The Adventures of Josip & Melanie

Well we finally made it to the place we will be calling home for a while. When we first arrived at the airport we realised a lot of others were also visiting London as the queue at immigration was phenomenal. Another thing that I noticed was the fact that if you’re English is not the best. Immigration wants to know everything about you even the colour and type of undies you were wearing.

We definitely knew we were in London when we had to board the Underground or the Tube as it is affectionately known to all Londoners. Fact: Did you know that 3 million people catch the Tube everyday & a total of 6 million use some form of public transport (i.e. bus, overland rail) to commence their daily grind.

Our hostel The Albert is in a great location just next to Hyde Park and is in the area of Kensington (where the lovely Princess Di used to hang out). Man we were so happy to arrive at our hostel and find out that we were put in a 3 bed room instead of an 8 bed mixed dorm. But there is always a catch which in this case was the fact that we were on the 5^th floor no lifts and as everything in England is old, creaky and narrow it was interesting lugging around 30kg of luggage up the crappy stairs.

The weather this week has been amazing and we are having a bit of a heat wave. I think the max temp was 33 degrees celsius. Poor buggers imagine they came to Melbourne when it hits a lovely 46 degrees. The worst thing is that nothing here is made for hot weather the tube is sticky and smelly and they actually have signs warning about the heat and telling us all to make sure we drink lots of water. And the roads were reported to be melting in some locations. Sorry but this whole topic causes a major belly laugh. Not until you actually come to live in a country do you realise how different it is from your real home. Now I kind of know how our parents felt but it was even worse for them as they could not even speak the same language.

Although I am not sure I understand what they are saying at times. Apparently if I talk about my pants I am talking about my undies. A trouser is the correct term. A bottle shop is called an off licence. And a chip is the hot variety while a crisp is the crunchy cold variety. And you also may have heard that London is a bit multicultural. Well put it this way this whole week I think we have heard 2 authentic English accents you name it they have it here in London.

The food in the supermarkets is not as expensive as I thought it would be. However fruits and vegies are a bit ridiculous. The capsicums are sold separately not by the kilo!! and everything is wrapped in bloody plastic. You can by a six pack… of tomatoes that is sitting in plastic, wrapped in plastic and then put in a plastic bag. Oh yeah and what is with the self service crap. You actually have to put your own shopping into bags while they sit on a chair (while on their mobile phones) a bit like ALDI. However ALDI is actually really cheap I don’t know what their excuse is but maybe they are just lazy arses!

I have decided that I will start work next week as I could not really be bothered doing much at all at the moment. I am still in holiday mode and dreading the reality of working in a hospital again. But for now I must leave you as I have been tired this week and as I look at what I wrote it is all negative shit so I will leave you with a few positive notes. They have snickers, mars and rolo ice-cream and it is cheap and they have these cool fruit smoothies in the supermarkets that taste yummy. (Yes it had to be about food)