Birmingham and more...

Birmingham High Street

I went to Birmingham yesterday for a day trip. Birmingham is not a big city and can be summed up in a day. Less if you're not a shopaholic. I noticed the cost of living there is much cheaper than Reading or London. Take for example a punnet of strawberries would usually cost £2 in both places. It costs only £1 in Birmingham.

50p for two brocs??!! I used to pay £1.38 for one!

Birmingham is strange. I felt like I was in a foreign country than another city in England. The city has a huge community of Indians and Middle Eastern nationals. I think Eastern Europeans are slowly coming in as well. I noticed this when they spoke or I may be wrong. Maybe they were speaking a Birmingham accent (if there's one).

In the centre of Birmingham, is a market square and shopping complex called the Bull Ring. The Bull Ring area has been part of Birmingham's centre of trade for over 800 years. Previously it was just old streets. It was only in 2000 that the shopping complex was built and 2003, fully opened to the public. So, this is a fairly young city as compared to other cities around England.
The centrepiece of Bull Ring is the Selfridge building which was designed without windows. To make this odd design interesting, the architect of the building decided to clad the entire building with 15,000 pieces of aluminium disc. You either like it or you don't. Some people think it's hideous. But I think it's quite a stunning design.

The Bull Ring shopping complex; day and night scene

The old and new side by side

World Famous Rag Market??

The hifalutin Bull Ring shopping complex

Another piece of interesting story that I learnt is that Birmingham was the first place to have erected the Nelson statue in 1809, and not in London's Trafalgar Square where the present Nelson statue and column stand. I know some of you may ask, "So what if Birmingham is the first? Big deal!" But to the locals here, it is a sense of pride and certainly have a historical attachment to the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

My trip to Birmingham will always remind me of several bizarre incidents from the time I left to the time I came back.

Going there...
There were no travel information about where to wait for the bus. Apparently it was a new bus route. So I ended up playing investigator at the station. I am glad I met another person going to Birmingham with the same bus. There were just two of us! It's really weird.

During lunch...
I ordered a Mega-Size Middle Eastern meal deal. It was huge and I didn't finish it. So I asked the waitress to pack the leftover into a disposable container. She took the plate and dumped everything into the black bin instead...

The lunch that almost didn't happen

At the market...
I bought a punnet of plum and asked the seller if they've been washed because I wanted to eat them right away. She replied, "I don't know but you'll know after eating it."

At the market Part 2...
At the last minute, everything was going at half price at only 50p. I saw a basket of tomatoes which I wanted to get. It was the last basket around so I asked for it. Another customer hurriedly asked for the same thing. I obliged and walked away. Five minutes after, the same customer approached me from nowhere. "Here, take the tomatoes. I thought you wanted them. It's too heavy for me to carry them."

These tomatoes look great, don't they?

On the way home...
The bus driver was blasting his favourite Bollywood songs towards the last leg of the journey. It was so loud as if a car was honking in front! The worst thing was, the speakers were cracking!

Grocery shopping at Tesco...
A store wide blackout occurred. All customers were evacuated from the building and I've only spent 3 minutes there!

Shopping in the dark

At the train station back to Reading...
It was an unusual night. Just too quiet. I imagined it to be a scene from Stephen King's horror movie; deserted train station all by myself. It's weird because it was supposed to be a busy station where people change here to go to Heathrow Airport. I asked a station warden standing nearby. He said, "There was a big fight earlier. The police came in 5 vans; about 15 of them were deployed to load twenty troublemakers into the van. The train windows had blood. Oh...you'd have thought this train just came from hell."

Deserted train station. Photo taken from other sites.

It's just strange so many bizarre events happened in a day. Oh well, at least they have put colours into my Birmingham visit which would otherwise be a dull one.