Passing through Dis(s)

This is a travel blog, right? (I like the idea of starting a piece of writing with a disconnected, unexplained sentence before moving swiftly to a new paragraph. My new piece of writing starts with "This was a long time coming" and then begins to describe lilac wallpaper).

So I boarded my first UK train after a rather stressful bus/ticket-office experience. Despite leaving nearly an hour and a half early, circumstances led to me dashing down the platform as the doors to my train were closed one by one. I screamed to the man as he closed the door to last coach (this being the first time I have been openly rude to a local) to stop and let me on. He did, explaining to me as I entered that I could have opened one of the other doors, entered, and closed it after myself. My face was a little more than red. I settled on the train as it departed for London. I couldn't miss it because? Well this happened to be Anna Kolesnikov visit number one - and I wasn't giving up on that for any reason short of a ruptured appendix or brain hemhorrage.

The train ride was long. Norwich is pretty disconnected, apparently. I turned on Kelsey's "Open Road" playlist and intermittently read an awesome book about hippies crashing in Torremolinos and stared out the window at the passing countryside. I remembered why I was a vegetarian. Cows are fucking cute. There was this mother and her calf curled into one another, covered by a smal thicket of brush on the side of the road. All open land and space to roam - hills, valleys and grass. I love cows. Who among you meat-eaters could kill a beautiful baby calf? That's not preaching. Just a thought.

Anyway, there was little else of interest except for a short stop outside the town of Dis(s). And for those of you (shout "here" if your there) who are Dante fans, my God was this place a good facsimile for its second-"s"-absent literary counterpoint. Abandoned, half-gutted buildings and mounds and mounds of industrial waste. I thought to myself, does this mean that my final destination (London) is a Hell facsimile or that of Dante's ultimate destination of Paradise? Yes, I overthink weak metaphors.

When I arrived at Great Portland Street station, I found myself stunned speechless at the sight of Anna. It had been three years. It had been too long. After a few minutes' struggle to regain the shared language of our ten-year-old friendship, we fell into an easy rapport. Three words: Anna is awesome. Not just that. She had three more years of awesome under her belt and yet with these years of mutual but separate growth, we still shared some of that enigmatic stuff at the heart of our friendship of three years ago. Three more words; London is beautiful. Emily Hella still often recalls a drug-addled request of Mother Nature to bring on "MORE OVERCAST! MORE WINDY!" Well she succeeded in London. It was the perfect day. Anna was the perfect guide. We wandered up and down streets, got lost repeatedly, having to reference the GPS on her phone. She apologized, repeatedly. I assured her, as it did, that this only added to the charm of the experience. We talked and talked and talked as we wandered through London's streets. We even reminisced a little bit, creating nostalgia for a place that we had earlier agreed held little for us now.

Things we happened upon: Trafalgar Square (where two intense antisocial people huddled over computers and dictated moves to two helpers who then picked up the pieces to a gigantic chessboard and followed instructions, drawing quite the crowd; where Anna forced me to take a begrudging picture with the famous lions), Big Ben (which always reminds me of my father), Parliament (where we realized we could not walk in the "out" doors; where we proceeded to trespass on the Parliament carpark to ask a question; where several tourists followed our example, greatly annoying the guard), a real, dank English pub (where, to my surprise, I was able to order a falafel burger; where we did not order any alcoholic beverages; where I realized that I am not, in fact, an alcoholic; where Anna was sorely disappointed by the quality of the food; where she continued to mention how wonderful Notting Hill is; where I giggled to myself as all I could imagine was engaging in a troubled romance with Julia Roberts); the real Soho (where, suspiciously, nothing was happening; where, I assume, all of London's hipsters were gathering in some basement plotting a sinister, but eco-friendly, plot to destroy the earth).

Things we could not find: Anna's university (at which I laughed, seeing as she was currently living in the university's housing)

Best moment: leaning on the railing of the bridge over Thames as the wind bandied us about and we watched the passing driftwood/garbage and discussed Che Guevara and life and beauty and wind and tourists and how Parliament made absolutely no sense at all but was really pretty and ornate.