Alright, so here’s another installment of the long promised London coverage.
One thing I noticed in London is the mysterious absence of trashcans, or litterboxes as they may call it. Now, I didn’t get the impression that London is a very dirty city. At least not everywhere. But there are no trashcans. Even in underground stations, they urge you to take your trash with you! What the hell? But it obviously works quite well. It did work for me too, because I took my trash with me, but after clutching my empty coffee-cup for half an hour I was tempted to simply throw into the Thames. Luckily, on our way to the Tate Modern, I made a chance encounter with a trashcan, thus evading prosecution by the littering jurisdiction.
As I’ve mentioned already, we went to the Tate modern. I was quite impressed with the size of that whole building, so here’s a picture to prove it really is quite huge:
But the most impressing thing was that I actually saw my most favourite sculpture in the world. Now, I’m not really a major art person, but I saw that sculpture in a book about Futurism years ago, and instantly liked it. I didn’t have a clue it was in the Tate, actually I thought I had read it had been destroyed (I later on realized that there were a few similar Boccioni sculptures which were destroyed, but they were made of plaster). It was quite a thing to see it right there in front of me. Touching it would have been even nicer, but hey, at least I was able to lick it. Haha, just kidding.
![Medienschelte.at [de]](http://stormgrass.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/medienscheltebutton.png)
yes I saw you licking the sculpture and it was quite an embarassing moment for all of us when the alarm went off and you were forcefully expelled from the tate modern by 4 security men – because of course you were fighting for your life, as we can all very well imagine you doing
Shhh, why did you have to tell everyone?
No Trash cans? Said to say but this is a throw back to IRA Terror tactics. In particular stations, overground and underground, were vulnerable. Small bombs were put in trash cans, so they were all removed. Glad you found it not to dirty and at least these days we don’t have to worry about the IRA; lets hope for us and our visitors it continues.
Hey, thanks for the explanation. Nothing beats indigenous knowledge.
Yes, most of the public litterboxes in London were removed after the IRA used them to hide bombs inside them in the early/mid-1990s. They’ve only recently begun installing transparent litter bags now.
And that sculpture is the one from the Italian 20 cent coin, isn’t it?
Exactly, that’s the one…in the early days of the Euro the first Italian 20 Cent coin I got into my hands on I stored in my filo, fearing I wouldn’t see too many of them later on. Well, I did though, so that one coin was put to use again…for cigarettes I suppose, which proves that art can at least buy you cigarettes.