Logan Worldwide, Part 1: Along the way to Africa

I know I should've updated this blog like everyday since I first got to Africa. I'm lazy though. So now I'm gonna try and do a recap of everything I've been up to since I first got here exactly one month ago.

I left Juneau, Alaska at some point in early January. I don't remember off hand what day it was. Let's say it was the 8th.

Flew to somewhere else, most likely Seattle. Connections between flights are unimportant. Flew to Newark, New Jersey and then caught the NJ transit to New York. I had never been farther east (in the US) than Illinois. And now, here I was big bad New York. I was excited and a little scared. Your entire life, TV and movies fill your head with all of these expectations about New York. A lot of people translate this propaganda into fear, and I think some of it rubs off.

I love New York. I'm not gonna buy the tshirt, but I thought that as a place, it was no less than amazing. This, of course, is based on an experience of three days. So yeah, I ate a hot dog and a pizza, caught the subway everywhere, went to the Met and to Times Square. I didn't go to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State building or the WTC site, because I have very little interest in those areas.

The whole time I left all of my stuff and spent the night at an insanely cheap hostel in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn. East Williamsburg is the hipster, artsy part of a traditionally Jewish neighborhood. I didn't really do much there. Every morning I got on the subway and left to explore. Oh, the price. The hostel was around $10 a night and had everything you would want. It was clean and I didn't even lock my shit up while I was there, and I was only there late at night.

So, I went to all of these places in New York and left JFK on day 3 or 4. Don't remember exactly.

I had a 12 hour layover in London, so I decided to get out of the airport and go exploring the city central. I didn't have anything to do for such a long time so I just walked . . . and walked . . . and walked. In between all of this walking, I took a subway or three.

Now, about London, it sucks. I was only on the streets for about seven hours, but goddamn was that place the most miserable place I had ever been to. Cold, gray, and the people were just the same. The architecture was cool. I'll give you that, but the place itself was like some kind of purgatory leaning towards a cold hell.

The only interesting things, to me, were these cute, little packs of cigarettes with pictures of black lungs and dead babies on them. So I bought a little pack. I'm not normally a smoker, but London is depressing, and so, I felt like smoking.

Walking around London, I got hungry. There were places with "food" being advertised with pictures, "Beans & Toast!". Disgusting. So I got some Indian food from a little stand. There was no where to eat it, and so I went to the trash-filled outside dining area of a McDonald's.

Now, not that I'm a connoisseur of McDonald's, but the place was insane. I didn't want to just take up the eating area without purchasing something, so I bought a coffee. In America, in any city or town in any state, the inside of a McDonald's is somewhat clean and the customers operate in some sort of orderly fashion. Not here. There was no semblance of a line at all. People just pushed through each other in a crowd to yell at the Indian employees the things they wanted to appear at their mouths. Here is a list of things I could compare the situation to:

Looting during Hurricane Katrina.
Stephen King's The Stand.
Black Friday.
South Vietnamese evacuees.

Finally, after I got this post-apocalyptic McLatte, I sat down outside. I sipped it down and observed my surroundings. People smoking 2 feet from the entrance/exit. Trash everywhere. Birds eating it. Among this, I had been aware of how noticeably different I looked compared to the Londonites. I was wearing jeans. Nobody wore jeans. I had on a baseball cap. They don't have baseball, so no one wore one. Everyone was dressed very nicely. That's one compliment I'd give. They might live in a bitterly cold trash heap, but they dress very much like civilized human beings. Or robots. Robots with an inner core of hatred and anxiety, but fitted outwardly with a coating of perfectly creased slacks and a peacoat(sp?). And the entire outfit probably cost as much as a new computer.

I know it sounds like my view of people in London was nothing but bad. And it was. Besides the Indians and one guy that worked for the subway (in my head, "Oh my God, you're talking to me!"), no one was nice. Londonites were nothing but dirty hostile personifications of Satan.

I could have stayed longer, but why would I want to prolong a session of torture? After 5 to 7 hours of mostly wandering around aimlessly, I went back to the airport, and found my way over to a little shop away from the crowds of European and Arab "mmm, yeah I really need to buy cologne and a jewel-encrusted handbag in a motherfucking airport" douche bags. I nursed on a 5 lb. beer and ate some weird chicken salad & corn sandwich. I felt like, psychically somehow, these people had all been calling me names and kicking me in the stomach repeatedly while I lay in the fetal position. And now, I was at the far table, the unpopular kid, pushing my glasses up and trying to escape eye contact.

Things were going to get better.

Next post, Africa!