LoL goes on holiday :-)

Hurra, morgen fährt the Lonely Librarian in die wohlverdienten Ferien! Und neben dem Besuch der London Rare Books School (zwar nicht wirklich Ferien, but still a treat) gibt es viele gute Gründe, um nach London bzw. England zu fahren: The British Library with its great permanent exhibition of the BL’s treasures in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, visiting the London Library, the V&A, the National Gallery, the British Museum with its famous Reading Room, Shakespeare, the RSC at Stratford, Gregory Doran, going to see “The Taming of the Shrew” in Stratford the week after next, National Trust places, English Heritage places, English parks and gardens, country pubs, mint chocolate chip ice cream, mint chocolate, mint syrup in your Starbucks coffe, mint sauce, mint cake, everything to do with mint anyway, sausages, English cooked breakfast, sausage rolls, being called “love” and “dear” by bus drivers, supermarket cashier etc., home made organic fish pie at the NT café, fish & chips with lots of salt and vinegar, big bowls of tasty soup available basically everywhere, (unexpectedly) finding Canaletto paintings at almost every museum and country manor house, Sir John Soane’s Museum (an absolute must see!!), the great choice of cds with music from the 1920s and 1930s at Virgin and HMV in Oxford Street, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Cambridge itself, that lovely new Italian restaurant in St. Albans which is probably the only place in the whole of GB where the pasta is actually cooked in salt water, bright green mushy peas that look as if they glow in the dark, beans on toast, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Oxford itself, Charles Dickens House, Audley End, being offered help and given directions by police officers, bag ladies and members of the general public after 2 seconds of standing at a street corner in the middle of London looking lost, Indian take away, Chinese take away, cider, the Harvester’s restaurant (grilled lamb and mint sauce ), walking from the London Eye to Tower Bridge along the Themse with a visit to the fab bookshop inside Tate Modern and a peep at the Globe (although if you’d like a Shakespeare play, go to Stratford!), Tate Britain, the Green Market under the railway bridges in Southwark, staying with friends who have cars and therefore not having to rely on public transport (which is outrageously expensive, usually shabby and rather dirty and doesn’t really get you anywhere interesting anyway), toasted brie and bacon sandwiches, seeing the Eiffel Tower out of the airplane window when flying over Paris (chose a window seat on the left side when flying from Zürich to London and on the right on the way back, mostly lovely at nights, when all lit up), walking through every aisle in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, M&S food section etc. (but don’t forget to take an extra jacket or you’ll freeze to death), watching the news on telly (leaving you with a complete lack of knowing what’s going on in the rest of the world), watching the very detailed weather forecast on telly for the next 24 hours (sunny intervals, with clouds and possibly spells of rain, cooler in the morning but getting warmer during the day), the different kinds of “rain” you get in Britain (light rain, heavy rain, light showers, heavy showers, drizzle, flood showers etc.), EastEnders, Doctor Who, As Time Goes By (and many other BBC series and films), tea (served in big pots or mugs with real milk without having to specially ask for it), English cakes, sweets, biscuits and puddings to go with your lovely tea, homemade fudges and toffees in lovely old-style sweet shops, people saying “thank you” to the chauffeur when getting off the bus, custard, custard tarts, cucumber sandwiches, spending half a day at the huge Waterstone bookshop off Picadilly Circus (one of if not the biggest bookshops in Europe, although sadly lacking any on librarianship), the Waterstone’s branch in Malet Street with its nice section with used books (and although it is right opposite UCL, home of School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, there are almost no books on librarianship…), and many more…

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