Trip To London

Piccadilly Circus/Trocadero

he Circus isn't really a circus at all, just a big square. The only thing it has in common with a circus are the clowns... eeuh I mean the tremendous lot of people. Walking was made absolutely redundant! You could just let others push you around! Great invention! We had come for a 'game' of Alien War. The magazines had been full of it so we decided to take a look. A strange guy in a noddy suit stood outside the building distributing leaflets. Wow! Two for the price of one! Inside we found several other bastards (and bastardettes) in the same noddy outfits. The ticket outlet was near two big creepy looking doors.

"Hello, I'd like three tickets please!" Solution said handing over one 1 pound off leaflet and one two-for-the-price-of-one leaflet aswell as our dutch student cards. "You do take these dutch student cards don't you?"

"Mmmm...'95... Student... Guess so... Weekend?"
"Yeah! I can travel freely in the weekend, whereas AlcoRhythm here can do the same during the rest of the week!"
"Cool! That'll be £13!"
"No, it's not! I've got these two voucher-thingies. This is two-for-the-price-of-one and this is £1 off!"
"Hey! I'm not that intelligent! Tell me first next time OK!"

We got our tickets.

"What happens now? I just stand here and wait until somebody picks me up?"
"Oooow! You could sure do thaaaat honey!"

So we waited...
And waited...
And waited some more...

Then somebody arrived with a kid.

Wait. Wait.

Then a group of Germans (uuuuugh we thought) arrived.

Finally there were twelve of us. (You go in in groups of twelve) We were told, no ORDERED, to line up against a wall. Everybody got a small cross-examination as to their intentions, names, whereabouts and shoelaces. (Yeah! Shoelaces... what's wrong with that!?) "Were are you from?" the "Space-marine" asked.
"From Aalten"
"Where's that then?"
"Holland"
"Aaaah! We've got an orange team here! Think you're going to win next years european footbal championship?"
"Dunno! We'll win Wimbledon first!"
"Mmmm, who do you think is better? Germany or Holland?"
"HOLLAND!"
"Mmmm" said the marine as he walked down the line to the germans. "So, they say Holland is better..."
"No it's not!" said one of the german girls.
"Was sagt er?" asked a dim german.
"Das die Hollander besser sind!" said the hyper-intelligent girl who could speak two languages.
"Nein, das sind sie nicht!"

The war was on! The biggest danger now came from the germans instead of the aliens in the complex!

We were lead through one of the doors and told to follow the orders and stay put.

Then the hyper-intelligent german apologised and so did we. Solution struck up a chat with the hyper-intelligent german girl. She was nice and she'd had been here before and told us just what was going to happen. We started to like her. After a frantic 'ride' (which was really the coolest thing we've ever seen! Go there when you visit London!!!) about which we cannot give details without getting into trouble with 20th Century Fox, we came out into the hall again. We wanted to invite the german girl to a drink, but YES, AGAIN, FOR THE I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY-TH TIME in this holiday, a nice girl had to tag along with her mother! Ooh brother! We felt really sorry for her. One of the things that this holiday changed was our prejudice against german women. But hey! We live near the border and a lot of germans visit our village but never had we met such nice german girl as here in the Trocadero on Piccadily Circus. If you happen to read this and think..hey! that was me! Please, please, please contact us!

Further on in the Trocadero (that's how the place is called) we found a thing called 'The Emaginator'. We found out that it is one of those movie-theaters with moving seats. And what kind of movies! And what kind of moving seats! Absolutely fabulous!!!! This is really realistic! It made Infinity scream! (Not that much is needed to do that, but still...). Their slogan is 'Once is never enough!'. Ain't it the truth! We went on 3 rides (they've got 6 rides (I think) and they are all great! The devils mine ride is the best we've seen!). If you made one ride, (£3) you get the second one for only £2!!!

Next up, Virtual Reality! Bummer! Not as good as we'd expected. It's OK, but it doesn't come close to Alien War or the Emaginator. The goggles are a bit wobbly and the screenupdate is a bit jerky. Still it was something we'd never seen before, and the fact that you can look into any direction, with the view updating accordingly is quite cool.

After spending all (well, not ALL, but a lot) of money, we went out into the streets again. On Leicester Square we suddenly stopped dead in our tracks. We had heared... TECHNO VIBES!!! Boy! We hadn't heared anything like it for a looooong time! Soon we were able to locate the source. It was an man with dark sunglasses and a ghetto-blaster playing tapes. And...He sold them! Solution bought one and we continued on our way.

At this point we had become very thirsty and started looking for a terrace to collapse on. To our amazement we found out that down-town London was a terrace-less as the Gobi-desert. When we finally found one:

"Pfff, I don't think I take one more step..."
"Hello! Can I help you?"
"G'day! Three Carlsberg please..."
"Hey! Are you from Australia?"
"No, we're not from Australia"
"Oh...Ok! And what would you like to eat?"
"To eat?"
"Yeah! We've got an Australian specialty today..."
"We're NOT from Australia...All we want is three Carlsberg! That's not much to ask is it?!?"

The waitress went and didn't come back for a long while. After this while we saw her chatting to another waitress, about that strange bunch of Australians on table 3. The beer either still had to come all the way from Scandinavia or wasn't even brewn yet, 'cause it took the waitress a very long time to bring it to us.

"Here you are..."
"And about time too! Where did you get this beer? Australia or something?"
"I knew it! You where just to shy to tell... You ARE australians!"
"GGGGGR! We are NOT... oh, never mind..."

We quickly emptied our drinks and left the silly place for the underground to Elephant and Castle.

Back at the Hotel

Luckily for us, we had found a shortcut to the Hotel. It turned out that all we had to do was walk through some small park and we were there. When we went to ask for our key, nobody could find our check-in forms. The UNFORTUNATELY-guy was out and nobody seemed to know how to run a hotel. It's so hard to get good help these days... After turning the whole place downside up and had some frantic debates we got our key. 1st floor, with the elevator. During the ride we all had the idea the elevatorcable wouldn't hold and that any second now we would experience weightlessness. We safely arrived on the first floor.

First floor looked like something out of Doom or Wolfenstein. Long, small corridors with doors on every square inch. After playing the blond bloke with the big machinegun for a while we found our room. And yes! It was about a square inch big... Well, OK, our perception of inches after those Carlbergs might have been altered a bit, but still. The room was PINK. Of all colours in the world you can paint your rooms in, why on earth PINK?!? The bed was pink too, as were the curtains, the closet, the walls, the telephone (which happened to hang askew in a big way, like WOW! Look how askew that telephone is, and Boy! That telephone installer either wasn't one endorsed by BT or Mercury or simply had one to many Carlsbergs himself. Another possibility was that our perception of telephone had been altered by the Carlsbergs aswell) and the carpet. Straight through our room was a big pipe. A VERY big pipe. Next to it being pink it was also not properly fixed in place and the paint was falling off like dandruff. Actually it used to be pink, but over years of it not being painted the sun had turned it into a vague dirtly looking shade of white. Further examination pointed out that it was not only dirty LOOKING, it WAS dirty!

Infinity had voted to sleep in the other room, because one could only order single or double rooms. While AlcoRhythm and Infinity searched for Infinity's room, Solution went for a shower. Into the bathroom closing the door behind him. I said, closing the door behind him! Yoho! DOOR! CLOSED! F*CK! The door was not in a closing mood today or indeed any day at all, so it stayed open, no matter what Solution tried. The only way to close it was by pulling a screw that was sticking out and on which in ancient times probably had been a doorknob, but not anymore...After freshing up, we decided to leave the place as quickly as our feet allowed us.

Into Town Again

The hotel had made AlcoRhythm sick. Literally. He almost puked on the pavement, but didn't when he saw a bum from the street had to sleep there at night. We couldn't find club Heaven so we asked a guard at a parkinglot.

"Excuse me, could you tell me the way to Heaven?"
"Well, I've been told as a small boy that when I was good and behaved that someday I would..."
"Yeah, yeah! We mean the club not the institution!"
"OK! Second road on the left..."

Fine with us. We found Heaven closed. It was 19.00 so what do you expect. Someone went in. We stopped him asked about the club.

"What's this then?"
"It's a nightclub!"
"I know that, but what KIND of night club?"
"It's a gayclub!"
"Oh!..."
"But not tonight!"
"What's tonight then?"
"Tonight's awfull. Tonight's Megatripolis. All filled with awfull straights!"
"Oh! I'm straight, so that's OK! What's the music like?"
"Normally very good, but not tonight!"
"What's tonight?"
"Tonight's awfull. Tonight's Megatripolis. Awfull music, TRANCE music!"
"Oh! I like trance..."

Mc Donalds

Because of AlcoRhythms' sudden unwellness we decided not to go to Megatripolis but to a movie. But first: Mc Donalds.

At Mc Donalds the hype around Batman Forever had taken off. Batman burgers, Joker fries and Penguin salade were just some of the products in batmanflavour. Everything was in style of a the man with the ill-fitting cape. AlcoRhythm settled for a coke while the other two members didn't settle for anything less than a super-dooper-mega-big-mac-menu. It cost them an arm and several legs, but hey! That's OK, 'cause on the Coke cans was this great compo! You had to roll over the edges of cans. There would either be a text like "You've won bigtime!" or "You've lost bigtime!" We lost bigtime three times. Damn! F*CK! No Ferrari F40 and no french kissing with Kim Basinger, Shannen Doherty or Sherilyn Fenn. GGGGRRRR!

We went back to Leicester Square, because we had seen a lot of movie theaters there. Normally one would pick movies. In England they seem to pick theaters. We couldn't find a movie that really suited us, so out of complete desperation we chose Tank Girl. We didn't expect much of it, but we booked first class tickets anyway. It would start at 20.30 so we had plenty time to have a look around Leicester Square again. This is when we saw the icecream stand! The brand was called Mövenpick, which is from Switzerland. In the Swiss language this probably means something like 'moving dick'... Moving genitalia or not we bought some. (Hey! We're not perverts or anything...) The icecream was quite expensive, about £1 a scoop. But what kind of scoops! The icecream guy made a sport out of getting a much icecream as possible onto his scooper. It was heavenly. Vanilla didn't taste like vanilla icecream at all, because it tasted like REAL vanilla. The strawberry icecream had real strawberries in it, BIG ones and the peach icecream had real peaches in it etc. etc. Superb! AlcoRhythm immediately felt better! Next to the icecream-salesman-terrace where we were sitting a band started to play. It was so awful that AlcoRhythm almost got sick again. The really bad thing was everybody seemed to like them except us. We countered shouts like "Hurrah! Bravo! BIS BIS!" with shouts of "Helga! The cheese!". A horrible waitress from the Swiss icecream-terrace briefly looked up but continued her work. We thanked god for making it 20.15. We hurried to the theater and stumbled in with large Cokes during the trailers and commercials.

The movie

In England everything from videogames to underwear to comics are age-rated. Movies too. This poses film producers a big problem, because how do you advertise an 18+ movie? Well, advertise during another 18+ movie I hear you say...But what about all those 18+ people that go to 12+ or 16+ movies? To beat this someone had come up with a grand idea: A 12+ trailer for a 18+ movie. This means that filmproducers take great pain to make the movie appealing even by not showing anything. The results are pityfull. Enough about that, let's get on with the EXCITING stuff. Tank Girl.

The movie started.
BLERK!
Blerk!
blerk!
blerk...
huh?
HUH?
HEEEY!!!! This is actually quite good!

It was.

I won't say that if you only see one movie a year you should go and see this one, but if you only see one movie a year you should go and see this one. It's fast, furious and... to HELL with bad taste. Beside, I like girls that wear nukes for bras. Blondes have more guns... and bigger... mouths. Tank Girl will be hardwired in brains forever. We left the theater and just around the corner we saw a girl... she was wearing a T-shirt just like the one Tank Girl had worn in the movie. We were not sure if she wore nukes as a bra aswell. When Infinity went to check he got beaten 6 inches into the sidewalk by her boyfriend. It would take us such a long time to get him out of pavement that we almost decided to leave him there. In the end we didn't and started digging.

London by night

For some strange reason english pubs close very early. This has been so since WW II. This results in silly behaviour like people ordering 5 beers just before closingtime and taking them out onto the streets. When such a person finishes his 1st beer, the rest of the beers have gone "dead". This is no problem because english beer is always "dead". Perhaps it is the other way around. Throughout all these years of early closing pubs and resulting dead beers the englishman has started to like dead beer better than the freshly poured frothy variety. Therefore nowadays only dead beer is served.

Walking through the street several guys tried to get us into their clubs.

"Hi! Going out tonight?"
"Mmm, perhaps."
"Come in here! This is a great place!"
"Well... What's on tonight?"
"Tonight's BOOM night!"
"What's that?"
"If you don't know, don't come in!"
"???"
"It means gay night!"
"We're not gay!"
"Well, then I know the place for you! It's just around the corner... but... wait a minute... You'll get in trouble!"
"Why?"
"He's got trainers!" he said, pointing at AlcoRhythm.
"What?"
"Trainers! They won't let you in with trainers on! But, wait! Just tell 'm I sent you! No! Better still, I'll come with you."
"No, that's not necessary... We're not sure we want to..."
"That's OK! I'll just come with you and..."
"No!"
"Yes!"

We had had about enough of this man, so we kicked him in the balls and continued on our way.

After a while we found the corner the now-no-longer-a-man-man had been talking about. At the corner we encountered another man. He gave us a flyer of a club. Probably the same club mr. eunich had refered to.

"Come in! Tonight's LADIES night!"
"What's a ladies night?"
"If you don't know, don't come in!"
"???"
"It means ladies get free entry and all the booze they can swallow...gets them in the mood you see. Well, you wouldn't know about that since you're gay..."
"We're NOT gay! Want to lose your testicles just like red-face back there?"
"No, no! Sorry! Please come in! But... wait! You'll get into trouble!"
"Why?"
"He's got trainers!" (pointing to AlcoRhythm again)
"What?"
"They won't let you in with those things on! But I'll come with you... I can get you in!"
"No you're not!"

We punched his lights out and we left.

A large band of spectators had started to follow us. All wanting to take a peak at that bunch of angry foreigners rampaging through the city. We passed the club all those men-in-pain had talked about. Outside where two doormen.

"Come in! Tonight's LADIES night!" said the doormen.

"NO! He's got TRAINERS!" yelled Solution.

We gained control over our temper and left without hurting anyone. The bystanders-now-turned-problem-fans that had been following us were very disappointed. Most of them continued on their way again and the others left a while later. Just in time, 'cause they were starting to become very annoying and our fists had begone to itch.

Late night Mc Donalds

200 meters further on we heard a noise that made the glass in the windows tremble! AlcoRhythm had gone hungry!!! He was 100% the old AlcoRhythm again, and he had developed a ravenous appetite! Luckily Mc Donalds was close...and closed! But because of the nice way Mc Donalds treats their customers everybody that was still waiting to be served we the establishment closed was allowed to stay to receive their order. Some nice girls let us in while the staff wasn't looking. Solution hit the toilets immediately! AlcoRhythm and Infinity simply went up to the counter and ordered some food. With the usual Mc Donalds speed (well slightly slower, it was after all 00.30) it was served. Munching our hamburgers-avec-stuff we walked toward Picadilly again.

Tower records

Huh? Lights where still on in the Tower Records building. Probably someone working overtime on a cleaning-job or something we thought. NOT! Tower Records was quite simply opened until 1 o'clock!!! Weird! Shopping after midnight is a really weird experience...

"Miss! Hey! MISS!!!"
"Zzzzzz.... Huh? What? Oh!"
"I'd like to buy this CD..."
"ZZZzzzzzz"
"BUY! CD! GET UP!!!"
"Huh?"
"Oh never mind... Just this comicbook then!"
"Huh? Comiczzzzzzz...."

And we left.

Since there was a lot of talk going on about Soho, we decided to check it out. We knew it had to be near Picadilly and Leicester but where exactly we did not know. We walked until our feet had become bloody lumps. No Soho. We headed back for the hotel. Our goal was just in sight when, in one of those tunnels under Elephant&Castle, we where stopped by three black men.

"Have you got a fag?"
"No sorry!"
"Hey! Where are you from?"
"From Holland..."
"Aaah! Holland! I know Holland! Know Amsterdam?"
"Yes..."
"Know the Hague?"
"Yes... but..."
"Know Rotterdam?"
"Yes... well... but..?"
"Look man, I have this problem you see. We've got to go and collect our car and we need a couple of bucks."
"Sorry man, we haven't got any change! We are just poor students!"
"Ah come on! Don't give me the bullshit man, don't give me the bullshit man! Look, here your my friend OK? I won't hurt you... But that man..."

He pointed at one of his friends who we now saw was on the lookout.

"That man is the one you should look out for. Yesterday he didn't care about the life of another man..."

He had one of his hands in his pocket, which showed an big bulge.

"Wanna see it?" he said pointing inside his pocket
"Nonononono! That's OK..."

Solution grabbed in his beltmounted hi-tech wallet for a couple of lose bucks. He didn't come any further then £2.25.

"This is all I have..."
"Ah come on! Just a few bucks man, that's all I ask. I won't hurt you!"
"Then stop pushing me!"

In the meantime the third man had come up to AlcoRhythm and nearly pulled his wallet out of his pocket. (Note to readers: AlcoRhythms wallet is NOT hi-tech, nor beltmounted)

"NO!" said AlcoRhythm.

That did it. The man backed off. AlcoRhythm found some more bucks to the total of £4. The treatening black men took them and left. Another difference found between Americans and English: When an american robs you, he steals ALL your money and then kills you. When an englishman robs you, he takes four bucks and leaves... I think the three of us together would have been good for at least £180. Silly english persons. Dumb weirdos.

We walked to our hotel and spent a night without any good sleep, on matresses with the springs sticking out. We had backaches to last an eternity.