This is just a little note to all South Africans who have been overseas on Schengen visas: STOP TELLING OTHER SOUTH AFRICANS THAT IT IS EASY. IT IS NOT EASY. Today, we are cautiously optimistic about Kyle’s visa. I have been praying hard and it seems to have been approved this morning, thank God. Basically, that was the feedback we got when we spoke to Sam the Visa Technician this morning. So that is a very very good thing. The note at the top of this entry, however, refers to all the people who said ‘Ag, just do the visa when you get to London, it is so easy and it only takes like, a day.’ Ok, stop telling people that, because it is not, like, true. It is very, like, difficult. Sure, it only took two days after a week of information collecting, stress and a little bit of tricksting the system, but it also cost us £200 in flights booked, flights cancelled, stress and money given to Sam the Visa Technician. Basically, it will all be worth it if we pick up a shiney new visa tomorrow, but people should be aware that it takes time, money, string pulling, more money and lots of lots of internet hours. So if you are a South African wanting a Schengen, organise it in the grand old R S of A before you get here, unless you have a month or two before you need the visa. Make it two to be safe.
In other news, today I took steps to organise a bank account at a place called Visa First (?). Basically, they are also tricksting the system, and what they do is this: they are a company, and they vouch for you, so you can get a bank account without having a job or any papers from home. This loophole will cost you £35, and they even help you fill in the banking form. I also tried to get clarification on NIN, NHS, etc etc. The explanation I got was this:
Me: Ok, so what is a National Insurance Number? Is it linked to NHS in some way? How are the two different? (Author’s note: admittedly I wasn’t quite so succinct in my question, but I flatter myself that I got the gist of it)
VF: Rather get an NIN, cause then you get charged less tax.
Me: Ok cool, I will. Now for NHS, do I need a number for that?
VF: NHS stands for National Health Service.
Me: And do I need a number to refer to?
VF: Rather get an National Insurance Number, because you pay less tax.
Me: Ok, but what about NHS? Is there a number to activate it?
VF: NHS stands for National Health Service, but for numbers, rather get a National Insurance Number, because you pay less tax.
And so I decided to look on the internet rather. Which I have not done.
Our dinner plan has just cancelled on us. *curses* to the man who promises me food and then cancels. *curses*
But much love to the rest of you!
Filed under: Travel
Things I know about Woburn:
I stayed in a house that smelt like cheese.
People in Woburn seem to be wealthy, considering the large amounts of Range Rovers, and also the fact that at some places they charge £16 for a steak.
They get really touchy about their deer.
Ok, so basically, we arrived late in Milton Keynes, having underestimated the time it took to get there. Then, we went to The Swan for supper. The Swan is a really pretty little pub that Kelly and Tam used to work at. Then, Tam ordered almost everything off the deli board at £1.50 per item, and my head nearly exploded trying to convert it all into rands. Then, it was all on the house, because Tam is a manager at the restaurant. Can I get a woo-hoo at this point? Woo Hoo! Free Food! Then, we went to the Black Horse, Tam’s current pub, and sat there until the early hours.
Then we went home, and this is where the house of cheese comes in. Short story: the house smelt like cheese. Long story: this house, supposedly inhabited by Tam’s ‘neat freak’ (how can I emphasise that more?) boss, had stuff growing mold in pots (and can you imagine how long it would have had to be there to get moldy in the cold?!), had cigarette butts in glasses and basically, was pretty disgusting and also smelt like cheese. So we stayed in the cheese house for two days, but there were ample rewards, including seeing Tam, who is running around moving twice as fast as any normal person, as a result of having to think faster than a table of grumpy customers. So we played with Tam, and she fed us and it was all lovely, but then came The Shame of the Woburn Deer Incident.
So on Sunday morning it was blustery and cold, as England is given to be at any particular day or time, so we went walking up to the Woburn Abbey. Except we cut across a piece of grass where other people were walking already, and foolishly believed that we could take the same path. So there we were, borderline frolicking up this hill in the wind and the cold, past some deer, the pictures of which I am sure Kyle will upload shortly and generally having a smashing time (English terms are needed since we were near deer in Woburn) when we saw a man up ahead, who had seen us, frowned upon us, and subsequently driven all the way up the hill to meet us at the top and tell us that we weren’t allowed to walk on the grass, and there was a sign to that effect at the bottom of the hill (which we didn’t, in fairness, walk past, but that is another story). We began the tried and tested ‘I’m not from around here’ excuse, but were swiftly defeated in verbal combat by the comment (English accent): Yeah, but in fairness a sign is a sign everywhere you go though, innit? We had to bow to this superior logic, or feign a ‘Mi no speak eeeenglish’. We decided to go with dignity, and left, this time (after another bout of correction from the same man when we walked on the tar instead of the footpath) on the footpath, which, I regret, looked remarkably similar to where we had been walking. Thus, leaving us with the feeling that we had been wronged. Thus, leaving us with a slogan pertaining to deer. So if there are any deer reading this, be warned. We intend to steal your grass and eat your children. But probably not, because underneath it all, we’re just softies.
And this concludes the story of Woburn.
Filed under: Travel
We’re on a train back from Milton Keynes now, after visiting with Tam. Luckily, it wasn’t such a dogshow this time getting on the train. We managed to get onto a Virgin Train this time as well, which was supposed to be way better and more comfortable… we’re still stuck on the floor of this train… squatting on our backpack, and watching an episode of Scrubs on Hopeful (Thats the name of my new notebook).
I’m hopefully going to be able to convince Gavin tonight about buying my video camera and things over the web for me, and then let me give him the cash. We’re also hoping to get to 1stContact this week, to organise some bank accounts over here. They’re a company that Tam’s roommate works for, which gives people who have just arrived in the country all the things that they’ll need to get started. It prevents you from waiting, like, 3 months for a bank account, and comes with a rad “nommie” card, which you can phone home with for a bucket load of free minutes.
There was no reception in Milton Keynes, so for all the peeps who tried to contact us whilst we were there, we’re sorry for the zero-response, but it was out of our control. We stayed in a little village outside of Milton Keynes, called Woburn. Woburn is super strange. I’ll let Jenbug tell you more about it in her post, because I’m tired of writing all the posts these days 
As I said in the last one, tomorrow is the day that the visa application gets sent through to the embassy, so we’re holding thumbs for that all to go alright. I’ve also decided to maybe look into buying some random flight into Spain or France, or even Italy, sometime in the next month or two, and then booking some random accomodation in a hostel somewhere, so I can give them some more forms to take tomorrow and hopefully give me access to a longer visa. This is all in the hands of the French, though, and they’re hands that I’ve come to hate. Ugly hands. French hands.
I felt like a real Saffer this weekend, missioning around with our backpack with the SA flag sewn on. People in Woburn stare a lot, but not just because we were tourists, but rather, just because they are rich and dodgy. Rich people. Dodgy rich.
Anyways… Train is almost back into London. Gotta get out of the doorway!
We finally managed to get to Milton Keynes last night, to visit Tam (Ramp Ramp). It wasn’t the easiest of journeys, and it was heavily delayed by the days activities. Some of which included:
Organising variations of the documentation that Nexus had asked for the day before.
Taking even more documentation to Nexus to organise the Schengen Visa.
Riding on the trains for HOURS.
Buying a big-ass Pizza Hut special, and mapping it in about 10 minutes.
Strawberries.
So yeah, Nexus wanted another document, so we spent the morning organising it and then going to collect it. The places that we have to go are more than a couple stops along the District line of the tubes, so when you need to get there, you have to be content with at least 45 minutes on the train. Then, you hit your change-over, and move on to the same line but going in a different direction, which then takes a further 20 minutes to get to the correct stop. And thad having all these weirdo Londoners around us. The door right next to us kept on half opening and banging around, as well, as we flew through the outskirts of London, and into “the wilderness”
Finally, we made it to Milton Keynes, and found ourselves trapped on the wrong side of a ticket-taking-gate. We moved off to the one side and found the ticket-master type dude who could sell you tickets if you didn’t have any. Before we left, we had found out that it would be £13 return for the train. But, as we soon found out, if you don’t have tickets when you get there, you pay penalty fares and last-minute type prices, resulting in us having to fork out £22.50 each for the return journey. He was supposed to charge us £20 for EACH LEG, but he said he’d let us off this time. Nice Britain. Friendly Britain.
Eventually we got past the ticket gates and found a very excited and happy Tamsyn waiting for us. We headed off to our dinner reservation at the sister pub to the one that she manages at, and started getting down to some really crazy deli foods and lots and lots of wine. We spent an hour there and then headed off to the pub she was working at because she had a shift at 8pm till 10pm. She sat us down at another table, and just kept dumping bottle after bottle of wine into our never-empty glasses. We ended up meeting this couple who had been working on ships and travelling for about 10 years! Zoe, the wife, was pretty drunk once we started talking to her, which resulted in a pretty repetitive discussion about travelling and places to go. At the end of it, we walked away with his business card, her cell number, and an offer that went something like this (over and over again): “You guys, you know, we know… what itcsh laaik to travel.. and we know what itcsh laaik to need a home base. You just, anytime, you just say, Zoe…. we need a plaaise to staye… and we’ll have you. Anyfing from the fridge, anyfing to eat, go out for dinna, anyfing. You just haves to call.” – Shame, she was really sweet, and she basically offered us a place to stay anytime we’re in England, so it was pretty rad of her.
Much wine was consumed, and sometime after 11pm I headed back to Tam’s house to get in some shuteye. Jenbug and Tam went back to the pub after tucking me in, and stayed out for a littlts just to fetch the damn document… then it’s back on the train, and back all the way along to 3 stops before where you started, and a bit of a walk to the building where we have to keep taking all of this. Putney bridge is where they’re located, for all the London peeps who read this blog. Putney is a really strange word… and it’s ironic because since we arrived here, Jenbug and I have joked about how incredibly siff (manky, disgusting) the word sounds, and how it would really suck to live there. We travel past it almost every day on the district line from Wimbledon, so it’s been quite hilarious now actually having to get off the tube at the Putney station and mission through Putney village, full of all the Putneyers. Putney folk. Cheap folk. Manky Putney.
So once we had ridden the tubes all morning and afternoon, we decided to split up for the last assault on Putney. I would go back into the manky place and drop off the desired booking letter, and Jenbug would head back to Wimbledon, stop off at Pizza Hut, cash in on one of the coupons we got the other day, and claim a large (large is MASSIVE at Pizza Hut) pizza for £8, which would be the first meal of the day for us! You’re able to select any 5 toppings for the pizza, as well as the fact that you can just split it into halves, and have completely different stuff on each side. Although, do be warned, if you are concerned about tasting some of the other sides toppings, then you’re going to have to deal with it because they aren’t very accurate when spreading the toppings over. All I could think of whilst devouring the pizza yesterday, was a vegetarian and a meat-eater trying to share a pizza, and the shear amount of chicken that said vegetarian would enevitably munch on. Chicken is strange in the EU. Chicken chicken… the other white meat.
After we ate, we threw all of our desired clothes into one of our backpacks, and we headed for Euston station (about 15 stops away from us, with 1 change-over at a really busy station) to catch the earliest train we could get to Milton Keynes. After about an hour and a bit on the tubes, we arrived at Euston station and made a run for the national rail lines upstairs. We spotted two platforms that had trains going to Milton Keynes, and started bolting for the one that seemed to only have 2 stops before it got there. As we were running down the platform, we were both wondering how we in fact were supposed to purchase tickets for the train, considering that you could just walk straight onto it. As we arrived at the now closing doors, we asked the guy standing in the doorway if we could buy tickets on the other side, to which he replied, “Yeah, theres a thingy on the other side”.
We got onto the most stuffy and hot train you’ve ever been on, with all the Londoners standing around you in their massive jackets. Jenbug and I started just pealing off clothing left right and center, and were finally a little bit cooler about 3 layers down. There were no seats. There were just business men. Unluckily, by the time we got to the train, it was already after 5pm so it was peak time and there were just tons of business men and women all commuting home. It made the train ride quite uncomfortable, having to stand for about an hour on this high-speed train, feeling incredibly hot and stuffy, and having all these weirdo Londoners around us. The door right next to us kept on half opening and banging around, as well, as we flew through the outskirts of London, and into “the wilderness”
Finally, we made it to Milton Keynes, and found ourselves trapped on the wrong side of a ticket-taking-gate. We moved off to the one side and found the ticket-master type dude who could sell you tickets if you didn’t have any. Before we left, we had found out that it would be £13 return for the train. But, as we soon found out, if you don’t have tickets when you get there, you pay penalty fares and last-minute type prices, resulting in us having to fork out £22.50 each for the return journey. He was supposed to charge us £20 for EACH LEG, but he said he’d let us off this time. Nice Britain. Friendly Britain.
Eventually we got past the ticket gates and found a very excited and happy Tamsyn waiting for us. We headed off to our dinner reservation at the sister pub to the one that she manages at, and started getting down to some really crazy deli foods and lots and lots of wine. We spent an hour there and then headed off to the pub she was working at because she had a shift at 8pm till 10pm. She sat us down at another table, and just kept dumping bottle after bottle of wine into our never-empty glasses. We ended up meeting this couple who had been working on ships and travelling for about 10 years! Zoe, the wife, was pretty drunk once we started talking to her, which resulted in a pretty repetitive discussion about travelling and places to go. At the end of it, we walked away with his business card, her cell number, and an offer that went something like this (over and over again): “You guys, you know, we know… what itcsh laaik to travel.. and we know what itcsh laaik to need a home base. You just, anytime, you just say, Zoe…. we need a plaaise to staye… and we’ll have you. Anyfing from the fridge, anyfing to eat, go out for dinna, anyfing. You just haves to call.” – Shame, she was really sweet, and she basically offered us a place to stay anytime we’re in England, so it was pretty rad of her.
Much wine was consumed, and sometime after 11pm I headed back to Tam’s house to get in some shuteye. Jenbug and Tam went back to the pub after tucking me in, and stayed out for a little while longer.
All in all it was a really long day. We’re in Milton Keynes till Sunday night and then on Monday, Nexus will be taking my application to the French Embassy and we will be finding out for sure if our trip to France is going to happen or not. So far, there is £200 riding on it, should it get declined. I really really really hope it comes through. It’s -10′C at Jen’s aunt and uncles place in France, at the moment, and snowing like a champion. Champion snow, Snow champion.
Filed under: Travel
Dell are amazing. I just got off the phone with their customer support line. The conversation went something like this:
Kyle: Hi there, I am wanting to return my copy of Windows Media Center, that I got with my notebook, for a refund.
Dell: Okay, so you’re wanting to return it because you have no use for it?
Kyle: Yes, I have no use for it, I use Linux instead. I have removed the pre-installed Windows from my machine.
Dell: Sure sir, just hold on for me one sec.
Kyle: Okay.
[ 20 seconds pass ]
Dell: Okay, just a few more moments, please sir.
Kyle: Sure.
[ 30 seconds pass ]
Dell: Okay sir, you may keep the CD copies of the Microsoft software that was bundled with the notebook, and I’m just checking to see what Dell paid for that software.
Dell: It says on the system that £25 plus VAT was paid for that license. It will take 3 working days to process, but we will be reversing that amount onto the credit card that made payment for the notebook. It should be done by Tuesday morning, but I will phone you with an update on progress on Tuesday morning.
Kyle: So I can just keep or throw away the Windows CD’s.
Dell: Yes, you don’t have to return them to us. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Kyle: No, thats all.
Dell: Okay, I’ve emailed you the notes as record of this conversation with us, to your email address, and I will be contacting you early next week. If you have any other queries, then please do not hesitate to contact me at the address given.
Kyle: Awesome, no worries.
Dell: Thank you for calling Dell UK Customer Support.
*BAM* And just like that £30 refund for Microsoft Media Center 2005! Whilst the £30 is very much under valued (£70 RRP, usually), I am more than happy with it, purely because of the fact that they were so accomodating with it. It was the nicest experience I’ve ever had with a customer support line. Clearly, Dell have identified this as being something that needs to be addressed, and have put in the necessary protocol for the help line people to follow. Based on how quickly she could respond to it, it is most definitely something that has now been built into their customer support database. I am really really really impressed with Dell. In fact, I am contemplating getting hold of Linux Journal, or one of the other places that have published stories about Windows Tax Refund, and telling the about how awesome it was to deal with Dell today.
So incredibly impressed. £30 … R420 … More than adequate to not sneeze at and ignore. Linux is being recognized. Dell recognizes Geeks.
It’s still snowing Well, it’s not nearly as bad as it was yesterday (or good), but it’s still snowing. The little fluffy flakes are falling all around our house at the moment, but they’re pretty much melting as soon as they touch down. In fact, it’s very similar to the snow that Jozi experienced last year for just a few moments. Though, this snow is quite a bit thicker and more consistent.
Yesterday was the most stressful day here, so far. We decided to devote the day towards getting my Schengen Visa sorted out. It wasn’t pretty, and at around lunch time we were dealing with the idea that it may in fact not be possible for me to get the visa before we leave for France on the 1st of February. 
. We were losing hope, so we did more and more research into alternatives. The french embassy here only lets you in if you have an appointment. So, you phone this number that is charged at £1 per minute, and listen to some random pre-recorded frenchy frog that tells you all this random and useless information for a couple minutes, before letting you know that the first available booking is on the 13th of February! 2 weeks to get an appointment to organise a visa! WHAT!? After I dealt with the immense hatred and bleakness I had with the French at this stage, we started looking into other options. Private companies.
It’s the same as in South Africa, really, which did surprise me a bit. Most of the visa, passport etc places here have booking systems that usually take a little bit of time… so, what do the companies do? Well, they book appointments themselves, thus driving up the minimum amount of time that you have to wait for an appointment, thus making it more inconvenient for most people, thus making most people phone and use the companies which already have the appointment in 2 days time. It’s a vicious circle… but all you South African’s will be happy to know that it also happens in these 1st world countries, and it’s not something that only us “developing” countries suffer from. Which is a theme that I’ve experienced in many places around London, and in the EU in general. There are many inadequacies and inefficiencies over here, just like in SA, but some of them are just deeper and not so obvious on the surface, as they are in SA. As I’m typing this, I cannot remember some of the more larger and obvious ones, but when they come to me, or when I encounter them again, I’ll most definitely blog about it
So, the end result is that we found a company called Nexus who can do the visa application in 5 working days. We are gathering the documentation today and hopefully we can submit it this afternoon. We’re still waiting on the letter of invitation from Jen’s aunt and uncle in France, which they sent a few days ago, but which they also went way-out-of-their-way to organise. Thanks again for all the effort, I really do appreciate it.
If all goes to plan, we’ll be heading off to France on the 2nd or the 3rd of Feb. A little behind schedule, but at least they’ll allow me past the border. Speaking of borders… we were at certain stages of yesterday thinking about going the “Fly into Geneva (Switzerland), hire a car and drive across the french border without a visa” route…. but then we weighed up the pro’s and con’s of it, and decided that it may be a bit too risky. Some of the pro’s included spending a day or two in Switzerland… some of the con’s included being banned from entering an EU country for 15 years, and a 5000 euro fine… to name a few
We’re still staying at Neil’s place… who, as always, is taking the best care of us. We’re constantly brought packets of food every evening, and lavished with the most incredible munchies throughout the day. Yesterday included going to Nando’s with the coupons he gave us, and getting a full lemon and herb chicken worth £10, for absolutely free. We made burritos with it, mixed with some avo and cheese. Hmmmm burritos. The avo’s here are so so so small. They’re quite a sorry excuse for avocado, but tasty nonetheless. 49p per avo makes you wish that they were a little bit bigger!
This morning I’m dedicating some time towards getting my Windows Tax Refund from my Laptop, from Dell. For all the people who read my own personal blog, it’s been quite heavily documented on there for the past few months. I started working on it in South Africa, and finally, the time is now to start working on Dell UK and getting my £50 (or there abouts) refund on my unused copy of Windows. Hold thumbs!
Jenbug is still sleeping by the way. Every morning I seem to be waking up no later than 8am, whilst she can put more of an effort in and push through for another hour or so. I think it’s the 2 hour difference still thats causing it, though I’m not too sure.
Sunrise is late here… and sunset is even earlier. It’s generally dark.
We were awoken this morning by a phone call from Gavin (Muppet), telling us to look outside. It’s snowing in London. Not just willy-nilly snow… full on, a-couple-inches snow. Jenbug and I immediately donned some clothes and made our way to the front of the house, and out on to the street. We frolicked in it for a couple minutes, building a snowman, tracking some dodgy duiker (or some sort of animal) prints, and making snowballs out of the fluffy fluffs of snow. It’s really awesome, and also highly unlikely… so we really did get a full London experience. Afterwards we decided to return to the warmth of indoors and have some hot aero chocolate… yes, thats right, Aero hot chocolate. It’s amazing. Not better than the Chocolate Cornflake Minibites (from M&S), but close to it.
In other news, it looks like we’re going to be staying in London for a couple more days because Tam is trying to figure things out up in Milton Keynes still. Once she’s ready for us, we’ll head on up there, but until then we’re just going to veg around Neil’s house, who once again, has bought us a crapload of food to devour throughout the day. Yum! He also gave us some coupons for Nando’s, and McDonalds. We now are entitled to two free whole chickens from Nando’s…. if we can find the coupons!
Filed under: Travel
Basically, I have always known that my cousin Neil was a good guy, but once again I say yay for cousin Neil. We were unfortunately left without somewhere to stay last night as a result of a few unfortunate circumstances, and cousin Neil stepped in to help us out. And he took us for pizza. And wine. Now, if this doesn’t sound too great to you, you are obviously in South Africa, or are already ‘on the pound’ (i. e earning pounds). For us, spending pounds, having saved in rands, a glass of wine, some garlic bread and a pizza is somewhat unthinkable. In a nice restaurant…seriously, this thing had wine glasses on the table and real waiters from Italy and everything. And the biggest bonus? It was inside. Whereas we had been outside. the.whole.day. Oh, and btw, London is having a freak bout of freezing weather, where they are estimating temperatures as low as -3, with wind chill taking it as low as -9. Nice.
Filed under: Travel
Hi there kids and kittens! Well, we are here in London, living the life (if ‘the life’ means paying R70 for a glass of wine and buying cheap rolls and chicken loaf at Tescos) in London.
Ok, so leaving home was very sad. Very very sad, and I cried a lot. In fact, at the departures gate I was ‘that person’- you know, the one sobbing their heart out, half balling half hiccuping. Basically, I should have been laughed at by people who hang around at departures gates watching for sobbing girls. But in fairness I kindof feel like I could laugh at them, for having silly pasttimes. So all in all we are pretty much even.
Then, the plane was hectic. I was sad, still sobbing after take off, and a nervous flier. And the pilot said that we would be having ‘a bit of weather’ for the first few hours. In reality, we had 8 hours of pretty bad turbulence on a flight of 11 hours, and I clutched my Bible and prayed for a lot of the time. It really comforted me, and I really felt like Jesus was there protecting me.
When we arrived in London, we just went straight to sleep, and woke up more rested, but possibly two of the grumpiest people on the planet. I credit Quentin Haywood’s shower for saving me from doing something drastic. Once I was minus the sweat from the plane I was ready to see sense and be at peace with everything again.
On night one, we met up with Gavin, my cousin Neil and a whole bunch of other people at an Earlsfield pub (read: Rhodes University Reunion) called The Planet. It was great to see everyone again, and especially to catch up with my cousin. We also had wine sponsored by other people, which was cool ( as the next day we had what will henceforth be remembered as the R70 glass of wine debacle of 2007) but we were in bed by 10:30, blaming jet lag and general exhaustion. Since then we have just been missioning around, visiting places and seeing people. Public transport gives me a real kick. It is, as Kyle has said, pretty cold. I am eager to get travelling.
And that about sums it up for now. Big ups to all the people from home.
Much love…and leave comments…
Filed under: Travel
So… we’re in London. It’s cold… it’s expensive… it’s great Our flight was okay. Not the greatest, but okay. We had about 7 hours of turbulence that I pretty much slept through, but Jen was very much disturbed by. Sleeping on the plane is never great, but I managed to get a little bit of shuteye. Virgin is really awesome! They have TV-on-demand on the plane, and a really impressive selection, including Arrested Development, Extras, and a couple other really k-rad TV series. Then a whole line-up of really recent movies… like Taladega Nights… Ricky Bobby… wow.
So once we landed, we made our way through to customs, where Jen and I seperated… her in the EU queue, myself in the “Other – With UK Visa” queue. My queue was like 10x the length of hers. Took about 40 minutes to get to the front, at which point the customs lady questioned me about my intentions once inside the UK, and also my understanding of all the rules. Wasn’t too hectic, but she then proceeded to tell me that x-rays or not, I needed to go queue for Health Control. Finding myself in yet another queue, this time amongst some iiiiiiiiiincredible dutchmen who were also coming across to the UK, I had to wait another 20 odd minutes till I got to the front, showed my x-rays to the doctor, and got cleared for entry into the country. Yay it was over, and I could finally get through to where Jen was, collect our bags (which she had done already), and meet up with our taxi driver.
The taxi driver. Quin had organised us a taxi to meet us at the airport and then take us to his house. It was cheaper than getting the Heathrow Express, and was obviously a lot less effort. Well, we thought it would be. He waited for us for 2.5 hours because of all of the delay through immigration, and kept standing waiting for us with a “Kyle” sign at the arrivals gate. We finally got through to him, and found a pretty disgruntled man who was pretty tired of standing waiting around for “Kyle”, which I completely understand. He took us down to his car, and on the way stopped off to pay for the parking.
This was our first taste of our expensive life to come.
£10 for parking, which I had to pay for… and then moving off down to the car, and driving down to the exit. The taxi driver (who even though I introduced myself to, didn’t tell me his name) then lost the ticket, and parked off on the side and started digging around in his car to find it. He couldn’t. So he ran into the parking office down the road and explained that he had lost his card. The guy across the desk from him pushed out his hand with a ticket in it and asked him if it was his… It was. Freaky. In the, like, 3 minutes it took us to get to the bottom of the parking lot at Heathrow, someone had picked the ticket up, and handed it in, or something like that. Either way, somehow they had our ticket, and everything was now clear to leave.
So we headed off down the road, and about 1.5 hours later we arrived at Quin’s house. We were only supposed to take about 45 minutes, but this guy seemed to be keen on driving around the suburbs for a while. It definitely felt like we were doubling around a lot, and not really taking the most direct route, but anyways. Now at first this sounds like the most brilliant plan for a taxi driver to do, especially with tourists, but we had already agreed on an amount before we drove off, and we had also confirmed that this was the normal price for this journey… so he had no reason to do it. Who knows…
We were so stoked to arrive at Quins place though… after fetching the key hidden inside the braai outside the house, we dumped our stuff inside Quin’s room, and passed out on the bed. We slept for about 2 hours.
After we awoke, we missioned off to town and bought some 7 day travel cards for the underground, and a UK sim card to start sms’ing and getting in to contact with everyone around here. We stopped off at a Subway and got some footlongs… About £5 a piece later, we were full, wallets a little emptier, and feeling pretty cold walking the streets of London.
It’s pretty cold in London. It’s colder than I thought it would be… now before you start saying I told you so, everyone, I am completely happy with the temperature. It’s a little cold at times, but we made a concerted effort today to dress properly, and then it was fine. Thermals vest, shirt, jacket, jeans, thick socks, leather shoes, beanie, and a scarf… It was warm.
Shoo… tired of typing now. I also have my new notebook now, which is absolutely awesome. I started a flickr account now as well, for putting all the photos on. They can be found here. The notebook is puuuuurdy. It’s sleek… and frakking fast. Love the notebook. Love the portability. Anyways, I’ll let Jen write the rest of the news since we arrived. Everything is rad over here, we’re moving from Tam’s house to Brezzler’s (eyes eyes eyes) tomorrow, just for 2 nights, then off to Milton Keynes to visit Tam… the other other Tam.
So keep it real… msn me sometime. Shoowah.
