Berlin

It's my birthday and I'm in Berlin.This is my third trip to this gritty and fabulous city. And with the familiarity of it being three, this time I feel like I'm living in today's city, not visiting one filled with ghosts.

It's helped by the fact I stay with my friend Lena, who is the mistress of simple living. You could call Lena's apartment minimalistically furnished, but not in an austere or wankily deliberate way. She just earns less, spends less, accumulates less, and when she acquires, it's considered and textured with natural fibres. No plastics live here.

A little kitchen sits in a nook to the living area and doubles as the bathroom. It's an important place, for Lena's food hospitality is legendary. She's worked in bakeries on and off for some years and she has a knack for making wonderful out of what's available.  Breakfasts, particularly, are a long, creative affair generally involving croissants, at least one kind of jam made by a relative, honey which presents itself in patterned glass jars, pumpernickel bread, Nutella, coffee. Today we had baked eggs served with purple carrots and a delish, steamed pumpkin. Plus a herbal tea brewed from pine cones to heal my chest, which is in its fifth week of being inflicted with a terrible cough. At the moment,  Lena is into making sauerkraut so this she enthusiastically serves up with each meal or snack.

Here is the chocolate cake she whipped up on the midnight of my birthday as I lay sleeping in the same room.

As soon as I arrived here, I felt lighter and more peaceful. This is a lot to do with being with a good friend with whom I can just be.  It's also to do with being in her home full of texture and lightness but not full of STUFF.

It's a good reminder for how I should be, in Sydney.

Change

The last time I spent any decent time in the UK, back in 2007, the atmosphere amongst people in the community was dark, short, rude. I remember a young school kid - no more than 14 - refusing to pick up his bag so an elderly gentleman could sit on the bus beside him. When the elderly man copped an earful of abuse, I was the only one on the packed bus that went to his defence. People kept their eyes down.

On another occasion, I witnessed a well-dressed office worker - morbidly drunk and tripping over his feed as he snaked down the platform - nearly fall onto the tracks at Bond St tube station. Four of us went to his aid.  None of us were English.

My heart was hurt at the time and I was personally in a bad place, but I left England dispirited by the bitterness I had witnessed.

Eight months later when the London riots occurred, I wasn't surprised.  Others have since described the riots as, "an event that had to happen," to relieve the discontent in the city. The cork came off and the pressure relieved.

Fast forward six years and the Olympics have taken place. The overwhelming success of that event echoes now in terms of the optimism of the place.  The immediate and ongoing impression I've had on this trip is of positivity, optimism, friendliness.  A teenage boy smiled at me on the train the other day (and not in a letchy way). I watched a young delivery van driver wait for an old lady to cross the road, with a grin and a wave. I chat to dog owners in the street, all happy, if with that scent of loneliness that dog owners can sometimes exude. British politeness and humility is on show, but also with a easygoing-ness that I don't recall from previous trips.  Perhaps it is the joy of a good summer just spent.

No where is the optimism more evident that in the level of building work underway.  In areas around the Battersea power station, also in East London, score of cranes puncture the skyline.  Property prices are skyrocketing.  The Evening Standard printed a story yesterday about a home in St John's Wood sold to Elizabeth Murdoch for £38.5 million.  It last traded hands in 2007 for £3.26 million.

There are some wonderful new buildings in London, like the Gerkin and the Shard.  And the are some shockers. The St George's Wharf development at Vauxhall, with its gimmicky and ugly bow design feature, is a good example.  Green glass and concrete appear to be the only materials being used in the new buildings popping up like mushrooms. And for this, London is beginning to look Chinese in parts.

Not all of this is necessarily good.

Yesterday I went on a walking tour of East London to see some of the street art of that area. It is quite wonderful and now a drawcard of Brick Lane, just as the curry houses are, or, long before, the silk houses of the Huguenots.

But many of the walls that the street artists paint are being pulled down.  Most artists could not now afford to live in the groovy area.  Massive corporate entities like the Royal Bank of Scotland are encroaching on the leftie artisan, immigrant and small trade vibe that once characterised the area. And with all the glass buildings going up, there won't be any more concrete for the street artists like Roa or Banksie to draw against.

An important political debate about the dirth of affordable housing in the Borough of London is underway.  It is said that some people who have long lived and made up the communities around East London are being forced to move to Manchester or other regional centres. This echoes what is happening around Miller's Point in Sydney, where council-supported residents - who's family association with those homes sometimes go back generations - are being moved against their will to new housing locations.

After what appears to have been lingering economic stagnation post the GFC, it is wonderful to see London as optimistic and flourishing.  But I do hope that the drive for economic prosperity will benefit not only the richest. I hope it will still allow space for those who enrich our society through cultural, as opposed to cash-based pursuits.  I also hope that riches will not harden the wealthy and middle class to the plight of the poor, especially those immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families (be gone, UKIP.)  May London continue to provide opportunity for many of differing backgrounds, as it has for centuries. 

The best of Britain

When I arrived at London Heathrow, the pilot jovially informed us that it was, “A clear day in London; 17 degrees.”

I looked out the window to overcast, grey skies. I realised that the English definition of clear, “not raining; no fog,” was more optimistic than the Australian definition of clear, which wouldn’t have allowed for anything other than azure blue skies.

Having left the Australian version of a clear, 24 degree day, I worried that I’d packed too lightly for England.  And my first impression of the weather confirmed a long held internal view that I hadn’t missed this place for good reason.

I posted on Facebook that I’d arrived in the UK to receive a flutter of messages from old friends welcoming me and asking to see me.  I began to reflect on how the English were a constant in my life.  My dad, who I came to see.  My best male friend, who I met only a year ago and who likes to wear tartan out of respect to Vivienne Westwood and the punks (not to the Scots).  Two best girlfriends. Several boyfriends over the years, all of whom hold a deep love of music and a sharp wit. Best of Britain mark #1.

The next day, I dragged my father and his partner into central London.  It was going to be a tussle between the V&A, for its art and design, which would appeal to me, and The Science Museum, which would appeal to my dad.  In the end, we spent most of our time at the pub with a pint and a ploughman’s lunch, which appealed to the both of us.  Best of Britain mark #2.

I didn’t take a picture of The Brittania, the pub we ended up in. But here is one of the pub we originally tried for, which was closed for minor renovations.  It is the wonderfully named Scarsdale Tavern in Edwardes Square.

The Scarsdale Tavern, Edwardes Square

Edwardes Square, a hatch of Georgian era terraces, surrounds one of London’s gorgeous private gardens, made famous by the film Notting Hill.  Best of Britain mark #3.

After the pub, we ended up in lower Hyde Park around the grounds of Kensington Palace, where Diana’s ghost reigns.  At that point, London really began to turn on the charm with weather even I would call “clear.”  It is approaching mid autumn but the afternoon had all the elements of an Indian summer, and it was wonderful to walk by the fading hydrangeas and many annual flowers, the names of which I don’t know.

As a dog owner, I was chuffed to see the many King Charles spaniels and pugs and beagles being led around Kensington Palace, an activity that would hardly be allowed in Sydney’s equivalent of the Domain or the Botanic Gardens.  Best of Britain mark #4.

By this point, it was nearing 4pm, which is the time I come alive but older parents start to fade, so I cast them free and set off on foot around South Kensington.

I came upon the South Kensington Bookstore, which I felt sure must have been the inspiration for the travel bookshop in the forenamed Notting Hill. It was full of Taschen design books and bestsellers on philosophy.  The fact that it seemed solvent in this age of online shopping, which has felled giants as large as Borders, gave me pause to reflect on the intellectual proclivities of the English.  Best of Britain mark #5.

I kept heading south, determined to bump into The Thames.  I ambled along the Kings Road, an old haunt of mine from when I’d worked at The Royal Marsden Hospital in my early 20s. There was browsing at Habitat and Heels, where I reminisced about times when another best friend and I used to drink too much gluwein on the special Heels Christmas sales night.  I hope they still run it.

It was a day of wonderful names: Kensington Gore, Cheyne Walk, Prince’s Consort Road, Tedworth Square, St Leonard’s Terrace. No one uses English as do the English.  Best of Britain mark #6.

I did run into The Thames.  And this was her pineapple, her gift of welcome.  The stunning Chelsea Bridge.  Best of Britain mark #7.

Chelsea Bridge, from Chelsea Embankment

I didn’t come to England for the weather, but for the people (and maybe the pubs).  And she’s reminded me of her rich history, her charming gardens, her diverse architecture, interests and culture; her politeness.

Best of Britain mark #8.