How We Got Here

I flew to England on an early morning plane. That's how RyanAir gets you-- you'll pay 40 Euro more for the flights at a decent hour. To ensure that I'd arrive at the airport with ample time for things to go wrong (as one would expect they are bound to), I took a 4am taxi to the Madrid Bajaras Airport. The night and early hours of the morning had been fun, a goodbye party thrown by my friend Rachel in Madrid and her tourism friends. Still, the night yeilded only 30 minutes of a quick nap and a rushed packing job to catch the taxi in time. My eyes drooped as we sped down the Spanish motorway, and I tried to mentally brace myself for the cold I was to meet in London. English tourists I'd met in Madrid had warned me it had snowed in their nation's capitol earlier that week.

I slept through the majority of the flight, and only opened my eyes with a jolt of turbulance that signified we were coming in through the low cloud cover for a landing. I felt wretched. I'd had no food at the Madrid airport, preferring to curl up on a bench and catch a few winks before the flight took off. I looked out the window as the plane approached the earth. What was this? Trees? Cottages? Low-lying stone walls? Where were the skyscrapers of London? Where was the majestic Thames? I had been told by an English friend that London Stanstead Airport, unlike the majority of RyanAir airports, was actually in London and would be a short trip by Underground to Victoria Station where I was to catch a Megabus to Oxford in exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes. But no such luck here. Once off the plane I learned London was an hour away by train-- a 28 Pound train. I had bought some Pounds off my friends before leaving and had exactly 30. With no other choice, I hopped on the train and watched the English countryside fly by until we dove underground and all signs of life were out of sight. The train was express to Liverpool Street Station, and from there I had just 30 minutes to get across one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe. Easy, I figured. London had that lovely advanced transportation system speeding along beneath it, the veins carrying the lifeblood of the city. Wrong-o. This was a Sunday.

When they say "Mind the Gap", it is common to assume they are referring to the gap between the train and the platform. But it is also necessary, when relying on the London Tubes, to mind a different sort of gap-- the gap in service. Many train lines do not fuction at all on weekends, and many others have limited or no service due to construction (mostly to get things up to par for the 2012 Olympics to be held here). Such was the case with service to Victoria Station, where my bus was to leave from shortly. As it turned out, there was absolutely no service to Victoria on that particular day. With just two Pounds on me, it was clear I was going to have to dive into plan B. After queueing for nearly 10 minutes at an ATM I was finally able to take out a sufficient amount of Sterling. I hailed one of the famous London taxis and announced "Victoria Station please, as quickly as possible." The driver looked concerend. "It's Remembrance Day, Madam," he said in a thick Cockney accent. I looked puzzled. "Most of the roads is closed, Madam, but I'll try to go via Embankment, tha' should do well." Just exactly how much of an inconvenience this Rememberance Day would prove soon dawned on us both. Or at least on me. My driver, I'm sure, was well aware of which roads would be unaccessible, and was just taking me for a very expensive piss. Military marching brigades lined the streets, constables with red poppies pinned to their lapels directed traffic away from every single bridge across the river. "I'm afraid this one's closed too, Madam, wha' a shame..." the driver said at every turn. My heart sank as I watched the clock tick ever closer to 9:30 and the meter tick ever higher. "The Queens in town, you know, Madam," the driver rambled on, driving past the same closed bridge for the third time. "Highly inconvenient if you ask me!" he muttered, laying on the horn as a police vehicle cut him off. I had to agree.

A 27 Pound taxi ride later, I was wandering around Victoria Station trying to find the bus stop. I knew I'd missed the bus, but was hoping the next one would honor my ticket. After being given false directions by at least five less than helpful passersby (apparently Rememberance Day has nothing to do with being able to remember the geography of one's city). At long last, a bus pulled up, the 10 Pound Oxford-London bus. An advertisement of free wireless onboard lured me to give up my Megabus plans and simply buy a ticket for this bus. Several long hours later, after a faulty sink in the bus's toilet had soaked my left side, I was in Oxford. I was tired, hungry, and broke again. I felt like a true warrior, having survived the long and hard trip from Mardid to Oxford, by air and by land (though thankfully not by sea).

It was my cousin Clare who I had come to visit in Oxford. She is working on her PhD., but in addition to school work and other jobs, she coaches soccer to a group of refugee and assylum seeking teenage boys, mostly from the Middle East and Africa. They have all come to Oxford seeking better futures, as many of them were orphaned in their home countries and are escaping from war or persecution. Through soccer, she teaches them skills they'll need to communicate and develop into adults and professionals. Though some of them have been living in Oxford for several years, with host families who take them in and offer support, deportation is always lurking on the horizon. British law states that as the boys approach adulthood they can be deported, though they have no support system in the countries they fled from and sometimes a very limited chance of survival upon returning home.

Clare, always the cheerful optimist, was telling her young players, who remain hopeful and friendly despite the horrors in their lives, that her cousin was visiting her. "She's come from Spain," Clare told them excitedly. "I also came from Spain," one of the players answered. Clare, somewhat surprised, asked him about the country and what cities he'd visited. "I don't know," he answered. "I was tied to the bottom of a truck the whole time." When Clare told me this story, my own trials and tribulations to get from Madrid to Oxford seemed like a stroll through Buckingham Palace Grounds. This boy, not so much younger than myself, had faced a life threatening journey from Afghanistan, where his parents had been murdered. He had not had the luxury of flying RyanAir, the cheap as shit airline we all complain about for its poor service, but had been transported illegally beneath a truck with four other boys, only two of whom survived the journey.

There are many roads to get from one place to another. If we remember anything on Rememberance Day, let us not forget that.