Oh the people you’ll meet
This morning I am sitting at a kitchen table in a quiet upper story apartment in Leeds. I am keeping company with a pair of pigeons and a silent army of stone spires lining the lichen-covered slate rooftops just over the narrow cobble lane below my window. Outside, I hear the morning noise of cities the world over - busses, demolition, the whine of a drill, the slightly frenzied stop and go of traffic.
I am slowly waking up from my first real sleep in England after a night of upright catnaps in a too-small plane seat, and a full day in the very front of the upper level of a double decker bus. We sacrificed legroom for the furtive hope of sightseeing. But instead, were treated to what more than one local has told us is “bloody typical English weather” - a viscous mix of drizzle and fog, providing only brief glimpses of emerald green pasture dotted with blurry white puffs of what can only be sheep.
And so, I am reminded that seeing stuff is only a small part of why we go to new places. Over the last two days, we have been gifted with conversation and connections, and those fleeting - oh, but earnest! - friendships we create in the span of time we are fellow travelers.
“Madrid reminded me that there’s life after 8 o’clock at night,” said Alina, an Adyghe (I had to look it up)-turned-British citizen who plopped down in the seat next to me at the busy Central Bus Station at Heathrow. She was a pretty, slightly bookish woman in her mid-30’s, mother of a couple kids, married to a Brit and living in Cornwall. Like many folks in this part of the world, she had just taken advantage of a short flight for a brief, solo visit with friends in Spain.
“We don’t really ever go out where we live. And if we do, we’d never bring the kids.” In Madrid, she told me, the restaurants are full until 2 and 3 in the morning, with adults, children, young folks, whoever. There is a vibrant waterfront, where fishmongers sell a dizzying assortment of sea life, many of which she saw on her plate at dinner time (which, she adds happily, is around 10 or 11pm).
“We have plenty of fisherman in Cornwall,” she tells me. “But we don’t eat the fish they catch. It’s all exported. Or sold to the London restaurants.”
She’s not complaining. She says these things matter-of-factly, as an objective observer, or as an anthropologist talking about a cultural oddity. Which, it turns out, she is, of a sort. Or rather a cultural consultant, providing training for corporate types and other professionals who have multi level interactions with folks from many different countries. (I think it won’t be a surprise that we continued on in this vein for the next 30 minutes animatedly covering everything from Brexit to the lingering cultural isolationism created by COVID).
“I love my job,” said Felix - our seat-mate on the one-hour flight from Portland to Philadelphia - a paradoxically chatty technical engineer who travels a lot for work. A 51-year-old polyglot, he regaled us with stories of growing up in a multi-cultural family in Miami, and about his life as a father of five (the youngest is 20!) with his educator wife (a picture of whom adorns his phone’s home screen).
Felix grew up the son of an hotelier, and perhaps as a result clearly has a passion for food and travel. Having just spent a week in Portland meeting his team at a new job at Tillson, he spent more than a few minutes raving about the raw little neck clams he had a Fore Street the night before and the smoked Old Fashioned from Blythe and Burrows.
“Promise me one thing,” he said earnestly when we told him we were skipping London and heading to Leeds for a our first two nights in England. “Go to an Indian restaurant and eat a curry, or order the Chicken Tikka Masala.”
Like most folks we’ve met since we left Portland on Thursday, he was puzzled by our choice of first-night city. Our seat-mate from Philly to Heathrow - a Londoner coming home from a work trip - joked that when her kids went back to school from a modest family holiday in Leeds, their globe-trotting counterparts made fun of them. “But we had a great time,” she said. “It’s a really nice city.”
Which seems to be the general consensus among most of the locals we met on our in-country travels north, even if they’re skeptical.
Catherine and Dean, our front row companions on the seven-hour northbound bus ride from Heathrow told us that Leeds has a pretty great music scene, and plenty of restaurants and bars.
Last night, after walking the 5 minutes from the Leeds city bus station to our alley apartment in the center of town, we wandered out into the still-light night in search of something to eat. At 9:30 the bars were just starting to spill out onto the out door patios, and we could hear the bands tuning up as we walked along Call Lane. I was reminded of Alina’s joy at re-discovering life after dark in Madrid. The crowd here is young, but to me, reveling in the warm, wet half dusk of a Friday night, it felt like a miniature multi-cultural NOLA with a vintage rockabilly vibe. Even after a day and a half of travel, I felt invigorated - perhaps inspired in part by that bus station chat - from the dramatic change in my routine.
Amid the crush of the high stone buildings that line the streets here, we found a tiny, mostly empty Indian cafe, the telltale aroma of curry and tikka advertising its menu. With a shared look and a common goal, Steve and I entered the brightly colored space and saw to a promise we made along the way.
