Switching Countries: A Foggy Day in London Town

I arrive in Heathrow airport at the start of the business day. I've slept a few hours on the plane after choosing to watch the unimpressive film "Amazing Grace," a preachy historical drama about William Wilberforce, the parliamentary leader of the British Abolitionist movement.

I sleepily work my way through customs, exchange a large amount of currency for a few pounds, and finally find my way to the underground.

Waiting for the train, I marvel at the ease of "switching countries." In ten hours I've gone from buying a coconut scraped ice from a vendor on Loisaida to sitting on a subterranean bench in London listening to brutish teenyboppers talk about their vacation in Southern Spain while a highly proper mechanical voice tells us to mind the gap sometime in the near future.

One marvels at the ease of it all: cab to JFK, check-in + board, take a nap, check-in, and... you're in Great Britain.

I wonder which has changed: the ease of international voyaging or my own psychological experience of traveling.

The train ride from Heathrow to Hackney is quite long, and I spend most of it thinking about the last time I was in London (late fall of 2004).