leo burghaus

London Bridge Station greets one with the swarm of people that characterizes Downtown. It is a first taste of what is to come: busyness. You walk in awe, gazing up the tall buildings that sprout in front. The time it takes to adjust is characterized by the people shooting by next to you, that disappear as quickly as they came in your eyesight. This part of town is loud enough so that engines are a background noise, but nobody is shouting.

The crowd is dressed as workers: individuals wear overalls, suits, dresses, business casual… People walk fast, shoulders straight, eyes fixed, seamlessly navigating obstacles. There is a place they have to get to, a place they are expected at. Probably one of those offices in the skyscrapers.

Entering one of those offices, you are greeted by a big, modern floor with views that reach as far as your eyes can take you. The only thing blocking parts of the view are the skyscrapers next to yours. You can pierce directly into the offices in there. One has a similar floor, with fewer plants. The office over that has a ping-pong table, and the one under is filled with people in sharp suits. The building next to it is one of the few residential ones in the area, and you look directly into the dining room. People have eaten there, but nobody has picked up the table. Everyone left. The flats over and under it are clean. Nobody is home. Everyone is away.

Realization: if these buildings in front have all these rooms stacked on top of each other, our building is the same. Different scenes are playing similarly across 23 floors beneath me, and 34 over me. It’s an endless scenery of office tetris.

Lunch is a bad time to be on the street if you’re daydreaming. There is no time for that, no place. You get carried by the crowd’s rhythm. You’re surfing a wave of people. Left and right: restaurants, smells, meal deals. The smells, what a great mix. Portals to all parts of the world seem to be located in the different places. The smell of indian food. The smell of African food. The smell of… what is that? There are markets; they lure you in with the scent. You wish you could have this every day: this variety, all these options. A lifetime will not be enough to try everything there. Life is unfair like that.

After picking something up, it’s back to the offices, drink and food in hand. Fun conversations, entertainment that the place offers, looking out of the window, and back to work. Because it’s a special occasion for us, there is little time to do everything: you focus on the essential, have meetings and get ready for the after-event.

Because when the timekeeper strikes the hour of clock-out, the pubs get filled. Not by everyone. But every day of the week there seem to be enough people going for a drink that the places offering get full. People stand outside, beer in hand, vividly talking. Looking on my left, my backpack throws a glass on the floor. It was empty. I’m sorry, I say. I really am. No worries, no worries brother, all good! He had to get a new one anyway.

The night is a good opportunity to get to know the people you work with better. After some time in some restaurant in the neighborhood, we somehow end in the office building again, but this time in a restaurant in it. 53rd floor. Now London is an endless space of lights, reaching far. Very far. But you know you are in the heart of it; this is where things are still happening. Som offices still have lights on. Actually, there are still people working there. Wait, there are a lot of people still working. The watch says it’s 23:12. Their screens are on, coffee is sitting on the table, people glued to the desk. After-hours? Night shift? We don’t know. We are having the last drink of the night. They wanted to show us around. They did.

Before the night ends in a hotel 15 minutes away, you and a colleague get a late-night lahmacun. You could’ve gotten late-night ramen, or late-night sushi, or late-night Caribbean.

It’s quieter now. By no means quiet, but quieter. It feels like the city is getting ready, not to stop, but to slow down, to take a deep breath. Tomorrow it will start again. Tomorrow will not be the same, but it will do what it always does.