London 2016 Day 4 – LCM Summer School including Mile End

On this morning I felt well again, so I was looking forward to another day of summer school :)

On our way from the flat to Walthamstow Central station we saw this funeral carriage at the corner of Hoe Street and Albert Road.

The summer school morning started with David Ng teaching us about 1 Corinthians 9 which includes the famous passage on cross-cultural mission.

Later we learned from Imtiaz Khan and Tim Spring about the many aspects of cultural diversity and what impact it can have in a multi-cultural society.

Afterwards we had lunch which was as excellent as on the days before. It’s also time to mention Laura Bol (photo above on the left) who had organised all of the summer school. She was very helpful and caring when it came to individual issues. I had been in contact with her in advance about my body’s whims regarding food and she sent me links of all the food she had ordered, so I could check the ingredients. For Hermann who needed his lunchtime nap because of fatigue she arranged that he could use the library where he slept on the carpet floor after lunch. Big thanks to you, Laura!

In the afternoon we travelled to Limehouse station with DLR. Close to it was Husk Coffee, one of LCM’s projects, in front of which we met with our guide for this afternoon Henk van der Meer. We didn’t enter, but started out tour instead. The sun was shining and it was quite warm, so whenever we stopped and Henk explained something I tried to find some shade which wasn’t always easy.

Of course this wasn’t a tour to see the beautiful parts of the area, but to get an idea about the kinds of people living there – many of them immigrants, but we also walked along a road where many British flags were to be seen on the balconies to celebrate the Queen’s (official) 90th birthday. On one fence we saw this:

After a short coffee / tea break at ELT Baptist Church we set off by bus for a visit to the East London Mosque. I had been to Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and to a mosque in Eastern Turkey, but this building was much bigger than both (at least I think so). They kept expanding and had also bought a neighbouring synagogue – once a large Jewish community had lived in the area.

The summer school day ended with this visit and Hermann and I went down the road to Aldgate station to take the tube back to Walthamstow.

You can read more on this day on the LCM Blog!

Intending To Become A Minimalist

I’m used to having lots of items. Even as a child I was spoiled with material things, though probably compared to today’s middle-class children I would have seemed poor. Anyway, I had more than enough toys and more than enough other items when I grew older. I got married to a man who also owned a lot of things, especially books. When we moved house we needed 130 large boxes to put it all in.

I don’t know how or when it started, but during the past few years all this became more and more of a mental burden to me. It became so severe at times that when I imagined our house being burnt down and everything lost, I didn’t have a sense of loss, but of relief (Not that I really want that, after all there is another family living in the house and I’m sure they wouldn’t share my feelings about such a scenario!) I began to sell / give away items, but there was still so much I could hardly see a difference.

A few days ago I saw a young man on tv who had actually given everything away, except for the 118 most needed / treasured items. While listening to him I felt just one big emotion: ENVY! It was then I decided I had to go through with it. However, this is easier said than done, because of some mental obstacles I have to overcome first – which are:

1. Items you might need one day in the future; very good argument to keep an item which you haven’t used for years and which just collects dust in the cellar.
2. Items which are not good enough anymore to sell them / give them away, but which are still too “good” to be thrown away. We have got lots of them.
3. Keepsakes, photos etc. – you cannot just give or throw them away. We have got lots of them, too, especially as Hermann is a passionate photographer and before photos could easily be stored on hard drives, etc. they were all printed on paper. He has also got posters of one of his previous dogs.

I have started to gather items which I will give to charity and have thrown away others, but I’m also still fighting against my weaker self, so that I will be able to get rid of as many as possible of the items I might need one day, the “too good to throw away” items and the keepsakes (most of them). Next time we move I want it to fit all in about three boxes, not more. Still a long way to go, it seems.

Our London Visit Day 4 Part 1 – The Geffrye Museum

Dark clouds were hanging over London on that morning and it was rather cold, so it was an ideal day for visiting a museum. The Geffrye is one of the less well-known museums in London, even though I don’t understand why. Maybe because it is not close enough to the “tourist areas”.

It was not far from the place we stayed, however. We took the Northern Line to the Old Street Station and a bus from there. The bus driver was very friendly and showed us the way from the bus stop to the museum, though we didn’t even ask for it – that’s London :) From the bus stop we had to walk a little, but not much, to get there.

Despite the cold weather there was a family having a picnic on the lawn in the front yard, much to our astonishment.

The museum itself can best be “described” in pictures and so we were glad that it was allowed to take photos inside.

As you can see, it is very much worth visiting – and don’t miss the shop where you can buy lots of books on home and gardening, gifts, cards, souvenirs, etc. ;)

Our London Visit Day 3 Part 1 – Platform 9 ¾ and St. Sarkis

We only had to go two tube stations on Piccadilly Line to reach our fist destination on that day. It was the famous Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Railway Station. This was the platform from which Harry Potter took the train to Hogwarts. Not the real one, though, but just a sign and a luggage trolley “disappearing” in the wall, so that people can take photos in front of it. The actual filming location was situated between platforms 4 and 5.

Our next destination took us to Kensington, one of the most expensive parts of London. We took a Circle Line train to High Street Kensington. Here even the tube station itself is worth a look – it even has got its own little shopping mall inside.

From there we didn’t have far to go to reach Iverna Court and Iverna Gardens in the centre of which stands a church of the kind we had so often seen during our visit to Armenia in 2009. However, St. Sarkis is in London and in one of the best places in London, too. It had been built in 1923 for the survivors of the genocide in the Ottoman Empire which had taken place during World War I and in which more than one million Armenians, Aramaeans and Greeks were murdered systematically and with the utmost cruelty.

The church is surrounded by houses which at least partly seem to contain flats, and we wondered what it would cost to buy or rent such a flat. Far too much for us, at least ;)