England – Page 3 – DU Abroad

The Northern line tried to boil me alive this week.

On Monday, I was going to Old Street station like usual to get to class and noticed that the train to King’s Cross was taking far longer than usual. Normally, the trains arrive every few minutes, so you won’t have to wait very long after you get to the platform. But I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting… and still, the train hadn’t arrived. More passengers poured onto the platform, and soon there were people filling up almost every inch of the place. Then, an announcement: the Northern line has been severely delayed due to a signal failure at Stockwell. Surely, this can only be a delay around Stockwell, right? Moments after the announcement, the train screeches onto the tracks in front of me and the horde of passengers.

The most splendid noodles from Lanzhou Lamian Noodle Bar in Chinatown. You know your food is about to be excellent when the restaurant is full, the staff are all yelling at each other in a language you don’t understand, and you’re not totally sure what’s in the bowl in front of you.

The train is practically about to burst. People are pressed against the windows, squeezing between bags, backpacks, arms, legs, coats; it seemed like there was hardly even room to wiggle a finger.

Lettuce — Liz Truss was Prime Minister of the UK for exactly 50 days in 2022. A head of lettuce lasted longer than she did, oh dear. It seems that people everywhere hate their politicians.

I was going to be late to class if I didn’t catch this train, so I preemptively moved towards the yellow line at the platform edge. A few passengers get off, sweaty and sighing with relief as they exit the car. By some TFL miracle, I manage to squeeze into the end of the car, feeling guilty as my backpack definitely smacked someone’s small child in the face. The doors slide shut and the train moves on. People everywhere are sweating, the scent of skin, perfume, cologne, and the musty seats all mixing together to form the lovely TFL signature scent on steroids. For the next two stops, I think I finally understood what it was like to be part of a seafood boil, as the seafood. Just like crabs and shrimp and prawns and lobsters, the people on the tube don’t speak and just suffer through the cramped heat in silence.

When I got to King’s Cross, I think I was fully soaked with sweat, from only a two-stop journey. Splendid! And I didn’t even make it to class on time. When I walked into the lecture five minutes late, my professor asked me if I was doing okay. She was justified in her observation; my face was shiny and my hair a mess. This is what TFL will do to you.

Though the London Underground is the most expensive public transit system in the world, it is known personally victimizing its riders with delays and disruptions exactly when it’s the last thing you need. The Northern line is a problem in particular, since it’s actually the busiest line out of the 11 (Weird, right? I would’ve thought it was the Central line, since it’s supposed to be “central”, and all…). Would highly recommend looking up “TFL Status” and checking if there are any delays or disruptions along your usual route in the morning before you need to be anywhere, lest you be caught waiting and waiting and waiting for a train car might try to suffocate you to death. Or, just take the bus.

When you aren’t worried about being steamed by people’s body heat in a stuffed tube car, you will have the leisure to look up and see the stops on the line and some advertisements along the upper portion of train cars on the tube. Poems will sometimes replace the ads on tube cars. I wouldn’t consider myself a poetry person by any means; I developed a very sincere hatred for Robert Frost in high school because of his overwhelmingly simplistic rhymes and themes (“two roads diverged in a wood and I / took the one less traveled by”, seriously? I could write that, so why are you so famous, Robert?). I still find the selection of poems on the Underground to be fairly entertaining. I think my favorite one I’ve seen was this one on a Victoria Line train (I forgot to take a picture of it on the train, but here it is):

I’m going to do the thing that everyone hates about poetry and find an underlying meaning when there appears to be none. I thought this poem was funny in a way that makes you feel like you are slowly going insane like the author. I too, am fond of “am I bananas?” But I think this poem is more about making do with what you have; by rearranging “I am a poet / I am very fond of bananas”, you get a lot of combinations that do still make sense. I interpret this as making things to do with what you have, rather than finding things to do all the time. You might be in the same area most of the time, either going to/from class, buying groceries, etc. But there is always something new to do that exists outside of recommendations from TikTok or generating ideas with AI (I’m actually a pretty big AI hater. If you can’t make a grocery list or draft an email or find things to do without ChatGPT, you have the survival skills of a banana). It could be as simple as just taking a different route home, maybe stop at an interesting cafe or shop along the way.

Mutton Pepper Fry from Dishoom, a well-known upscale chain of amazing Indian street food in London. Would highly recommend this and also the Pau Bhaji. Also, my camera roll is mostly becoming food.

I’m going to be wandering around Switzerland and Spain next week, which I am very excited about. Currently, I’m writing this as I sit in Heathrow Terminal 5 waiting to board my flight to Geneva. Au revoir, tschüss, and adiós, for now.

Thanks again for reading!

Alexandra

London has some of the worst urban planning in the world, but this is because the city has been around since before urban planning itself existed. Most of the city’s major expansions occurred during the Industrial Revolution (the mid 1700s to late 1800s), so the design philosophy for most areas was as follows:

Oh, a factory! I guess we should build some houses around it for the people who work there… let’s also put in a space for a restaurant so they can eat. Maybe a school if their kids are getting an education and not working in the mines. Could we place a church in this skinny alleyway? Oh, there are more people now – let’s just put some more houses here… and there… and hey, is that another factory? And so the process begins again.

Modern urban planning wasn’t really formalized until the UK’s 1909 Housing and Town Planning Act, so most construction before that was entirely random and sporadic. For example, many working-class homes were built as “back-to-backs,” sharing a wall with another house, lacking adequate ventilation, and having no yards to cram as many people as possible near a factory. If you look at an aerial map of an average US neighborhood versus a London neighborhood, you’ll see that the US neighborhoods are meticulously planned with space for schools, retail, a certain distance between houses, streets that have clear start and end points. In London, you’ll find a lot of streets that start and end in odd places and churches in places where there shouldn’t be churches. As a bonus, every single tiny street has its own name, which makes finding certain streets particularly difficult.

The Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. This garden is not just peaceful, but proves something about London’s endurance. It’s survived a bombing in World War II and a suicide bombing in 2005.

Even experienced Londoners will usually need some form of a mapping app to get around the city. I was looking for a café to eat at with a friend after class in Marylebone, and we walked around for a solid 15 minutes before getting to the right street, even with the directions out on our phones. We had to turn into this deserted-looking street, that then immediately opens up into a larger street with a variety of restaurants and shops. Navigating around London is not for the easily discouraged.

The view from Primrose Hill in Regent’s Park. From here, you can see a lot of iconic landmarks: St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye, the Shard, the Walkie Talkie, the Gherkin, St. Pancras International.

The cafe itself was very good, though (the Chiltern Street Deli, if you’re curious). Much like everything else in London, it was kind of expensive. I ordered a tuna melt, and I kept thinking to myself “I could make this at home… why am I paying £7.5 for canned tuna, cheese, and bread?” It’s the experience, the vibes, and convenience, I suppose. I enjoyed my food and chatted with my friend, so I think it was worth it. Travel and food are inherently related to each other. But still, the financial and potential dietary consequences of eating out all the time abroad are not to be underestimated. Convenient and fun, yes – but cooking is still an absolutely necessary life skill that I think not enough people have. Knowing your way around a knife, a pan with hot oil, or a piece of raw chicken breast are essential things to know. I’ve been cooking in my flat kitchen pretty often, especially on slower days when I just stay home and take calls for my internship and don’t see the outside world; it’s something that can simultaneously kill time and provide me with sustenance. What’s not to love?

Cooking for yourself gives you a sense of normalcy. Romanticize it, just as much as you would eating at a local restaurant. The act of producing something with one’s hands, using all one’s senses, is very fulfilling. Personally, I’ve always known my way around the kitchen pretty well. I have always been interested in food, where it comes from, how to make it, how to eat it. I grew up watching Food Network with my parents on weekends, and my dad spent a long time working in the food/beverage industry. If you’re used to exclusively eating mommy and daddy’s cooking, instant noodles, or dining hall food, picking up a knife for the first time might be daunting. These are some things that I’ve found helpful when making my meals during my time in university, that a current/future DU abroad reader may appreciate:

When you do cook, just make a lot of one thing. For example, if I am making chicken breast and rice, I would simply cook 2-3x the amount of chicken I am actually going to eat, put it in some containers, throw it in the fridge, and boom. Protein for days.
99% of meals are just some variation of a protein, carbohydrate, and vegetable/green thing. Planning to buy 1-2 proteins (chicken breast, ground turkey, per se) 1-2 carbohydrates (e.g. rice or pasta), and 2-3 vegetables (my go-tos are cucumber, bell pepper, tomato) will have you set for a lot of meals. Having a list of these things when you go grocery shopping will also prevent you from buying as many chips or snacks.
The most basic kitchen essentials are a knife and a pan. You only need one good knife, which will have you slicing and dicing almost all the ingredients in your posession. Don’t cheap out too much on a pan. You’ll know that the one you choose is good if you can imagine yourself whacking someone on the head and causing them serious injury with it. If there is any shred of doubt about the severity of their injury, or worse, your pan getting dented, you need a better pan.
Learn the basics and everything else becomes quite easy. Dice an onion, butterfly your chicken breast, make rice and pasta, make eggs in at least 2 different ways (e.g. over easy, scrambled), and a world of cooking options becomes available to you.
Heavy emphasis on knowing how to cook your chicken. For breasts, slice them in half lengthways, put them between pieces of plastic wrap, pound the thicker end with a mallet or your death-inducing pan, oil that same pan, grill each piece on medium-high heat on each side for 4-5 minutes.
Premade sauce and seasoning blends will solve most of your problems. Despite what TikTok chefs want you to believe, you do not need to make your own sauces. Just buy one that seems good from the grocery, heat it up and throw it on your plate. Use a seasoning blend on your protein instead of buying all the separate ones to save space. Easy.

Here are two examples of meals I made, which are quite simple when you boil it down to the protein/carb/vegetable basics:

Dinner 1 — Salmon with rice and vegetables. I bought the salmon (protein), a premade thai sauce, and then just had to cook my rice(carb) and chop up some vegetables to put on the side (but don’t worry, I did cook my broccoli on the stovetop).

Dinner 2 — Chicken tikka masala. This might seem complicated, but I just bought the sauce and naan from an Indian grocery store I passed on my way to my flat. So the three components are my chicken breast (protein), rice/naan (carb), and the cucumber (vegetable). Not too shabby.

Note: FYI, naan just means bread. I will judge you if you say naan bread because that just means you’re saying “bread bread”. It’s like saying “chai tea” (tea tea) or “bao bun” (bun bun).

I encourage you to see the grocery store as just as much of a cultural experience as eating at a local restaurant is. Find some strange ingredient you’ve never heard of, and try to make something with it for dinner. Now you’ve got an evening activity that won’t break the bank!

Cliffs — Me at the Seven Sisters cliffs in Seaford. Would highly recommend the day trip to Seaford/Seven sisters in the morning, then a 45-minute bus ride to Brighton (which is like if Maine, Key West, and San Francisco had a baby together).

Maybe next time I’ll attempt to cook something with the infamous British “brown sauce”.

If you’ve managed to read through my mediocre crash course on cooking for college students abroad, I appreciate you dearly.

Thanks again for reading!

Alexandra

Category: England

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