Shakespeare in Bloomsbury

Shakespeare and I are living in Bloomsbury for the next week, between UCL and the British Library. It's probably the most literary area of London (think Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group), and we love it here.

Y-M-C-A

In case anyone is curious about what living at a YMCA is like, I thought I'd post some pictures of the room I'm in.

Lo and behold: right across the street is The Shakespeare pub. I might have to check it out.

While I was unpacking, I found my Shakespeare posable figure in my purse and thought it would be fun to take a picture of Shakespeare at the YMCA.


And of course, I had to have a picture of Shakespeare outside of his namesake. My camera couldn't keep both in focus--I tried several times and attracted quite a few quizzical stares for holding a small plastic toy up in the air.

Flats update and what bedsits are

It seems strange to think that yesterday I spent most of the day complacently writing and reading, thinking that by the end of the day, I would either have a bedsit room or have made an offer on a flat. Neither happened, but I think it's for the best.

Last night and this morning were frantic, between deciding not to take a two-bed flat we had been close to wanting, adding a third flatmate, and suddenly finding that the hostel I planned to stay in this week didn't have any rooms available. I have a place to stay now until the 22nd--I had to book a room in the YMCA for three days until I can move into a little hotel in Bloomsbury, but it isn't as bad as I expected. As for the flats, we are, so to speak, back to square one, but I have a feeling the looking and deciding will go faster this time.

I did like both the bedsits I saw over the past few days, but I would much rather live have flatmates, so there are people around to talk to! The first I saw was an elderly lady renting out a spare bedroom in her house. She lived there with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson. The room was spacious and nice, but no washing machine, no dishwasher, no oven, and no going out at night. She gave me tea and cookies and we had a nice chat, but it didn't take too long to decide I would pass. The second was a middle-aged woman renting out a room in her house. She lives there by herself as her son is getting his MA somewhere up north. It was much smaller, but had a very large desk and full use of the house. She knew quite a bit about literature and so we had a chat about my thesis topic over tea. The area she lives in is called the Shakespeare Collective, apparently--the street names are after characters from the plays: Cressida, Miranda, Prospero, and I think I saw Lysander. I love how London is so full of literary history than even streets get named after famous literature. I walked out of the YMCA tonight and saw, just across the street, a pub called The Shakespeare. I love it.

Coming soon: Lego Shakespeare Tours London

To bedsit or not to bedsit

In London, there is an option for those seeking affordable (read: cheap) accommodation that, I believe, is unheard of in the U.S. It's called a bedsit: and I think that it's either something close to what we Americans call an efficiency, or it's a room in someone's house that they are renting out.

Since I'm not sure whether or not I'll have to live by myself, I've made a couple appointments to look at some bedsits in Camden. Both were listed on the University of London's housing database, so I think the landlords must have been checked out by the university and I'm reasonably confident that they will turn out to be nice. Both landlords are women, and they sounded on the phone like nice, motherly ladies.

I'd much rather have a flatmate, if only just so that I would have someone to talk to, but I have to admit that there's something romantic about the idea of renting a room from one of these women. I keep imagining that it will be like in Little Women when Jo goes to New York and rents a room in the attic of Mrs. Kirke's boarding house. (I think one of the rooms I'm looking at actually is in the attic of the house.)

Of course, I don't know yet whether my imagination will turn out to be like the truth. It could be a disaster: small room, mean landlord, no one to talk to. Plus, in some of them, I'd have to share a bathroom with another tenant.

My goal was to know where I would be living by today. If I end up living south of the Thames with a flatmate, then that might happen. If I end up needing to find a place by myself, I probably won't know until at least later in the week. So the "battle" keeps going.

Finding a flatmate (and a flat)

I'm in the middle of the "battle" (as my dad calls it) to find a place to live. It's difficult since I don't know many people here. To find a flatmate, for example, I had to rely upon the university's housing message boards.

I tried to find a flatmate before I left, so that even though I would be arriving in London without a place to live, I'd at least have someone to live with. That didn't quite work out: I am meeting a girl tomorrow who I might live with, but she's also looking at single rooms, which means I have to as well.

These online message boards are a lot like internet dating. I've never had to do this before: either the university assigned me to someone else or I got together with a couple friends. It's a weird experience to advertise myself online and then to field responses. You can post an advertisement of your own ("I'm 21, from Texas, and starting a master's degree in Shakespeare. I don't smoke and am quite tidy.") or respond to others. Sometimes it's a landlord making a post. There seem to be quite a few ladies who live in Camden who are looking for postgraduate students to live in a room in their house, so I've been calling some of them.

I couldn't look much over the weekend, so I've been really looking now for two days. I'm already sick of it! I don't like looking all by myself and trying to coordinate with landlords and letting agents and walking all over London and (as happened last night) sometimes getting lost. But I suppose if I can do this, I can do anything.

I think it's a bit harder for me since I'm just moving to the country, and so I don't have a renting history in the UK. Landlords are less likely to want to rent to me. This whole process--getting a visa, finding a place to live, finding a job--seems designed to keep Americans out of the country. You'd think they would give some of us a chance!

What does moving to London look like?

A picture of my luggage before I left home.
NB: No, I can't carry it all.

In London

What a trip. I feel as if my payment for having it relatively easy the first time is that this time, I am exhausted.

It started on the plane. No direct flight, less leg room, people talking all around me. Amazingly, I still was able to sleep for two hours, but that was offset by the fact that the plane landed at 8am. Those two hours had to last me a long time.

I left one bag at the airport (I simply cannot carry both of them at once) and rode the train into the city. What a dreary day it was, yesterday and today. True London weather: cloudy, raining on and off, chilly at street level and blazing on the Underground. Lucky I have a raincoat--I seem to have forgotten to pack an umbrella.

I returned to Heathrow today to collect my other bag. Those cheats charged me for two days because it was there for 30 hours. Oh well. It was almost as hard to get back to London with it as it was yesterday with my big wheeled suitcase. Both days I got to the Camden Town tube station and then took a cab the last few blocks. I don't think I could have made it further.

My back is so sore today, I think partly from hauling the luggage around, partly from wearing my backpack all day yesterday and today, and partly from the horrible bed I had to sleep on last night.

I'm staying in one of UCL's residence halls for a week because it's about the cheapest place to stay in London where you can have a private room. The room's OK (for a dorm) but the mattress lives up to the full potential of a cheap, ancient, college mattress. The springs stuck into my back no matter what position I took. When I first fell asleep, I was too tired to notice, but when I woke at 2am, it was hard not to. I finally got back to sleep by lying on top of the comforter so I had extra padding and using my coat as a blanket.

I bought a blanket and two pillows today.

I haven't spoken to any letting agents yet about finding a flat, it being a weekend, but I went today to Walworth, where several flats are that I want to look at. The streets themselves (where the flats are) are enchanting (I don't know what they're like inside), but the main road nearby is less so, and it's a bit of a hike from the tube.

I wasn't enjoying London much these past few days and feeling a bit lonely, but I think most of that was from the exhaustion. I've taken a Tylenol and switched from a backpack to a computer bag and so I feel better and also happier now. Tonight I'm sitting in an internet cafe. My plan to nurse a cup of tea in a pub with free wi-fi was dashed when the pub turned out to be the tiniest pub I've ever seen, and packed full. So I came to Bloomsbury, where I still feel the most comfortable, since I lived here before. I saw quite a few interesting characters on the tube tonight: a girl wearing a pink bathrobe, for instance, and another pair wearing what looked like bad reproductions of early twentieth century dress. I wonder what kind of party they were going to?