I arrived this morning in London to classically drizzly weather. I'll be here for the next six weeks - splitting the summer between here and Hong Kong this year, as opposed to last year and the previous four when I spent it in Moscow. But I haven't been able to avoid reminders of the city we called home for so long.
It seemed like some sort of omen when the sticker I'm supposed to put in my passport for Hong Kong arrived by DHL the same day that my Russian visa expired. Then, last night at Dulles, as I was schlepping my overweight baggage to check-in, I heard the PA system making the last boarding call for Aeroflot flight 318 to Moscow. This is a flight that has so much resonance for me that when I set up wi-fi in our apartment in DC in the fall of 2005, in a fit of "home"sickness, I named the network "SU 318."
As if that wasn't enough, I'm staying at a place just around the corner from streets called Moscow Road and St. Petersburgh Place, and the guy who checked me turned out to be from Kyrgyzstan. Londonistan, indeed.
4 comments:
Just wait - if you haven't been in London for a while, you'll see just how much it has turned into Londongrad.
Don't worry, the food is still much worse than Moscow. ;)
unless you eat some londonistani food :) asian restos in london are pretty good, especially compared to the fake asian ones in mow.
Lyndon- you missed a fantastically sunny spring in london!
Hmmm, so you're staying in Bayswater then? rather handily, nearby Queensway has become something of a Little Moscow, if I remember rightly (I used to live round there). You're also very close to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral. And, of course, the Russian Embassy on Notting Hill Gate.
Everyone keeps telling me that I missed great weather in the weeks before I arrived! Oh, well.
I think part of the "Londongrad" image comes from all of the people who locals may perceive as "Russian" but who are actually Czech, Polish, etc. - these are the people you see working in hotels, coffee shops, etc. The actual Russians are either so rich or so poor that you don't see them so much...or at least that's my impression from the first week here.
Nick, yes, I'm in that area. Along Queensway, in addition to the "Kalinka" Russian store, I've encountered the best shawarma I've ever had, barring the place at Nevsky and Liteiny in SPB. Well, and there's a gyros place in NYC near Penn Station, but then they don't call it shawarma there, so perhaps that should be a separate category.
Post a Comment