Day 10: June 15, 2014

After staying at Rachelle's hostel, I ate breakfast and walked back to Nido to drop my stuff off to spend the day with Austin. He's in Rachelle's group and said that he would show me a cool bookstore that I've been looking for. We were suppose to meet at the hostel at 10:30, but one of the tube trains was down and I was 20 minutes late with no way of telling him. By the time I got there he had left. I borrowed true computer and sent him a quick message letting him know what happened, but that I would wait a while to see if he would come back. He didn't so I left and went walking and exploring for about an hour. I came back to Nido for lunch and to buy my train ticket to get to Universal Studios. After that, I met up with Sydney and we decided that before going to Universal Studios, we would go check out Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Every Sunday, all day long anyone can star on a soapbox and debate or discuss whatever topic they want. Most of the time it's about aliens or science fiction, but this day was mostly about religion and politics. One speaker talked about the Muslim religion, one speaker read us a sheet with 100 facts about bees with 80s rock playing on a boom box in the background, (We didn't like him.), and one speaker talked about how the British government is brainwashing the citizens, using media like the BBC against Germans and is misinforming the public about WWII. Germany is the real victim according to his speech. As interesting as some of these speakers were, the most interesting, the one that drew the biggest crowd, and our personal favorite was the Catholic fanatic. It wasn't what he was preaching that drew our attention, even though that was a factor, it was mainly the two hecklers that had a comment for every argument that he made and the audience debates against his arguments. Here is a picture of the speaker:

His argument was to persuade the crowd that the true Christian faith is Catholicism. Protestants are all misguided and because of the lack of discipline, has been lead astray by Satan and are all going to Hell and are also bringing down the country as a result (This applies to America and Britain). His main points to prove this was American and English culture, homosexuality, and the war on terrorism.    

The man with the brown sweater vest and red shirt was a heckler/debater(my favorite one), and so was the older man on the left that looks as id he's walking away. He kept pacing back and forth.

 

He didn't get any support from the crowd for any of his arguments, but did receive an incredible amount of backlash from the crowd when he argued against homosexuality. At one point another American girl not with us shouted that, "God died for everyone, not just Catholics", and, "Who gave you the right to judge/interpret what God views as an abomination?" She received a lot of claps and cheers from the crowd, including from me. That is when he quickly switched gears to the War on Terror and commented on how Americans were having such a difficult issue with it and we should get advice from the Catholics, because they did a great job with getting them out centuries ago (the crusades). The crowd was appalled at such a comment and he went on to brag about the brutal  killing, pillaging, rapping, enslaving and moving of people who were far more advanced than the Catholics that pushed them out. It is also the Crusades that set into motion all of the hostility that many Muslim people have against Western Culture today. He flat out made the statement that Catholics were the best at cleansing and purifying races several times. His support for this, is because, "Jews and Muslims are evil and Protestants are Ext if they do not heed their devilish ways." It was a very shocking statement. At that, there was a comment made in the crowd that Jesus was Jewish, and his only response was, "but he created the Catholic faith", as if this justified his Judaism or as if it even needs justification (It's also untrue). When someone commented that Muslims have the same creation story as Catholics and also believe that Abraham is the father of their religion, he scoffed and ignored the statement. We had to leave to make it to Universal on time, but after talking with Sydney, who is a Catholic she was saying that she could not believe the utter filth that he was spewing. He brings shame to the religion and should not be the spokesperson. He has nothing but hate and intolerance for everyone that is not Catholic, and that is not what the faith is about. I agreed with her, and then we separated to our two separate trains.

 

I got to the station a little later than Sydney, but she thought that I had already left and hopped on the shuttle to Universal, so I headed over separately. When we got there, there was so much to see and do in the giant ware house that we spent almost 3 hours in the entire place. Of course we got Butter beer and took several pictures. It was incredible how much detail and effort everyone who worked on Harry Potter put into the movies. It was all worth it in the end. I won't post all the pictures, because there's over 100, but I'll post some of my favorites:

 

 

 

After the tour we got some souvenirs and a quick bite and headed back to London. We were on the same train back and we were so tired and excited that we just went upstairs. That concludes the day.