h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As an expat Englishman often over in London for short stays, I make the most of it for a day or two (jetlagged of course charged up with a pint or two of Directors and a curry or a kebab).

I have to take the tube, a trip to London would not be same without it. Getting around central London is easy by tube and if you have that topographical map handy you won't get lost - As long as you can map the stations to points of destination. It is not particularly fast, but usually makes a few orders of magnitude more sense than trying to drive around. If you are really lost find a "real" cab - they have the "know" and you don't - so it'll cost a few quid but you'll get there eventually unless it happens to be the day of the Lord Mayor's Parade and your hotel happens to be in the Tower District, then the friendly cabbie reminds you 5 pounds later on your trip to another tube station as he informs you there's no way to get there from here by road today. Then you can always ask a policeman - US citizens should be informed by the tourist board that this is a safe and accepted way of asking for help in the UK - you won't be taken in, frisked or shot by mistake.

Of course a day of using up the weekend travelcard to toodle around the City will take it's toll on your clothing and nostrils - all that soot from vehicle exhaust sinks - to the underground.

As a little kid I imagined that these little tube trains blasted down the tubes at an incredibly high speed - it looked like it staring at the wires outside the windows. With an older more analytical view to travel I find it is often faster to walk around in the city centre. One thing you have to remember is that that tube map is a topographic map - representing connections not distances. Rather than a couple of changes and waiting around to get from Covent Garden to Oxford Circus you could just walk it.

I like to wait for the change in air pressure that precedes the train - just fitting inside the tube that carries it into the slightly bigger tube that is the station. That is something different from the newer undergrounds around the world.

The staff are always helpful in my experience. On one trip I took my wife (not from England) over for fun.. and of course using the tube to get around we proceeded to purchase our weekend travel passes during Saturday shopping rush hours. As it was usually extremely busy and I had about a kilo of pound coins in my pocket we could save time and buy our passes at the machine. I pumped in the required x amount of pounds, pressed the required button and nothing came out - the machine reset itself. We had a busy schedule and I really wanted to get on with it, perhaps with the loss of a couple of quid. I informed one of the station staff of what happened. He called his mates who took a look at the machine's insides, agreed that something was wrong and trusting me, wanted to find out why the machine had not dispensed - I also had absolutely no proof of payment. Next action on the agenda for the station staff was to open the machine's innards and check the coin balance versus dispensed tickets and see if anything was stuck - it wasn't but they beleived that I had pumped in a whole pocket load of cash and got short changed.

I was about to give up and just buy another ticket when our new friend would have nothing of the sort. Off to the station manager's hut to fill in the appropriate forms and formalities to ask for a replacement ticket. This took about half an hour or so. Then personally escorted throught the sardines we were brought to the counter to get our ticket with all the appropriate papers filled, signed and approved. We missed a bit of tourist time, but it was an entertaining experience after all. We thanked the station staff and got on with it. Probably for the staff this was a bit of a break from standing around the turnstiles, but I honestly was impressed by their courtesy and professionalism.

Then again I have also been stuck waiting for eternities and ages for the bleeding train to show up and wondering why I didn't just take a cab or walk - it would have been quicker than walking up the escalators that are out of order