. I showed him my phone screen. He did not wake up at first - he was like, yeah yawn, but suddenly he was like, what? And fully awake.

Friday morning was pretty post-apo. It was like going to work through a ghost town. Manchester was strongly pro-remain, and the few people wandering the streets looked like zombies. At work, at least two of my bosses were crying. People looked like something fundamental was taken away from them - like a flood or fire took their house.

Since then, the first shock is gone, but the hangover is still sort of here. The new PM knows nothing about what's going on. She thinks she's cool and hard and not to be fooled - the new Thatcher. But she is most obviously not. On the contrary: the more she says or does, the more it is obvious that she has no f. clue. And the more the sterling falls, making me poorer and poorer! Grrrr. :(

The whole situation in just sort of b/s. Last funny twist was the letters: they are sending letters to EU citizens that they have one month to leave the UK, otherwise they go to jail. The Home Office claims that this is a mistake, but it just makes me nervous. If such a letter has been sent by mistake, it means that the letter exists, and can be sent.

ಠ_ಠ

Rant about the Tube!

I hate it. I can't stand the Tube, especially in the rush hour. It totally gets on my nerves. I cannot do it. I am one of these spoilt basterds who need to live close to where they work becasuse I just cannot, cannot, cannot do the Tube.

Why? Because it sucks. It sucks so much that if I were a guy, and if it sucked any harder, ... you know. ;)

More reasons:
1) signal failure
2) faulty train at station X
3) congestion.

Regarding reason 1, there's signal filure somewhere nearly every day. Funnily enough, it happens quite often near Ealing. Don't ask me why.

How do I know, even if I don't never set my foot anywhere near Ealing, or many other Tube stations? Because my company has intranet, and on the front page of the intranet, there are the WTFL updates. Quite entertaining to watch how it gets from 'minor delays' to 'severe delays' to (sometimes) 'partial closure' and then to 'severe delays' and minor delays' and finally 'good service'.

Anyway. About the signal failure - wherever it happens - how about a simple solution? Just. F***ing. Fix. It. It happens almost daily, so just fix it. Do something so it doesn't happen every day. Go for it! Don't be shy!

Regarding reason 2. I've read somewhere that this is the most common reason for delays. As in point 1, this happens all the f. time. All the time. Every day or so. So - how about doing something about that? Not sufficiently London-cool?

Regarding reason 3, this is something that p. me off royally. Like, this was the reason for the whole idea, for actually bothering to put the trains underground, build the tunnels, etc. etc. - to avoid traffic jams and congestion. So how come that the trains are stuck in congestion? Are you even f. serious?

(For those who never experienced this travesty. If you travel on certain lines in certain times of the day (typically District / Metropolitan / Circle lines around the rush hour), you randomly stop in a tunnel for 1-10 mins, between each two stops, and a voice tells you that the train is stuck in a congestion and/or we are waiting for the train in front of us to clear the platform and/or we are waiting for a green signal. Or something like that. Literally a metro traffic jam. W.T.F.)

Actually,
4) Where's the oxygen?

This tends to be worse on some lines than others. Example: Piccadilly. Just think about Piccadilly and you are dead already, just from the very thought, due to the hot, CO2-rich environment down there

5) Miscellaneous.

Have you ever heard about Waterloo and City? This is an incredible two stops line (I am serious, it only has the two termini - Waterloo and Bank - ad there's nothing between these two) which is designed only for the bankers working in the City. These people usually live in the rich, posh Western suburbs. In the morning, they arrive to Waterloo train station by the suburban trains, and then take the Tube to the City. Cosequence: while all the Tube is very diverse (people of all nationalities, races, occupations, religions, etc. etc.), W&C is almost like a Gentlemen's Club. If you don't wear a suit and a tie, and don't have your copy of The Financial Times, you are not allowed in.
The iconic sentence (printed on T shirts and postcards) is Mind the gap. I think that Signal failure or Mind the doors, mind the closing doors, mind the doors would be much more appropriate. Especially the latter is the new mind the gap: you can hear it in almost every station, pronounced by an orderly on the platform, trying to let the train move as soon as it has a red signal (so that you don't make the congestion even worse).

Which lines do I like? I don't like any Tube lines, but some p. me off less than others. For example Jubilee looks OK most of the time. Victoria works most of the time. Metropolitan is kinda all right - sometimes. But - feel free to disagree.

Strangely, I also like Bakerloo, mostly because it looks totally postapo (and I like the 'romantic' feeling about that).

And so on. The. Tube. Sucks.

End of rant.

There's one thing I wanted to share more than anything else: the reasons why I started with the weird and funny and amazing art of aikido. Because - to those who know me & who know aikido - this would seem like the most unlikely combination. Here is the explanation.

Why did I start?  Good question. I certainly did not know what I was subscribing for.

I was doing some krav maga before staring aikido. KM is very pragmatic, very goal-oriented. Some say aggressive, which is certainly also true: the 'aggressive' is there for a reason, the reason being the need to deal with an attack as quickly and as efficiently as possible. It is also fairly easy and straightforward to learn. Which is why I like it so much.

But there was only one class a week in Manchester. I was looking for something else, something to supplement my KM training. And, for some reasons (karate is too much competition, taekwondo is too much high kicks which I cannot do, boxing was banned by the husband, etc. etc.), the choice of which martial art was soon reduced to judo or aikido

I chose to give aikido a try, because it was in a more convenient location and at a more convenient time of the week. I was like, if I don't like it, I can still go for judo or whatever. However, after the first class, I was so impressed that I stayed.

Karma? Maybe.

Why did I stay? For me, this question is far more complex than ‘why did I start’. Anyone can start – in the sense that they go for one or few classes and see if they like it. My initial plan was exactly this. Go for it, see how it goes, and if it’s b/s, never show up again. And go try judo instead.

But – there’s the magic. Maybe it is ki, and maybe not. I tend to think that the magic is actually physics. Biomechanics. How your body works, how it transfers forces, how it can act as a lever and how you can fix the position of your arms and move your body so that you actually move not only your body, but also the attacker's body. And how you can really use the force the attacker gves you to do things. Whatever it is, it is fascinating.

The truth is that during my first class ever, I was deeply impressed by the magic. We did this exercise which starts with the attacker grabbing both the defender’s wrists from behind (ushiro ryote dori? Whatever…) and continues with the defender lifting their arms upwards, turning their arms in a funny way to resemble something from Karate Kid, and bending the whole body forwards. And then – then, when the defender is in this funny position, and relaxes the shoulders, nobody can move them. However, as soon as the defender tenses the shoulders and/or starts fighting the attacker's force, the magic stops working, and suddenly everybody can move the defender whenever they want.

Sounds weird when described like this. But the fact that you are in a funny bent-over position and somebody pushes and nothing happens because all the force transfers via your arms and body and legs straight to the floor - I just immediately spotted something fascinating. The magic. Possibly the underlying principle - I don't know.

Anyway, I was impressed. I was so impressed that I immediately thought that I absolutely have to learn this thing, whatever it takes. So I came again. And again. And again. And… you see.

When I moved to London, this was the first thing I searched for - a suitable dojo. Not a GP or anything like that. Even KM was second to aikido. Funny, isn't it.

So, was it karma? I am not sure. I can say only this much: 

If I started any sooner, before I did a decent amount of krav maga and before my (earlier) dragon boat career, I would most definitely consider aikido the worst, purest Asian martial art b/s ever seen.

If I started anywhere else than in my beloved Manchester dojo (which is very ki-oriented and therefore does a lot of magic-related exercises), I would probably consider aikido the worst, purest Asian martial art b/s ever seen.

But I started in Manchester, and I started at the exactly right time, and now I just feel that while this is ridiculously complex and incredibly difficult, I still have to learn the stuff anyway.

Isn't it funny? I think it is. :)

Hello again.

It's been a while. I doubt that this blog still has any readers at all, but hey.

I suppose I shall rename this blog now - now it's more like From Prague via Manchester to London. But I probably won't, at least for a while. Anyway, this is where I am now - London. I relocated at the end of April (...29 April to be more precise), and I now live on the edge of Shoreditch, the hipsta-fancy-supercool-nonmainstream part of this very interesting city.

As you can imagine, a lot has happened in the past 16 months. It's a long and complicated story of one broken heart. Plus at least one psycho. Plus some martial arts. :)

Long story short: things became bad at work. Then worse. Then much worse. Then even much, much worse. Then, insanely bad. And then I left because I have been pushed so far, and so hard, that I just couldn't cope any more. And that was it. I will spare you details. I will only make the following two comments:
1/ I never did anything wrong. I kept in line with my core values and with integrity, and I always followed what I believed in. For which I paid dearly.
2/ My heart is broken, not love-wise but work-wise. I invested incredible amount of time, energy and passion into my work, and it just did not work, and at the end it all blew up in my face, and I was left an emotional wreck.

Anyway. I started looking for work. I tried to stay in Manchester. because things. I kinda liked the city I guess. But no way, the only interview I had in Mcr did not go very well, and after seeing potential employers in London, Birmingham, London, Glasgow, London, Newcastle, London, Southampton, London, Amsterdam and Stockholm, I was left with two offers. London, or - London. I picked London.

So here I am, in a shared flat once again, living in a room which has, like, 8 sqare meters. Sharing, among others, with a cat.

Great many things happened since my last post. For example:
- Brexit referendum happened, with the f. results
- Theresa May (and her b/s) happened to us
- I started aikido (Oh yes! I! Started! Aikido!)
- we went for Christmas holidays in Malta (...you'd never guess how cool it is to go to Malta in winter!)
- Theresa May said things to EU (oh no)
- I relocated, and now I am observing a different city (which feels so different that I now believe people who say 'London is like a different country when compared to the rest of the UK')
- I lectured in Brussels (which was surprisingly good)
- my students got their exam results (aaand - some of them made it - yaaaay!)
- I realized how much better my currect company is compared to my previous company

I think that I will write about most of these things some time in the future. Or maybe not. We'll see. Keep your fingers crossed for me!