#27. Ministry of Sound (Friday, November 18, 2016)

What was your best day…of having a lot of fun in a completely new place?

Another work trip. Another long list of activities I had meticulously planned (#58) before even getting on the plane to London:

The Tower of London: (coming up)
Jack the Ripper Tour: At nine at night, a tour guide walks you through all the precise locations where Jack supposedly murdered all those women, creepy backstory and conspiracy theories included.

Side note: Following the Ripper Tour, I went to a fancy bar in the City of London (right next to this Lloyd’s of London office), and there I meet a group of sharply-dressed insurance salesmen who are with this girl, Cynthia, who looks (and sounds) exactly like Ellie Goulding the singer. I assume she’s one of their girlfriends or something, but the insurance guys all leave¹, and it turns out she’s just some girl they do business with. So I end up having drinks with her for a few hours – she goes on about her messy personal life and how much she would really want to move to Canada – and then once we’re done I just take her number and she goes to catch her train home. I never end up contacting her.

The British Museum: The Rosetta stone plus five floors of old stuff from every past civilization imaginable.
The British Library: Original copies of the Magna Carta and a bunch of original literary works – including Jane Eyre with the edits Charlotte Bronte made before the first publication².
The Greenwich Observatory: Feeling this meteorite that’s apparently the oldest object on earth, and standing on both sides of the Prime Meridian.
Canary Wharf: Wall Street, but…nicer.

This Friday is a busy day as well. I start off by going onto the London Eye, then to Westminster Abbey (underrated in how much important stuff is in there; all of these past English kings from hundreds of years ago are buried there, and they’ve got the actual throne used for coronations), then to Buckingham Palace (overrated; I’m not allowed inside and I have to spend an hour in the gift shop because it’s so freaking cold outside).

After all this, and dinner at this generic steak place around Piccadilly, it’s only eight or so. And I have one more activity planned for this last night.

A pub crawl. Specifically, the “One Big Night” pub crawl in central London, which I had booked tickets for beforehand. I had never been to one, but I knew that would be by far the best way to get into the cool drinking spots and meet a bunch of random people in a foreign place. And they said the final stop would be a “big” nightclub. So I am beyond pumped.

I actually need to kill two hours before the meet-up, so I wander around the city and run into this big outdoors drinking/barbecue party under a bridge (in minus-20 weather), so that just adds to the surrealness of the whole thing.

I finally make it to the sports bar at ten. I meet a bunch of people, most of them are part of this “English studio” class³. There are about forty or so in the group in total.

We all have a couple of beers at the sports bar. We then move to this smaller bar that oddly feels like it’s located on some kind of small hill. Then to this place called “Zoo Bar” in Leicester Square where everybody is dressed in Santa hats for some reason (despite it being November). That place is popping hard. I take a bunch of shots there⁴, and I almost lose my coat.

Following that, there’s a bit of uncertainty on where to go next. I hear a bunch of names being thrown around by the guides, but then I check my phone and notice a bunch of messages from my mom – who had warned me (very seriously) not to get drunk in weird foreign places. So I sneak off to a nearby restaurant that has WiFi and after several attempts send her a quick text and go to rejoin the group.

But they’re gone. So I ask one of the guys nearby if he saw a large pub-crawl group and where they went. He says he didn’t, but if there was they most definitely are going to the Ministry of Sound at Elephant & Castle station – on the East End of the city and requiring a Tube ride. So he points me in the direction of the nearest Tube station, and I dash that way.

Five minutes later, I catch up to everyone right outside the Tube station. And twenty minutes later, we’re at Elephant & Castle. (The whole feeling of riding the subway as part of a pub-crawl group is something that’s just too cool to put into words.)

The Ministry of Sound is a hard-core electro dance club that is several dimensions larger than anywhere I had ever been before (except one…coming up). And that entire massive space is packed full. There’s one main room with a bar that runs along the entire wall, then a second room upstairs with the same setup, and a whole bunch of other rooms on the side with flashing strobe lights and electronic music blared to a volume that nearly shatters my eardrums while I’m standing at the back. The place is just insane, and I go insane.

It gets to two in the morning, and I figure – like every other club I’ve been to – we’ll all be taking off soon. But no. In London, there is no end time to the night-time partying. So we go, and go, and go, with the party still in full swing…long into the night and early morning.

After illustrating their practice by doing a ten-minute sales pitch for a pen.
If not for the events of this day, that would’ve been the highlight of my trip.
Basically professionals from countries all over the world are here for four months to, I guess, learn English.
We’ve got a group with this UAE guy living in London, these two Indian guys, this Italian guy, and pair of Dutch girls who are doctors.