"London is a roost for every bird," B. Disraeli

When I look back, one of my funniest trips was the one that I took to London five years ago. I was working in a Spanish restaurant in Berlin and one of my coworkers, Monica, and I, decided to take a little trip to the capital of the U.K., where we wanted to meet a couple of friends of hers who were coming from Madrid, Belfast, and Brussels. We took a cheap Ryanair flight from Berlin Schoenefeld to London Stansted. Everyone knows that it rains a lot in England. It rained even inside of the aircraft!! Yes, I don’t know why, but, once we landed, water began to pour down while we were picking up our hand luggage. Neither Monica nor I could speak English very well. We arrived two days before her friends, so, adventure was assured! We had to take a bus to center city and I laughed a lot when Monica ordered two round trip tickets with the hilarious phrase “go and welcome.” The vendor laughed, too, but we got our tickets and in less than an hour we were at Victoria Station. London is a very expensive city and we had a tight budget, so, we stayed in a youth hostel in Notting Hill, which is a wonderful borough with beautiful architecture. Like I said, because of the lack of pounds we never took the Tube (London’s subway). Instead, we walked for hours throughout the city and we always bought food at a supermarket or at McDonald’s, if we wanted something special. We were there for a week and we were able to visit the city’s highlights and terrific museums. We even were invited to a rave called “Save the Thames” or something like that. The rave was at the shores of the river close to Charing Cross Station. It was just fantastic and we met a lot of new people. I have to say that most of them were a little crazy. The most amazing thing is that after a couple of hours the water level began to rise. People kept drumming on the sidewalk. After a while the party ended. We took a night bus straight to the hostel but our flight was leaving early in the morning. Monica and I didn’t make it. We missed the bus to the airport and we had to take a taxi!!! We, with our low budget!! After one hour in a beautiful London taxi and 170 pounds!!! we took off. Tired but happy we arrived in Berlin and went to work for eight hours. Exhausted, bankrupt, full of life.