London Diary #1

One of the perks of being self-employed in a job that needs not a whole lot more than a good-enough microphone and an internet connection, is that you can basically do your work from wherever you want.

Our home-base is in the South of London, and if you have never been, you should. We're near an area called East Dulwich, and it's a rather charming place.

With a high street that has pretty much everything but is very low on the usual chains, it's a bit like village life, only a lot more cosmopolitan.

The downside to being nestled in an area that provides you with just about anything you want is a general unwillingness to venture much further. Not least because London is, compared to a city like Vienna, vast. Very vast. When in Vienna there's hardly a place you won't be able to reach via public transport within an hour, it takes us an hour already to simply get past the Thames.

But I'm not complaining, because there's a whole lot to do around here as is. Like the charming Horniman Museum and Gardens, a collection that spans cultural, anthropological and natural history, and also includes a butterfly house and an aquarium (granted, the aquarium is tiny, but it's still fun). The whole place is teeming with children and their respective care-takers, but it's still enjoyable enough.

And the gardens afford you a view right into Central London.

When we went to the Horniman today, we decided to walk most of it, which is mostly owed to the fact that I love eating just about everything I see around here. Doing a bit of walking should stave off impending obesity.

Unfortunately, though, on our way to the Horniman we encountered the Herne Pub, which we ducked into mainly to wait out the rain (hoping it would subside during our stay, which it did). I say "unfortunately" because we couldn't not have lunch there, so whatever we lost by walking we gained by gorging on burgers, fish and chips.‌

I'm still not complaining, though, because what kind of cretin would I be if I did?