The Ordered Mess Of London

By Author: Raul San Mateo
Total Articles: 2
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I have been many times to London. I used to live there, and I still keep a bunch of friends that I love to visit and to see as often as possible. But no matter how much I get to know the city, it never ceases to amuse me during every visit I make. It has just happened again. I’ve just been in London apartments short stay, and the very moment I put my feet on ground, at Liverpool Street Station, I got that same old feeling of amazement I got on my very first visit. Among the chaos of the crowded station and nearby streets, everything worked (almost) seamlessly. Black-suited rushing businessmen, elegant businesswomen in sport shoes, trendy youngsters heading to Shoreditch or Brick Lane, Asian East-Enders from nearby Whitechapel; elegant black cabs, roaring double-deckers, sports cars driven by young Muslims; modern skyscrapers neighbouring centuries-old, small churches… all this melts in together in an ordered mess. Living rules are followed but yet broken every single minute. Cars stop at pedestrian crossings and tube riders wait for other ...
... passengers to get off trains first, while young artists push the barriers of imagination and social movements keep questioning morals and inherited behaviour to push society forward. This is the city were the tube was invented, the city were workers rights were first taken in consideration, the city where women’s right to vote was fought for… Everyone and everything is so dispersed and diverse, but yet so compact and seamless at the same time, making London the place where the most bizarre things can happen but where everything leads to one end: a most successful city. Now, back in my block of apartments Barcelona (a city which I also adore!), I keep recalling Dracula’s words: “I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.” Can’t wait to roam your streets again, my dear London.