London/Indian Food Calling
With the holidays behind me, and dreams of dozens of 20-year-olds in our Amsterdam apartment no longer dancing in my head, I decided to go back to a journey I never blogged about. In early December, we headed to London for the weekend. Lucky me! I have been to London several times in my life, and each time I think back to my first visit, back in the late 70's. If memory serves me correctly (and it does so so rarely these days) it was a trip filled with mishaps. Then again, I have been accused more than once by those nearest and dearest to me of greatly embellishing my past just to get a laugh. Really? Without those little "tweaks", when would we ever have a good family story to share? And those embellishments are what makes this blog sing, after all. Anyway, back to the Vine Family/my maiden voyage to London. I seem to recall that when we took our first ride on one of those double-deckers, we somehow managed to leave my older sister, Jennifer, behind on the curb. As the bus inched out into the traffic, I can recall looking back at her horrified face. I just can't remember how we managed to scoop her up, and just how many city blocks it took. I also remember astonishingly bad food, and that my brother had to walk into a pub on tip-toes so that we could eat there. Somehow, that story doesn't quite ring true, since it would have been obvious to anyone that he looked exactly like what he was: a ten year old kid tottering into a pub on his tip-toes, trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to look 18. London has certainly changed a lot since the Vines brought their New Jersey vibe there those many years ago.
When you think of London, you might think of the Tower of London, Big Ben, the theaters in the West End, or walking along the Thames. We did none of those things on our recent trip. Call it the beauty of living smack dab in the middle of Europe: you don't have to cram absolutely everything into one visit when you live close enough to go places for the weekend. So when our U.S. friend Howard mentioned that he would be in London on business, and asked if we wanted to join him for the weekend, we didn't hesitate. The answer was, "Yes!" Had we looked at a calendar, we would have seen that we had committed to heading out on a Friday morning, after having just returned from our U.S. Thanksgiving tour. Or that we had just seen Howard in the U.S. on that tour. No matter. London was calling, so off we went.
A big part of our agenda was rekindling our love affair with Indian food. Last year, I met a food blogger who spoke at one of our American Women's Club meetings. When we broke into small groups, a bunch of us fired restaurant questions at her: What are your favorite spots for brunch? For Thai food? And how about Indian? She was brimming with suggestions for each of our questions, but when it came to Indian food in Amsterdam, she answered mysteriously, "Head out to Schiphol..." [Amsterdam's main airport]. A good Indian restaurant at the airport?, we all wondered. Then came the punchline: "And jump on a plane to London!" In essence, that is exactly what we did.
Luckily, Howard applied the same due diligence called for at his job with the S.E.C to the task of finding excellent Indian food.
This restaurant, Sheba Brick Lane, was as its name suggests, right on Brick Lane, which consists of lots of little Indian restaurants standing one after another, like parched and eager 4th graders lined up at the water fountain. More on lining up later in this post....Oh, and did I mention that this was lunch? And that we also ate Indian food for dinner that very night? More on that later, too....
One thing all long-ago visitors to London liked to complain about was the food. But that was then, and today, it's a different story. Our first stop - once we threw down our bags - was lunch at a miniature restaurant called Honey & Co. which turned out Middle Eastern food as delicious as it was spicy and colorful. After such a inspiring start to the culinary tour, we set off on a walk. For those doubters who still think of bangers and mash when they think of eating in London, you need only visit one of the Ottolenghi shops. For my food-fan friends, you know this man as the author of the cookbook that shares his name, or the equally spectacular Jerusalem or its sequels. The photos alone in these books make you want to jump inside and start eating. If you are lucky enough to have a partner/personal chef in the house like Peter, you will have tasted some of the recipes. They often require special reconnaissance missions for ingredients you've never heard of, like za'atar, an essential spice in a dish Peter cooked up one evening. Our mission was to visit one of the shops in London, right near the embassies. It's a posh neighborhood, filled with posh people and now with the arrival of this Ottolenghi shop, posh food.
We also found some evidence that I have roots in this posh part of town. It's an inside family joke, that my mother's Austrian-Jewish name was not really Grossweiner (yup, that's her maiden name), but rather Grosvenor. And Grosvenor (pronounced Grow-ven-ur) is always pronounced with a British accent, the posher the better.
Here I am paying tribute to the posh branch of the family.
It wasn't all food and more food in London, although with that Indian lunch and a South Indian dinner at a placed called Chettinad literally under our belts, the trip had already proved itself a roaring success. We did break things up with a dinner at a BBQ joint (yup, you heard that right) called Blues Kitchen. This restaurant prompted Howard to remark, "Leave it to the Brits to make Southern food better than we can in the U.S." This place was hopping, even though we hopped out just as the live band was getting started. Past my bed time.
All of that food required a lot of walking to prepare for the next meal, so it was a good thing we had booked a walking tour for the following day. Again, we went off the beaten path, to the East End of London for a street art tour that Howard and his partner in crime, Kate, had both taken before. I must admit I was skeptical when Howard first announced this plan. How many examples of graffiti could I look at before I would find myself thinking back to all the juvenile defendants I represented who stood accused (wrongfully, of course; always wrongfully) of spray-panting their "tags" all over Brooklyn? First off, I learned the difference between graffiti (a name or more usually a nickname) vs. street art (a work of art painted or sprayed on a wall). Some graffiti artists crossover to street art, and some stick to their original specialty.
At the top of the building is some graffiti. And the round painting is street art. How on God's green earth, as a favorite law school professor used to cry, do those guys or gals climb up so high to draw? No graffiti artist ever must suffer from my fear of heights.
In addition to taking us on an amazing street art tour, Lily, our tour guide, also filled us in on the history of the East End of London. Her knowledge was impressive, considering she is from Paris. She spoke excellent English, with a British accent to boot. She showed us the houses originally owned by Huguenots running from Catholic France. Later, Jews escaping religious persecution settled in this East End neighborhood. And several waves of immigration later came the Indians. Now, towering construction is going up everywhere, gentrification pushing out the artists and the immigrants.
Here's our tour guide, Lily, who is herself an accomplished street artist.
This tour was full of new things for me to think about. I never knew that street art could also include sculptures or even stickers. There is a group of artists in London who slap stickers up on street signs. Apparently, if you are caught spray painting, there's a big fine, or even an arrest in your future. However, if you just put a sticker up, and can quickly take it down, the police are apt to let you do just that and then go on your merry way.
We loved our tour of the East End so much that we decided we could trust Howard when he urged us to check out the Camden Market the next morning. It's an impressive jumble of jewelry, clothing, and food stalls, that even more impressively was open on Sunday morning starting at 10 a.m. Armed with my new-found knowledge about street art, my eyes were peeled for anything I might find.
Even the term street art has become more of a household phrase now that the artist Banksy is in the house. Banksy is an anonymous guy whose paintings are worth a ton, and who has maps and web sites devoted to finding his art in London and around the world. I came back to Amsterdam thinking about whether there is as much street art here as there is in London (there is not) and why not. Apparently, there used to be a lot more until the city recently decided to "clean up" some buildings, and the art was lost. I'm not sure how I would feel about a painting splashed on the side of a historic canal house, but on a wall of an otherwise boring rectangle? Now that's a different story. During the recent street art clean-up, the heart of Amsterdam's street art scene was demolished. It turns out that even in tolerant Amsterdam, luxury condos trump buildings filled with squatters and covered with street art. I guess I have to go all the way to London again to get my street art fix. Actually, it's not that there is no street art at all in Amsterdam. It's just that there is now a lot less. Rachel and I did see a great exhibit at the Amsterdam Museum called Graffiti: New York Meets the Dam. We discovered there that there is also a street art museum in Amsterdam. I would like to check that out someday soon. It seems odd that in a city that prides itself on its vast treasures in art museums and on its tolerance for individual freedom that street art is not supported and nurtured. If you think about it, it's the ultimate democratic art form: accessible to anyone and everyone who is able to come to the city and wants to see it. There is no admission ticket necessary.
And the beautiful thing about most street art is that it's not just designed to be a background, another pretty face on the wall. Most of it is meant to challenge you as you go about your daily business, walking the streets. It makes you question your assumptions about issues, and to just maybe change your way of thinking. This is hard work for someone like me who is mostly a word person. You could probably divide most people into two camps: "word" or "picture" people. By that, I mean you either gravitate towards words (books, newspapers) or to pictures (art, films) to both help you express yourself, and to make sense of the world. And what about a music pile? I sort myself into the word pile, with a few music cards thrown in, I guess. Along these same lines, a friend once told me she divided the world into police vs. non-police people. Police people are always minding another's business, noticing who is doing what wrong at any given moment. Non-police people just mind their own business. I'm a police person in a city dedicated to a non-police approach. This is a side note, but such a true one. This is just one of the beauties of writing a blog: you can go off on tangents to your heart's content.
I love looking at art, but I must admit that I often don't "get" it, in the same way some of my students used to say they didn't "get" the meaning of a book. My dad looked with a skeptical eye at most contemporary art. He once famously remarked, "I could do that!" while looking at a very famous example of modern art: a block of color on a canvas. I'm the opposite. I look and say, "I can't even do that!". I have long lamented my anemic artistic skills. I have such admiration for friends and family who can not only draw, but who love to do it. Now, with more time on my hands, I'm thinking it's time to change that. I think I'm not alone. There is a new trend towards adult coloring books, and I don't mean "adult" in the pornographic sense. Rather, these are coloring books to help grown-ups like me relax and draw, without the pressure of having to create a work of art. How perfect! And I'd like to add that I understood every word on the cover of this Dutch version that I just treated myself to.
I'll translate for you: "Creative Coloring book for big people. Who says that coloring pages are only for children?" Who, indeed!
You don't need a page-long editorial in the New York Times to tell you this artist's views on the recent wave of immigration.
In addition to marveling over the many delicious food options, and all the street art, I couldn't help but notice the other charming things about London that make it so very different from Amsterdam. Let's start with the concept of a line, or in British parlance: a "queue". People in London form neat and tidy lines to march onto the subway (the Tube), to ride the towering escalators out of the bowels of the Tube, and, well, virtually everywhere. I've heard that the Brits who live in Amsterdam are astonished at the lack of tidy lining up that goes on in the Netherlands. This British fellow wrote about his astonishment in a recent article in an expat newsletter. I have to say, to my Dutch friends, I line up with the British when it comes to this issue. I guess it's the teacher in me who loves a straight (and, while we're at it, a quiet) line.
Some other things that seemed typically British to me:
Let's face it, it is nice to visit London just to hear some good old-fashioned English. While it is true that most Amsterdammers speak excellent English, they do speak Dutch to each other. And that seriously interferes with my ability to eavesdrop on conversations (as I have so often pointed out). You just have to love listening to a British accent. It makes one sound so darn clever, doesn't it? And Downton Abbey has just made it all the more clear that Americans don't sound nearly as smart as the Brits. As the following video clip reveals, we Americans sound pretty darn dumb to the ear.
Living in Amsterdam gives us the chance to revisit places I first saw years ago. It's a chance to see how much some parts of the world have changed, and to realize how much more - or at least how differently - I appreciate travel as an older, "bigger" (according to the coloring book) person. It's also a chance to engage in a little revisionist history, smoothing out some of the wrinkles from the earlier family visits (whether with my parents and siblings, or with my own family), remembering more of the peaks and conveniently forgetting some of the valleys, or at least turning them into funny stories. So, thank you, London, for serving as the first overseas trip for me as a teenager, for my kids when they were teenagers, and for the recent street art/Indian food gig. I'll close with Britain's finest export ever: the Beatles. They sang it so perfectly, with that I-could-listen-to-it forever accent. "There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed." You've changed, London, and I've changed. I think that's a good thing, don't you?
This post is dedicated to my parents, who travelled to London and so many other places together. They look like Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau here. I love that my dad looks so British. I'm sure he had my mom to thank for his dashing attire. They are my travel muses.