From Cuban countryside to London

When the Boeing 747-400 was gliding towards Gatwick airport, almost ten hours after taking off from Havana, I could barely imagine that five months later I would be wondering if it has really been only five months.

It seems much longer to me. And I am not talking about experiencing some sort of time machine, but rather about Thomas Mann’s Hans Cartorp, who, when travelling to Magic Mountain, thought journeys not only move us in terms of distance but in terms of time, as well.

From one capital to another and to a different life in just a few hours, it is not hard to imagine considering modern blessings like aviation and scholarships.

But I have to confess it has been a trauma, though a positive one: first time abroad, first passport, first passing by customs, first mobile phone and bank account, first journeys on the metro or walking through supermarkets as big as the hangar for the Jumbo jet that brought me here.

The Monday that I arrived in London it struck me how the train between Gatwick and Victoria station was so clean, modern, perfectly lit up, and moving on a gelatine-like rail-, full of silent people, absorbed in their newspapers, mobile phones, I-Pods or other hight tech gadgets.

A huge airport, with too many planes taking off one after the other, silent people and the cold... Those were my first impressions.

It was Monday 7 AM, maybe the most distressing time in the week for people around the world. Not only for Londoners.

But I soon learned that Londoners make up for the weekly hassle on Friday nights. Many of them go straight from the office to the pub, flock bars and cafes. It is nice sitting in one of the stations in Central London and looking at so many happy, relaxed and above all tipsy people.

While Saturday nights are lively, Friday nights are a sort of door to the weekend, the relieving threshold to two days for entertainment and relaxation after five days of hard work.

Low-budget London

London constantly amazes me and sometimes I even feel a sensation of spinning or vertigo when I walk around. There is so much to see with regard to architecture, history and the multicultural ways of life.

And it gets better because – at least in my experience – much of the best of London is freely available.

Of course, we are talking about one of the Alpha cities in the world, an expensive mega-urban conglomerate in terms of accommodation, transport and meals.

But everything is relative, even here. You do not have to go to fancy restaurants, and there is always the most green and healthy way of transportation, walking as your eyes and mind try to take in all the visual stimuli of the big city.

Anyway, the double-decker buses are not so expensive and allow you to see more in less time, from a high, mobile post of observation.

Relying on a very limited budget, just walking up and down the city, I have already lost count of the tiny and marvellous buildings I have spotted in London, and the scenes I have witnessed in its indoor or open-air markets, from Convent Garden and Camden Town to Portobello Road, Brixton or Burough.

When you feel you need some open space, there are the vast green oases that make you forget you are in a noisy city, such as Green Park, Saint James, Hyde Park or Greenwich.

Other hangouts? Wandering around Soho, Little Venice or Southbank with its human statues, especially at dusk, as well as watching the boats on the Thames pass by from one of the bridges connecting the banks.

The cafe at the National Gallery, which served as a venue for a scene featuring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen in Closer, allows an atonishing view encompassing several London landmarks: Nelson’s Column, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey or the London Eye.

The Science and Natural Science museums, the Tate Gallery or the British Museum, where I finally got to see the precious Rosetta Stone. The City District - where high steel and glass towers share spaces with the ancient walls of the original London and present a future scenario of urban architecture.

After so much walking, there will always be the perfect cafe or pub to take a break and share experiences with your friends.

Cafes and pubs are omnipresent in London. As for eating, my culinary background has vastly expanded, with the spicy experience of an Indian restaurant marking the beginning of a tasty tour of the world that took me to the Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Thai, Mexican and Greek cuisines.

A city of the world

World Music or Foods of the world are trendy categories nowadays. Everything is becoming mixed, multinational, and borderless.

Some cities encompass a wide range of human cultures and customs. London is one of the places that over the last decades have built a complex and mixed human landscape on communities and influences from every corner of the world.

London has given me the opportunity to attend a traditional Hindi wedding, or “listening” to people speaking in Polish, Hindi, Arab, French, Chinese and other languages…except in English, as I was travelling by bus.

It was real, though it happened to me just once.

Who knows? Maybe in a few decades will be talking like they do in Code 46.

At tube stations and in markets, I sometimes take some minutes to listen to the buskers (street musicians), performing from rock to a Spanish air, folk music from Britain or South America or even jazz, blues and Steel music.

Definitely, London is a very good environment to exercise tolerance and acceptation of diversity, to appreciate how traditions remain alive in a place where the most powerful trends of modern society thrive.

Old stories and planes

Besides the great diversity and the intensity of the city’s life, living in London has meant being far from home and managing to set up a temporary habitat with some good albeit temporary friendships and a break to my everyday routine, affording me the space to ponder over my life from a distance.

That is a much-needed opportunity in these times of rushing.

I keep laughing everytime I see one of those big posh-pink limousines in the street struggling to turn around the corners. And I keep wondering why British newspapers grow thicker and thicker as their circulation drops.

On foggy nights, out in the city, I imagine the dark old London depicted in films like The man who new too much, the London where Sherlock Holmes (so deeply imprinted in British minds though fictional) solved his cases and Jack The Ripper built his bloody legend.

But current London is all light and music and life. I have never been alone here, never bored.

And I must confess that after these five moths –or more, as they seem to me- I still look up to the skies as I did on the first day. There are so many planes up there.