Today was apparently "guess Cliff's nationality" day. Over the course of the day, I was mistaken as a native of France, Germany, Russian and Czechoslovakia. No one guessed American, weirdly enough. Early in the morning, someone came up to me with a camera, speaking in very very bad French, and I think they were trying to say that their French was terrible, so I just interrupted and said "How about English?" The couple, who looked very thankful, then asked me to take their picture. This was repeated twice more throughout the day, once in German and once in Czech. The waiter at lunch, however, was so certain that I was Russian that he asked me if I was dining alone in Russian. When I sort of blinked and stared at him for a second, he apologized then asked again in English. So today, I am a foreigner, from places unknown.

I decided mostly just to go walkabout today, starting at the Blackfriars station. I got some nice photographs of Saint Paul's Cathedral, even though I didn't get too close to it. From there I walked south, across the Millennium Birdge, getting a handful of good snaps there. I proceded over to the Tate Modern, which made for some interesting viewing. I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside, but definitely enjoyed looking around, seeing some of the more modern works. There was a section dedicated to "Urban Modern Photography" but there was an admission fee, and the photo they were using to try and draw people in didn't impress me very much. Maybe I'm strange, but I find photography isn't always art, and a lot of photography that people consider "art" I simply consider drab. I guess I'm hard to impress with such things.

I also walked over to The Globe Theater, and it was around this point that my camera did die. It's a wonderful restoration, but the shows that were playing weren't of any particular interest to me (I've seen Midsummer Night's Dream far too many times) so I carried on to The Clink Museum and then past Southwark Cathedral (which is pronounced "SUTH-erk," which isn't half as strange as "Leicester" being pronounced "LES-ter;" also "fillet" is pronounced with the T here... strange bloody language) and then found myself over by London Bridge again.

I hopped back on the Tube and headed back to the hotel, swapping out my battery before going walkabout in the Notting Hill area. I really hadn't wandered around the area all that much, so I spent an hour or two just walking around the area, taking pictures and seeing what the area was like. It's very much in the process of gentrification -- many of the places seem to be getting rebuilt and the bars and pubs were always full of posh gents and ladies, all of whom looked like they spent more on their shirt than I did on my car back home. Seems a pretty nice area of town, but then again, I don't recall really seeing London slums. I'm sure they're out there - I just never saw them. The particular part of neighborhood I'm in is apparently fairly populated with tiny hotels and either Russian or Ukranian people, although I also heard conversations in German, Spanish, French, Italian and at least a couple of languages I couldn't recognize.

I ended up grabbing dinner at a curry place not far from the hotel. It turned into a rather weird expat dinner, as guy from Munich (Jakob) and a guy from Italy (Franco) invited me to come sit with them. So I had dinner with these two guys, who apparently had never met one another before dinner, and spent an hour or two chatting away with them about their trips and mine. Dinner had all sorts of odd topics. Jakob is in London to work out some deal regarding reprinting/translation rights for some book I'd never heard, and Franco, well, Franco just sort of laughed and said that he didn't want to talk about business because it was boing. Franco also spent about twenty minutes trying to convince me to get an escort for my last night here. Apparently he's something of a world traveller, and particularly enjoys the escorts of London. As entertaining (and graphic) as his descriptions were, I decided to pass. I wish I hadn't dropped off my camera before dinner, as I would've liked to get a picture of me, Franco and Jakob, but alas, not meant to be.

Anyhow, I realize it's Friday nigtht and I should be out partying away on the London nightlife scene, but I have a plane for Frankfurt to catch at 9:30 tomorrow morning, so it's early to bed for me here. I'll be asleep by 11 or so and up by 6-6:30 to catch the Tube over to Heathrow. All in all, London's an interesting place, and while I had a bunch of fun, next time I think I'll need to bring someone with me. I don't know that I'd mind putting in a year or two living out here, although I don't think I could ever permanently call it home.

So far I have somewhere around 650 pictures uploaded to the laptop. Dunno if I'm going to bring my camera with me to the Fury show tomorrow, but I might. Going to at least get a few shots of me and Nils as we bum about Hannover for the afternoon. (Also, humorously enough, it can be spelled Hannover or Hanover, and it's the same city... how weird is that?) Fury's on stage at 8, show starts around 6 or so, and I imagine the band'll be on until at least midnight, if not longer. I got some money changed over to Euro so I can be sure to get a USB drive recording of this show (and find out if they recorded the 22nd, and how to get it) as well as a shirt or two. Thorsten said he may have a goodie bag for me at this show, which will also certainly be awesome. And I need to remember to get Christian's autograph on my CD jacket tomorrow. Once I get up tomorrow, it's about 37 hours of consciousness for me and then hopefully I pass out on the plane out of Heathrow. There may be a post from either Hannover airport, Frankfurt airport or Heathrow, but I doubt it, since they all seem to want to charge for internet access, so I may simply scribble down some thoughts in a word file and then post them after I'm back in the States again.

Good night London.