From East to West: a night’s traverse through London
Early this spring, my brother Nándi and I traveled to London for an Elton John concert we should have attended two years ago during the pandemic, but which got postponed, and for which we mistakenly also traveled to London last year.
The concert was on a Wednesday night, and early next morning we had a flight out of London from Heathrow Airport — entirely on the other side of one of the largest cities on the planet. On our journey from the arena to the airport, we also had to pick up our backpacks from my friend Derrick’s house in Whitechapel.
So this is the story of when we left the concert late, the rain was gushing, and we saw thousands of people queuing at North Greenwich Station in a line extending hundreds of meters and we decided upon a few regrettable decisions that derailed our entire night, which ended up not being regrettable at all since we had an aimlessly fun and blithe journey, where we learned not to get frustrated by, and actually enjoy, our inanity.
10:00 PM, O2 Arena, London. At the exit, the rain is pouring, and the bendy boulevard to North Greenwich Station is filled with people; thousands of sardines, queuing at the silver-grey canning machine that is the Jubilee line. I know crowds and public transport (or at least I think I do):
“That’s an hour of queuing, at least,” I turn to Nándi disgruntled.
“What do we do then?” he asks.
We look around and instinctively turn to the bus terminal; fewer people there.
Bright idea #1.
“We could take a bus to another tube station!” I shout. “Cross the river and get into the first station there. It won’t be congested, and we could travel to Derrick’s place on a different line,” I explain. “We wouldn’t need to wait here.”
But there are a dozen or so stations across the Thames, and we don’t know which one could work for us. We also don’t know which bus could take us to a station that could work for us. And even at the bus stop, we see about a hundred people queuing in front of us:
“If all these people want to take the same bus, we won’t be able to get on,” I say.
“So let’s stand on the road instead of the sidewalk,” Nándi says. “We could see any incoming bus around the corner sooner, check its route on our phone quickly, and as the bus tries to stop here, we could get to the front of the queue by just stepping up on the sidewalk.”
“That’s brilliant!” I reply. “The people in the queue won’t let us get hit by the bus. They’ll just let us step on the sidewalk.”
“Exactly! And we just embark,” he says, with eyes sparkling from a clandestine ingenuity.
So we assume our strategic position on the road (stepping on the actual yellow “BUS” paint on the asphalt) looking perhaps slightly drunk, disoriented, discombobulated to those on the sidewalk.
When bus 108 appears around the corner, we look it up and find it works for us; and as it skids into the stop, we just step up on the sidewalk to the front of the queue, asking others to excuse our mistake, and we make it onboard.
“Can’t believe it worked!” I whisper to Nándi as we scan our cards. What a team effort — we’re out of this queuing business in just five minutes.
Right as the bus leaves the station — and as we’re still incredibly proud of our own bravado and ingenuity — it gets stuck in a parking lot traffic, is then diverted to zigzag across Greenwich Peninsula and pick up passengers at every turn. As we’re pressed against a humid window stuck in immovable traffic in a dusty and noisome tunnel, I keep thinking that a New Agey person would probably tell me judgmentally that it’s about time I suffer karmically. It takes us 50 crowded minutes to make a 15-minute journey.
10:50 PM. We make it to All Saints Station, just north of the Thames. It’s dark and deserted. We stand on the wrong platform, realize it, then change. The wide-eyed DLR train hobbles into the station. We get into the empty carriage.
Bright idea #2.
“Hey, I think we should get off at the next stop,” I turn to Nándi. “Google says it’s a three-minute walk to the Elizabeth Line entrance in Canary Wharf.”
He says sure; we disembark at Poplar and descend the stairs onto a road desolate and wet. Google tells us to go across the canal and into the enclosure of high-rise buildings of Canary Wharf. We can see the station, and we walk along a construction site of neatly piled dirt, and the heavy machinery left to sleep after piling it.
“The entrance is closed,” the two bald, corpulent construction workers at the entrance tell us.
We ask for directions and stride to another entrance five minutes away. It’s also closed. We try the door but no lend. Other people come, and they also try. Incredulous and grimacing, they step behind and leave.
“Are you sure Google said we had to get off at Poplar?” Nándi asks, a voice noticeably more aggravated.
“Yes, I am sure,” I reply with a voice noticeably more aggravated. “There’s also a third entrance,” I add.
“Do you really think if two entrances are closed, the third one will be open?” he replies. “I’ll go look for a bus,” and he takes off, a verdant park to the left, skyscrapers above, the street dark and wet and reflecting the glint of the skyscrapers. Like Central Park but little — “pretty cool,” I think to myself.
Nándi asks a random man at the stop which bus to get on. He shrugs so (having lost our trust in Google) I check Citymapper:
“135 works I think.”
135 comes in, we get on, ask the driver if he will take us to Whitechapel.
“It’s the opposite way,” he says. “Walk across the park to the other stop.”
We thank him, get off, and dart in the direction he showed us.
Then he honks:
“No!” he waves at us. “The other way,” he points vigorously and drives off.
11:30 PM. The other bus 135 comes in. We ask the driver to make sure we’re traveling the right way. He says yes and we climb to the upper deck and sit down. It’s only us on board. The bus scuds through the streets of London.
12:00 AM, Whitechapel. We ring Derrick’s bell, can’t agree if the stairs or elevator is faster, so we race up to the third floor, Nándi on the stairs and I on the elevator. Nándi wins. We knock.
We chat with Derrick in his kitchen, and ask about the counter; it’s stuffed with bottles of various sizes, and filled with liquids of various hues of yellow.
“My flatmate was trying to dilute apple juice with water to match the color of the cider of which he has to drink two liters on his hockey road trip tomorrow,” Derrick explains.
As Nándi packs his backpack we realize we have missed the last direct tube to Heathrow. No problem, we think, we have the entire night to get there. We hang out a bit more, give Derrick a hug, then take the very last Hammersmith line train across London.
01:10 AM, Hammersmith. I check Citymapper for the Heathrow bus:
“We have 30 minutes until it comes,” I say.
Bright idea #3. (Actual bright idea #1.)
“We could get some food until then,” Nándi says.
“And eat it on the bus?”
“Why not?”
“Sure, it’s probably gonna be empty anyways,” I reckon.
I am checking Google Maps.
“There’s a takeaway pizza place that is open,” I say. “Doesn’t seem bad.”
“I’m down for some pizza,” he says.
We walk down the road to the small basil green and black house with a red illy caffè sign. It’s your customary neighborhood takeaway pizza place “OPEN TILL 2 AM FOR COLLECTION,” it says next to the white uPVC door. There’s a single foldable garden table outside and two chairs.
We enter a confined space lined floor to ceiling with white tiles, a large deli counter in the middle, only a few half-empty cheese packages and lonely vegetables on its gray shelves, and towers of pizza boxes on top. In this microcosm of Italian and English culture, two Italians are chatting behind the counter in English. We interrupt them:
“Hi, we’re in a bit of a hurry,” we say. “If we order a pizza now, can you make it in 10 minutes?”
“Of course man, which one you like?”
We inspect the menu:
“We’ll get one large diavola. Thanks.”
Ten minutes later, he extends the pizza over the counter and into my hand. Nándi pays, sees another customer ask for grated parmesan on his pizza, then requests some on ours as well. I take garlic sauce packets.
We head out and realize we have five minutes until the bus leaves. I check the route on Google and take us to an empty bus terminal that should not be empty.
“Oh shit, it’s on the other side of the rail station!” I gasp. “I’ve never had such a bad day navigating in my life,” I think to myself.
We take off, sprinting to the other side of the train station, try taking a shortcut through a mall, have to exit unsuccessfully, then jump over a fence to reach the bus door just as it’s beeping to close. We check in — bags and pizza all intact.
We climb the stairs to the upper deck: it’s full of people — in the patchy and half-filled way of everyone sitting in a pair of seats on their own.
We backtrack and plump ourselves down on the first-row priority seats just outside the driver’s cabin. We hope he won’t care and we buckle down to the pizza: oily fingers, garlic sauce, backpacks every which way. A few hard brakes imperil our entire operation. It’s messy, smelly, prole, decadent, delicious — one of my fondest culinary experiences in retrospect.
We finish and clean up. Nándi takes a nap, I listen to a podcast. The N9 bus to Heathrow takes 50 stops along its journey in as many minutes.
At Heathrow, we walk into a bus terminal lobby, take an elevator down to an underground tunnel, walk along that tunnel, take a second elevator up, cross a metal bridge, and into Terminal 2.
2:30 AM, Hall of Terminal 2. People dozed off in all directions, on any square inch of space they deemed comfortable enough for a few lousy hours of rest: on stiff airport chairs and against the counters, video screens, and check-in machines. The security check doesn’t open until 4:15. We want to sleep a few hours but can’t find any spots even marginally comfortable or sanitary.
We notice a restaurant area at the far end of the check-in hall. It looks as unexceptional as any high-end modern bistro: a long silver bar, tables and wall panels of a dark wood finish, and leather chairs in posh colors, which in this case were pulled together to barricade the entrance.
Bright idea #4. (The last — and brightest — idea.)
“Let’s go check it out. Maybe we can find a place to lie down inside,” Nándi says.
We go to the barricade, take a circumspect look around, quietly nudge two chairs a few inches to make space and contort our torsos to sneak into the ensheathing dark of the restaurant. We pick a secluded booth and lie down on sofas on either side of the table. We fall asleep.
4:15 AM. We’re woken by an endearingly gentle, only barely masculine voice:
“Morning lads, wake up.”
Straining to open my eyes, my contacts dry as sandpaper, I see an enormous, brawny tall man with a glorious red beard, in a white shirt, wearing a bulletproof vest and a large automatic weapon across his chest. He’s got a calm, sincere smile on his face. For a slight moment I am unsure if he’s real or the product of my previously muddled state of consciousness.
“I know it’s been comfy here,” he continues in a distinctly Essex accent. “But you can’t stay because they’re opening the place.”
We nod, and he thanks us, profusely apologizing for the disturbance he’s caused by doing his job. “What an adorable person,” I think to myself. We gather our stuff and join the assembling queue waiting for the security that is about to open. We scan our passes and make it through.
Our only worry now is getting our drugs through the security check. I’m joking of course, but getting caught with some dodgy substance in our bag would be an appropriate ending to our story. We get inside, sit in a Pret, go to our gate, and almost miss our flight as Nándi decides to get coffee and breakfast at the last minute. We’re the last passengers to board.
In Hungarian we have a saying that goes “Don’t leave the beaten path for the untraveled one.” It seems sensible advice. Except that it is bullsh*t. It encourages comfort instead of discomfort, the ordinary instead of the novel, the easy serotonin instead of the hard dopamine.
After the concert, had we been content to join the queue at North Greenwich Station, we would have made it to Heathrow on an effortless night tube and could have slept even longer in that booth.
Instead, our happy-go-lucky restlessness took us on a journey that we will remember for the rest of our lives. It’s a reminder that abandoning the well-worn path and embracing convolution can lead to the wonderful unexpected that is at the core of exploration. While we Hungarians tend to stick to our ways, I bet the Viking, Polynesian, or Mongol saying would go more like this:
“Do leave the beaten path for the untraveled one. It’s the only way to life.”
