You feel the train long before you see it. The preceding hot gush of air, that wall of sound that fills the tube station. A cloud of dust and paper wrappers and other debris billows up as the brakes of the train scream, the telltale clack-clack and rumble of iron wheels on electrified track. Then the train approaches. The windows flashing past like the panels of a kinetiscope, with passengers standing and sitting and holding onto the rubbed steel bars, their bodies swaying with the motion of the train as it decelerates with precision and the doors open.
The ubiquitous “Mind the gap!” voice fills the tunnel now, along with the hum of humanity filling the platform. They seem to suck the air right out of the chamber as they hurry off to the exits. The rest of us clambor onto the train cars, minding the gap, and I can only think of what horrendous fate one could meet by not heeding this advice.
The train howls down the track again and I sit with my giant backpack in my lap. Feeling completely conspicuous, marked as a tourist. I listen to two men with shaven heads and sport jackets and gold watches talking tought about something, like a pair of Jason Statham doubles. The mind the gap voice is replaced by a friendly woman’s voice, announcing each stop along the way on the Picadilly Line. At this point, I don’t have the names of the stops etched into my mind just yet. I keep an ear open for only one placename and that is Knightsbridge. The rest sound like quaint names out of Harry Potter, some kind of portmanteau of names where it is hard to imagine people actually living. What singles out the tourists—and there is a young Dutch couple, students from the looks of them, sitting across from me—isn’t the backpacks as much as every time the voice says “Cockfosters” as the terminal stop on the line, we can’t help but snicker or smile.
The tough guys and the Dutch students eventually disembark and I am left as the veteran of this train car as others get on, glancing at my backpack which I peer over. I feel like a high school kid running track again, listening for the loudspeaker to announce my heat. The same hot pit in my stomach fills up with each announcement of a stop. I follow the line on the diagram ahead of me. Knightsbridge is just another few stops ahead. Then it is the next stop. I wonder if my legs are going to work. My head is still humming from the roar of 9 hours on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and unlimited glasses of wine which I drank to induce some sort of lost time effect on the flight as I was crammed between a man sitting next to a window he never opened and the man on the aisle seat that chatted with me in spite of my attempts to look like I was sleeping. He filled the fuselage of the aircraft with what could only be described as Bacon Crisps fart and a sleepy old man’s voice which barely registered over the engines.
The scent seems to have followed me into the city. London doesn’t smell like industry or mildew as I would have expected. It’s not the diesel and rain I remember of New York City or the brine and fish and flowers of San Francisco. No, it’s just more bacon crisps, with the under notes of river. Not a lazy, musty river either. This reminds me of a river in the mountains, muddy and wild.
I hadn’t slept hardly at all, but at the same time I don’t remember much of what I watched on the tiny screen in the back of the chair in front of me either. I feel like I haven’t slept for days already.
At my stop, it is like the starting gun goes off and I file with direction and purpose out of the traincar, onto the platform and feel pushed along the crowd towards the surface. I have studied the map in my pocket numerous times for this moment. I have charted exactly where I need to go upon reaching the surface. What the map hasn’t prepared me for is that Knightsbridge Station has three exits. One on Picadilly and the corner of Brompton Road, another across the street, and a third that emerges just in front of Harrod’s away from all traffic. I find my way out at the Harrod’s tube entrance. To do this, you have to go straight up out of the Underground.
I have no idea where the fuck I am or how to get to my Airbnb. Even though it is just two blocks away.
The thing about London is it is a city of outsiders. It seems like everyone is either a tourist or an immigrant. I ask someone for directions outside of Harrod’s. They look official. Uniform. That rushed professional urgency. Fancy hat and a yellow belt. They have no idea where Trevor Court is. So, I grudgingly hop onto the Map app on my phone, feeling my life savings running through my fingers as I’m sure my cellular carrier is draining my account to pay for the data I am using. Then I hop onto the Harrod’s Wifi. The map tells me to cross Brompton Road. I attempt this like a game of Frogger. Crossing halfway and waiting for traffic, my brain skewing to account for the way oncoming traffic is coming, in spite of the reminders literally plastered on every curb. “LOOK RIGHT! LOOK LEFT!”
I hear the “BING!” of a bell, and feel the rush of a bicycle pass inches from my body as I cross. The guy on the bike is gone before I realize really what happened. Another step and it would have been my ass.
I wander through the streets, briefly checking my position until I find Trevor Court and the row of white and black townhomes where I will be staying for the next ten days. I meet the Host, shake hands, trudge behind him up the neverending switchbacks of narrow stairs, until I find my room, immediately get chastised for wearing shoes into the flat, and as he carries my shoes down again to the front door, I deposit my enormous backpack on the floor and collapse onto the bed. Outside are the sounds of the city through the open window, as well as the songs of birds.
A city of eight million people and there are songbirds here.
I fall asleep, almost out of a somatic reflex from stress and lack of sleep. I awaken a few hours later and the sun is low in the sky. I feel that sensation, that pull that will take me out into a strange new city for the first time. Like it is pulling me out into it. And I let it.
I walk to Hyde Park and skirt along the Serpentine until I find a coffee shop. Couples on first dates are ordering espressos. I place my order for a Flat White and wait for my coffee, taking everything in, trying not to be in the way. As I drink my coffee, I follow the paved pathways, being passed by a fitness group where their leader is a young woman with the thickest Scottish accent I have heard yet. I follow the sound of it for a while, like a cartoon character locked onto the scent of a fresh baked pie.
My feet take me counterclockwise around the Serpentine and south again to Kensington Park as the light begins to fade. I take pictures until the golden hour ends on the dome of Royal Albert Hall. I get myself lost to find my way home and find a tavern. Tattersalls. Where I am introduced to and summarily ruined for English fish and chips for the rest of my life. There can be almost no match to the deliciousness that I have consumed.
I get back to my Airbnb, 35 Pounds lighter and realize as expensive as things are, I might very well starve. But I am being fed in so many other ways.
I’m coming up on the two year anniversary of my first solo trip abroad. It’s hard not to think about it. I can’t help but wonder how things have changed since then. A year before COVID. A year before travel has stopped for many of us and when it resumes, what will become of adventures like the one I had?
A lot has happened in the last year. This is a statement we’ve been hearing all around the world for a while now. Things have changed, from minute, everyday things like how we sit down in restaurants and order our meals to bigger things like how our children attend school, essentially no more movies, live music, or large gatherings of people. Not so long ago, things were different. Things were…normal. I’m beginning to think of things in terms of BC and Now. Before COVID. What comes next?