Lessons Learned in Week 3

After my two weeks in London I am starting to get the feeling of the city. It is not I would say I am Londoner, that would be fairly impossible; what I say is living in here is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

Hopefully, I have started to learn a couple of things from a pair of mistakes I have made during this third week:

• Never, never, never, leave your umbrella at home. Or at least, bring something that can serve as a rain cover (I always wanted to wear a hat). This Friday I left it thinking it was not going to be that bad… Actually, it was! The worst rainfall of all three weeks I have been here. The outcome: Francisco got very soaked. Never again!

The Avengers (1998)

Sir August de Winter: A man with an umbrella is a man praying for rain.

John Steed: And a man without one is a fool.

• Then it comes the public transport. I have travelled in so many rail and wheel public transportation elements along these weeks that I think I am breaking my own life record. You need to get used to, and you need to know very well the whole grid, with the different lines and different connections. Otherwise, you could get stucked going back and forward as a lame duck as I was one day this week. Know you city! (and its transport system).

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars.

It’s where the rich use public transportation.

Gustavo Petro (Mayor of Bogota)