Days 4: Frankfurt-London-Glasgow

Early start in Frankfurt, as my flight to London was a 7am departure. I figured if I got to Frankfurt Hbf a little after 5am I’d be fine. It took me a little while longer than expected to get everything together, not helped by a crap night attempting to sleep while my brain kept poking me to make sure I didn’t oversleep and miss the flight, so I got the the station around 5.15am, still a comfortable amount of time in theory. I hadn’t accounted for the happens-more-often-than-expected thing that German trains sometimes do run late. Germans will joke about this, crazy as the concept seems. So I board the train, and it starts to move, goes maybe 100 metres before stopping. I can make enough sense of the announcement that there will be a 5 minute delay, which was also repeated in English. 5 minutes, no drama. 10 minutes pass, no movement. At this point I’m on my phone seeing exactly how long before a flight I need to check in luggage, the answer being 1 hour. at 15 minutes the train starts lurching forward again, and I’m riding along trying to be calm about it, but stress centres are twinging.

I worked out I’d need Terminal 2, so when the train got to T1 a little before 5.40am I felt like it’d be okay. Then, after winding through the various halls of T1, spotted that I’d need to take a shuttle bus to T2. The driver looked about ready to leave as I came barrelling up, and I think he realised that if he didn’t keep the door open for me I was probably going to run through it.

Of course it seemed to take forever to get to T2, and then I had to rapidly shuffle most of the length of the terminal to get to the check-in (thankful for my new wheeled luggage) but I made it with about 5 minutes to spare.

Repeat readers of this blog will know that my luggage almost needs a blog of its own, as it has, on occasion, taken a different route to mine. The flight to London was a tarmac boarding, so I saw my case on the trolley while I queued. Then the handlers closed the front luggage door, and drove out of site behind the engine with my case still on the trolley. I couldn’t see if it was getting loaded into the back, or just being taken somewhere for a tour of its own. I boarded none the wiser, but figured that as there were several FRA-LCO flights before I had to leave London, it’d likely be fine.

It felt good to fly into London, I’m not sure what, something to do with seeing a city I know fairly well, and landmarks I’ve known since my youth (as well as the latest glass phallus). While Frankfurt is okay, and has some wonderful parts to it, London is a city that, for all of its crappy bits, I can navigate fairly smoothly. I’d never want to live there, especially not in winter (unless I was being paid a lot more than I currently earn) but visiting just makes me happier.

The whole purpose of 7 hours in London was due to Tate Britain putting together an exhibition of the works of the Rosettis (not just Dante, but Christina and the other siblings were getting a bit of action) as well as Elizabeth Siddal’s work. It was something that I couldn’t really refuse, so I shifted my flights to give me the biggest window in London and still make dinner in Glasgow for 6pm, and booked an exhibition ticket for 10am.

This left me a good couple of hours to get to the Tate, so I was able to meander through the City a little, stopping to pay my respects to the London Stone, pause to take in the marvel that is St Paul’s, and enjoy London in sunshine.

Much as I love Tate Britain, it’s really a pain in the butt to get to. It’s an inconvenient amount of walking from any tube station. While Pimlico is closer, that means a winding maze of streets, and the way I was coming meant Westminster and a bit of a ramble along the Thames was the preferred option. I stepped out of the station as the bells in the Elizabeth Tower struck nine, which I thought was a nice and unexpected touch. In previous years strolling past the Houses of Parliament was a casual, carefree event, but in this day and age it involves walking alongside tall fences and barriers, while heavily armed police watched from the other side.

My first time in London was two weeks after the 2005 attacks, and at the time, and since, I’ve made a conscious decision that while in London I’m not going to let a single siren be a cause for alarm — on the other hand, I’m allowed to poop myself and curl up in the foetal position if I hear many sirens and helicopters. While I didn’t see and fear or concern among Londoners, after all it takes a tough bunch to live there, and historically they aren’t so much stoic as having a minimal amount of shits to give, I noticed the difference in the streets themselves, large bollards and other anti vehicle construction along footpaths and especially bridges, bold signs about authorised/unauthorised entry, and other subtle obstruction construction. It’s a sign of the times.

The Rosetti exhibition was pretty fantastic, I got to see a bunch of old favourite paintings, as well as some of the prep sketches and versions, including Persephone done in chalk and pastels that looked almost as amazing as the finished work, possibly more so given the medium. It was awesome to see works by Elizabeth Siddal alongside Dante Rosetti, showing that she was a capable artist in addition to model. As with highlighting the other Rosetti siblings, even though the bulk of the work is from Dante.

I also had time to take a wander through the rest of the Tate, seeing Ophelia again (not sure why it didn’t get included in the exhibition, given Elizabeth Siddal is the model), the wonderful usual suspects Hogarth, Blake, Morris, and of course Turner (I’m pretty sure it’s compulsory to check out the Turner when visiting the Tate). Felt a bit old seeing works by more contemporary artists like Hirst and Emin, they’ve reached the point where they aren’t just in the Tate Modern.

Then it was time for the other half of the mission, to hit the Tate gift shop, and this was done successfully, before I then hit the tube back to the airport. This time I the trains didn’t run late, and I had time to grab a burger at London City Airport before the flight.

Arriving in Glasgow, happily my luggage came too. Then it was the bus to Glasgow centre, and a quick stroll to my accommodation here. I’ve managed to score a decent deal, I’ve got a self contained apartment with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a decent sized kitchen/lounge.

Met up with M, P, and G in The Pot Still, a wonderful and friendly pub with an amazing array of whiskies as well as some decent ales on tap. I started with the 80 shilling and 12 year old Highland Park, before moving on to a cask strength Benromach (well, P and G got that round, so I’ll blame them for the sudden escalation into cask strength territory). Then we headed off to a Korean restaurant for dinner, whose name had Bap in the title, which I found amusing as in addition to being a Korean dish, bap is also a Scottish bread roll.

From here the others sensibly went back to their lodgings, but as we were across the road from an Innis and Gunn bar, I felt that a couple of their ales would be in order. Both the original and the rum cask are pretty awesome.

My journey home took me past The Pot Still, and with that a Springbank and Laphroaig cask strength, plus another 80 shilling and a local porter. Persuaded the manager to play some Deacon Blue just before closing.

Then it was walk, kebab, sleep, hangover. Welcome to Glasgow.