From Cuban countryside to London city

By Deny Extremera

When the plane was gliding towards Gatwick airport, 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.

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.

I have to confess it was a trauma, though a positive one: 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.

When I arrived in London it struck me how the train between Gatwick and Victoria station was so clean and moving on a gelatine-like rail, full of people absorbed in their newspapers, mobile phones or I-Pods.

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.

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 and above all tipsy people.

Low-budget London

London constantly amazes me and sometimes I feel a sensation of vertigo when I walk around. There is so much to see.

It gets better because much of the best of London is freely available.

We are talking about an expensive mega-urban conglomerate in terms of accommodation, transport and meals. But you do not have to go to fancy restaurants, and the double-decker buses are not so expensive and allow you to see more in less time.

Just walking up and down the city, I have already lost count of the picturesque ambiences I have spotted in London, and the scenes I have witnessed in its markets and parks.

I enjoy wandering around Soho, Little Venice or Southbank, or sitting at the cafe at the National Gallery, the venue for a scene featuring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen in Closer, with a view encompassing several London landmarks.

Cafes and pubs are omnipresent in London. As for eating, all the cuisines of the world are available.

A city of the world

London is one of the places that have built a complex and mixed human landscape on communities and influences from every corner of the world.

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

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

At tube stations and in markets, street musicians perform from rock to a Spanish air, folk music from Britain or South America or even jazz, blues and Caribbean Steel drums.

Old stories and planes

I keep laughing everytime I see one of those big posh-pink limousines in the street struggling to turn around the corners.

On foggy nights, 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.

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.