So it is over. The nearly three years posting in London came to an end. But given that three years was the maximum we were shooting for, things turned out quite well. We certainly managed to see a lot of Europe during this time and more importantly learned many of the tricks of cheap travel on the continent, which should come in handy in the future when we return on vacations. The end of July was purely dedicated to organizing the move. This was helped by the fact that we arrived with very limited possessions (incidentally finding that we still brought with us more than we needed and did not miss any of the stuff in storage, which begs the question: why do we have 17 pages worth of possessions somewhere in a warehouse in Canada?).

On the other hand, leaving an apartment in the U.K. is a little bit more complicated than leaving a rented house in the U.S. First you have to get the place professionally cleaned, which means calling companies and getting estimates. Then there is the checkout inspection, attended by two clerks (one working for the landlord and one for you) during which all the spoons are counted, flat surfaces are checked for specks of dust and every little nick and scratch on the wall is noted and eventually detailed in a long report. This is of course preceded by packing and moving and all of that has to happen in the space of 5 days and nobody works on the weekends. Somehow we pulled it off, even though it will be a while before we hear from the real estate agent and find out how much of the safety deposit they will try to keep. We plan to fight them every inch of the way.

Once everything was packed and taken away we checked into a hotel. The company has a handful of places in London where it negotiated special prices; we chose the Sheraton at Hyde Park, which at this special rate was “only” 200 pounds a night. A conservative estimate would be that two thirds of the guests came from the Arabian Peninsula, judging from the Arabic newspapers in front of room doors, people we saw in the elevators and in the coffee lounge and the more than 20 Arabic television stations available. After all, Harrods was just around the corner and the big summer sale went on until Saturday.

By leaving on Monday, we gave ourselves a two day holiday over the weekend, all the work having been done by Friday. It gave us a chance to revisit some of the places and take care of some of the things we planned to do and never got around to. In fact, we got to know London quite well and seen most of the things we really wanted to see, even though, since London keeps on changing, we would have had things to do and see no matter how long we stayed. On Sunday I took a last walk along the Thames, this time on the south bank and I made it a little bit past the Tower Bridge before I turned back. The weather was perfect with were pretty white clouds in the sky and was able to take some nice last minute photos.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) As always, London did not disappoint, there were lot of unexpected events and new discoveries along the way. I’ll miss that. I also finally photographed some of the traces of WW II, which are not hard to find, but I just never got around to shooting them until the last moment.

Finally, on Sunday evening we did something we have been talking about doing for nearly a year. We headed out to West Hampstead to try out (the only?) Czech restaurant in town. It is in a Georgian villa (the whole house used to belong to the Czechoslovak Club and I sense that there must be some cold war time stories hidden in its walls) and has a pub and a restaurant. The atmosphere was authentic, menu extensive, food very good and reasonably priced. Alice had pork-cabbage-dumplings, I had the duck and Kumiko szegedin goulash. To top it off, Pilsner Urquel and the real Budweiser on tap. Too bad we had not tried this earlier, we would have made a habit of dining here at least once a month. At least Alice now knows where it is and can drop in if she gets homesick for food that sticks to your ribs.

In retrospect we were lucky to be leaving at the end of July and not a few weeks later as originally contemplated. That way we avoided all the silliness and delays related to the foiled attempt to blow up planes using explosives mixed on board from liquid ingredients.

We were initially worried about going through an unpleasant adjustment period in Houston after three years in the cooler and dryer climate of England. But the heat and humidity of Houston actually felt kind of good (I am talking about August!). Even more worrying was that after swimming in the pool during the first few weeks in the apartment complex where we were temporarily staying, by the end of August we started to opt more frequently for the hot spa – we were starting to feel cold. I thing my metabolism has slowed down to the point where I could be classified as a hairy reptile. One side effect is that I do not need as much food as I used to. That is a good thing, considering the incredible increases in prices over the last 3 years. Certainly way over the conservative 1-2% per year inflation rate that the government is trying to make us believe. I used to buy 5 apples for a dollar, now it will be two (and usually pretty small). Tiny box of grape tomatoes for $5? I am going to grow my own again!

After arrival, we faced two main tasks: house and cars. Since we knew the area where we wanted to live, had a budget in mind and decided to rent, we asked our agent to line up all he could (18 houses) and we saw them all in less than two days. Rentals are typically houses that had a problem of some sort and did not sell, trying to rent them out is usually used as a last resort. By the time this decision is made the owner is often living in a different state or even overseas and the property is uncared for. We saw several houses with dark green water in the pool filled with hundreds of tadpoles, dead cockroaches inside, stained walls, etc.- generally not a pretty sight. Did not see anything we liked, but since we saw everything there was, it was a question of picking the most acceptable or settling in to waiting until something better turned up. Luckily the rental agency we were dealing with was quite unpleasant and slow to boot and something better turned before we made a potentially wrong decision. We found what is called a “patio home”, very close to where we used to live before, even closer to shops and restaurants and this time a walking distance from the community swimming pool. We are not far from the Champions golf course and I have many options for my evening walks. More about that next month.

Buying a car was in some respects equally challenging. We knew more or less what we wanted, the problem was that we could not find it on the lot. We were looking for smaller, fuel efficient cars – but so was everybody else. Few would show up on the lot and by the evening they were gone. I did not want to pay money for silly options and so it took a while to get what we were after. Getting a discount under these conditions was not likely, but at least we fought off all attempts to sell us assorted protections packages and other schemes by which the dealerships increase their profits. Kumiko ended up with a new Toyota RAV4 and I with a small Honda Civic coupe. Both are working out fine.

In September I headed off on a company field trip to Wyoming, we returned just before snow started to fall – perfect timing. Meanwhile in Texas we made several trips to San Antonio to visit Monica. The city is growing by leaps and bounds. Three years ago the university was literally at the edge of town, now it is surrounded by new, posh shopping centers and half a million houses. Half a million in San Antonio probably buys a house that would cost several million in California. Mediterranean style with red tiled roofs, positioned on the flanks of hills that are the beginning of the Hill Country. Very pretty and no earthquakes. On one of the trips we took an extra day and visited the Lost Maples State Park – a small valley where maple trees survived as an isolated population from the last ice age. We were a little bit early, they just started to change colour, but there were not too many people, the weather was perfect and hiking trails were not crowded.

As every year, beginning of November is the time of the International Quilt Show in Houston. Kumiko again received a prize (Second place in the Miniature Quilt division). We went to the award ceremony on 31 of October. It is a big affair now – I estimated close to 1500 people in the audience – looks more and more like Academy Awards. Kumiko submitted 3 quilts in the last 6 years and this is her third prize! One has to see the competition to fully appreciate the achievement.