London Calling

Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, October 10^th, 2009

London, UK :: October 9^th to 11^th
Mission: See Bizet's Carmen at the Royal Opera House

The first time I visited London was last April and up to this day it remains the only city I'm not sure I like or not. Parts of it bother me on a purely energetical level, i.e. sometimes walking through a particular street, past a particular building feels inexplicably uncomfortable while it's usually the exact opposite with other cities -- Belgrade and Venice for example are like a magnet for me because of their positive energy. It might also be that seeing (and having lived in) NYC before London affected me in the sense that (to me) NYC is London on acid so when I came there, I wasn't truly amazed by anything because I'd already seen it done much better before (I remember thinking how Piccadilly Circus was a cheap fake of Times Square) and my days of yearning to be British are long gone as well although I have remained an ardent fan of Adrian Mole. On the other hand, there's still so much I have to see in London and I feel I'll only be able to produce a good "final judgement" once that has happened.


I unexpectedly went through a very difficult emotional situation last week (starting university feels light compared to it) and whenever something like that happens, I have to go somewhere else to get things sorted out in my head and be alone for a while which is clearly not possible in Ljubljana. Such a coincidence that I actually planned this trip months ago ... When I boarded the plane on Friday morning (7:25AM flight to Gatwick), I found someone I've known since I was little and hadn't seen in a while sitting in the same aisle; we talked about music, children and Moscow and it was good to begin shifting my attention to more pleasant things.

I was looking forward to landing in London tremendously as I needed to get something normal to eat (plane food makes me sick), but the flight lasted for what seemed like eternity. At Gatwick I had to get from the North terminal to South to catch the train to Victoria Station and while I didn't have any trouble finding the way in April, this time it was marked rather badly (apparently they've made changes to it in the meantime) so I was going up and down on escalators looking manically for signs that actually led somewhere. I got on the train 10 minutes before departure and had to walk through 3 wagons to find an available seat because they were already full. When we arrived to Victoria half an hour later, I turned on GPS on my mobile and proceeded to walk to my hotel; since my orientation skills are practically non-existent, I did recognize parts of the way from before, but I definitely wouldn't have made it without GPS (I never know where to turn at Trafalgar Square).


Trafalgar Square
I checked into the hotel in a state of complete and utter misery. Still enduring a bad case of empty, thus dissatisfied stomach, I went out to get food after unpacking, but since I was feeling down and there were so many restaurants I didn't know and I hated London because all I saw on the way to the hotel were construction sites and people who didn't know how to walk, I got really anxious and couldn't pick a restaurant to save my life. I ended up getting paella from the Covent Garden Market and a Dunkin' Donut from Tesco (I had to restrain myself from buying a dozen like in April when these donuts were all I ate the entire weekend) where I also stocked up on Vitamin Water. Speaking of which, aren't those little stories on their packaging the most charming?

Vitamin Water DEFENCE: if you've had to use sick days because you've actually been sick, then you're seriously missing out my friend. the trick is to stay perky and use sick days to just, erm, not go in. don't overdo it on the coughing front the day before you want to take a 'sickie' though. big giveaway. just stick with the ever-elusive "24-hour bug" -- no one can prove a thing. just remember not to answer the mobile while shopping when you're supposed to be a spluttering, bedridden wreck. please note: taking a 'sickie' is very, very naughty.

After the late improvised lunch I had to face a strange but realistic question: What am I going to do in a city I don't like for 3 days? Thankfully I was saved by the clock suggesting I could just stretch my evening bathroom routine for a bit and then head straight to bed as I was exhausted from basically not having slept at all in the past week. Holly wasn't coming from West Midlands until lunchtime next day meaning I could sleep as long as I liked (i.e. very long), but my biorhythm decided to pull a trick on me by making me wake up at 7:40AM with so much energy that I had to get up instantly, went to Tesco, had breakfast, did meaningless things for a couple of hours and finally met Holly in front of the opera house where we picked up our tickets. After that we headed for Bloomsbury completely dependent on our maps as my GPS decided to stop working; we got lost about 100 times in Aldwych so we gave up and went back to Covent Garden for lunch at Wagamama where I had the best yaki soba in my entire life.

We didn't feel like dealing with maps again out of fear of ending up in some deserted, remote place so we went to the National Gallery where we'd already been in April but (1) it's huge and (2) we love it so it was definitely worth it to check it out again. We kept cracking jokes the entire time -- we're both really creeped out by the portrayal of people in Dutch Renaissance paintings but love still lifes in that style because of their vibrant colors. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for long because we needed to get ready for Carmen and study the programme thoroughly before the performance; I didn't even take mine to the opera as after the curtain has gone up, I don't really know what to do with it any more.

Giovanni Battista Moroni: A Knight with his Jousting Helmet

Eva: Look, these pants were very trendy last season.
Holly: He was way ahead of his time.
Carmen was mind-blowing, but I wasn't expecting anything less anyway. Everyone was top-notch and while I didn't like how Bertrand de Billy conducted Werther at Vienna State Opera in May, his work here was flawless (especially Chanson Bohème). Elīna Garanča is my favorite singer so it would be impossible for me not to understand her interpretation of Carmen (and how much fun she's had with it) and Alagna, oh Alagna, let me just say that someone commented that it shows in his voice he's getting divorced -- in the best possible way! Carmen is so stunning musically -- everyone with a slight interest in opera and/or classical music knows its main themes, yet these melodies never get boring and each time I hear them I get the same thrill. The sound of this opera feels very exotic to me, probably because I've always perceived it as a mix of French and Spanish -- I never know how I want to pronounce Don José ...

After the performance was over and I went to pick up my coat I heard someone saying my name without the slightest trace of accent. I turned around and my jaw almost dropped: there were my friends Katja and Goldie from Vienna! It turned out that Goldie had left me a message on Facebook when she found out I was going to attend the same performance through Iska (our mutual friend) but I didn't see it because I didn't have internet since Thursday. I was already on cloud nine because of the opera, but seeing them made the evening a million times better. Just to think how it all worked out in the end, even without technology -- truly amazing.

This production of Carmen has the most beautiful opening I've seen anywhere: there's a woman among the people in the square washing her hair in a sort of well, she tilts her head backwards and for a second there's a splash of water drops in the air. This moment reminded me of the moonlight on Giulietta's bed in the April I Capuleti e i Montecchi -- in my book such intricate details score major plus points for Royal Opera House.

Holly and I had decided in the morning that we'd go to the stage door to congratulate the singers after the performance (my friends from Vienna and the States lovingly refer to this practice as "stalking") and when we got there we were surprised to realize we'd been preceded by literally dozens of other people. I had no idea what to think -- after the April I Capuleti e i Montecchi only about 15 people came to the stage door and the security guard let all of us in whereas on Saturday people had to enter one by one while the guard literally kept shutting the door in the faces of those still waiting outside. Chatting with someone in the crowd who didn't understand what exactly was going on either, I said that "there are so many people here and Netrebko isn't even in town" to which a lot of people laughed and I thought it was the most sure sign of opera geekery I've ever seen.

After having completed our "mission" with great success, we met Katja and Goldie in a nearby pub and had an awesome time discussing Katherine Jenkins, German soap operas, how it can take you years to graduate in Austria because you set your own deadline, Kristin Chenoweth, the Met's La Cenerentola etc. It also turned out that Katja and Goldie were in London for the same Capuleti performance as I, but we didn't know each other yet then (we met a month later in Vienna). The waiter threw us out a little before midnight and I couldn't help thinking what a lousy pub it was (I'm always the first one to go home, but I was ready to ~rock~ that night), however I was informed yesterday that all pubs in England close around that time so I stand corrected.


Postcards from the British Museum: Frog by Matsumoto Hoji + holographic Rosetta Stone
On Sunday Holly and I went to the British Museum and the genius in me had totally forgotten that place is the current home of the Rosetta Stone so imagine my surprise when I found myself standing right in front of it. The British Museum is so enormous that we decided to only see a couple of exhibitions starting with the one on Japan and of course it took us ages to find it but I was really glad we did because it was perfect (I really don't have other words to describe it. Everything on display made sense and there was a beautiful tea house in the first room). It sent me into another one of my "I want to be Japanese / I need to learn Japanese" moods and I resented the fact that I've forgotten how to write most of hiragana and katakana, giving myself 2 weeks to relearn them (I have my pink 10.5 x 8 wide ruled subject notebook I used for practising with Keiko in NYC one year ago at hand's reach as I'm writing this). We also saw the Chinese and Egyptian exhibitions (mummies!), but the Japanese one was far superior.

The last few hours before departure are always awkward because there's not enough time to do something substantial, but you don't have to leave for the airport / train station / ... yet either (not to mention the strangeness of saying goodbye to someone you know you won't see for quite some time) so you're stuck waiting in cafés and hotel lobbies wishing you could skip the rest of it and just materialize wherever you're supposed to be the next day. I left Covent Garden at about 5:30 and thought I would be super early for my 8:45 flight, but things sometimes take longer in big cities and I ended up arriving just in time. On the plane I battled my sleep-deprivation and major headache with a cup of Twinings, but it only cured the latter. Nevertheless, when I got home at half past midnight, my London state of mind didn't care about getting rest before Monday's classes at university and I stayed up until 2AM writing emails.

London, I will miss you!