There are cities that don't need an introduction. But I just in case... We are in London. A variety of food, a changing weather, Boris — bless his heart — Johnsoniuk in London. London. I won't drag the intro out. This is one of the most interesting cities I've been to. It is everchanging but always retains what makes it authentic. Here is where the Hogwarts movie-mania started. And, I know it's trite, it is a city of contrasts. So, here it smells like cow excrements, and there — like big money. However, I didn't come to the capital of Great Britain just for the sake of travel blogging. We'll talk about that after a short morning jog. You wouldn't even tell that one of us is going to run a marathon tomorrow. This is Roman Kashpur, a serviceman who lost his leg in 2019, but later came back to the service, as well as volunteering and sports. He came here to run the London Marathon and bring the world's attention to the relevant problem of prosthetics in Ukraine. It's a very important mission. So I came to London just to talk about it. Roman's marathon and the trip were organized by the Hromadianyn Foundation. Of which we are ambassadors. They help the servicemen who lost limbs to get quality prosthetics and following rehabilitation. And it's all financed by the English Tea brand TET, who is the main sponsor of the foundation. Thank them for that. By the way, this marathon is not Roman's first daring sport experiment. In 2021, he set a record in Ukraine by pulling an entire military plane on a prosthesis. The idea behind the marathon and the plane is motivation. The motivation of badly hurt, those who lost all hope. Everything is great. The life without a leg continues. Sometimes it's even better. Soo... Roma is joking about his situation and is proudly wearing this badge. So, during our jog we talked heart-to-heart about living with such a trauma. How long did it took you to adapt to the prosthesis. When did you start running? Well... Immediately after the injury. Six weeks, when I first stood on a prosthesis. First feelings, first steps were strange and unnatural, a bit painful, because the injury is still new. Although, a week later I walked much better. In two weeks I broke my first prosthesis. Because I wanted to live my life fully. And the prosthesis wasn't good for running and jumping. So it broke. It's good I was in shoes, because it would fall apart completely. — How much it cost? — It was a "woody". The cheapest. Just for walking. — A breaking. — It just happened. Apart from running and pulling the planes, what do you do usually. Before the marathon, I was doing cross fit. Twice I took the first place in the Ukrainian competition. — Among everyone or just injured? — Adaptive cross fit, so just injured. But in the online competition during the pandemic of 2021, I took the first place among everyone. 55, 56 times. Can't remember. — Let's be fair, you can pull up with one less weight leg. — I cheated in that regard. I hate zipping my jackets. Hate washing pans and high boots with laces. What is something you didn't adapt to? I adapted to everything. The only thing, you have to put on and take off the leg before sleep. Don't forget about it. Because I had a painful experience of waking and stepping on the wrong leg. It was once. A painful experience that I don't forget now. Listen, what about the staircases. They're the best. Adapted completely. Sometimes it feels like the prosthesis walks better up, because of the kinetic energy. I feels like a prosthetics advertisement. No, no, no. I don't encourage anyone. But if it happens, the life continues and everything is in our head. Let it be. I was moved by Roman's confidence and motivation. I felt sure that he will get through the London marathon. We'll talk about it later. During my trip in London I mainly talked with Ukrainians. Statistically, you can't really find a local Londoner. London is the first in the world with largest foreign born population. This doesn't even count in the rest of Englishmen who come here for work. The majority of my London acquaintances work in IT. Such as in one of the most incredible offices I've ever seen. We'll talk about it later. Now, about Mate Academy. It is a modern IT school that focuses on practical aspects of IT, programming, testing or web design. The students of Mate Academy receive daily help from mentors, lots of practice, work on real projects, interviews, and help with employment. The platform has a vacancies tab that helps with searching for work. The main feature is the free of charge education. You can pay up later with a fixed percentage from your future salary. This is a bit of statistics they sent me to prove their greatness. 90% of their students find their jobs. And more than 2500 people went through the studying. So, if you ever wondered what to go for: design, testing, or programming. You can scan the QR-code or follow the link in the description to sign up for the first free course. Which will help you understand your needs. And we're moving to London. In over 2000 years of existence, London's downtown became an architectural cocktail of modern and classic. In my first days here, I jumped on a excursion double decker bus. Which you can freely jump in and out, to look at the ingredients of this cocktail up close. Some may say this is a tourist hoax. But it is a really fast and comfortable way to see through the city, which is quite big in itself. Here, you just sit and enjoy the architecture, while listening to the guide in the earpiece. This is worth around £50 for two days. If you have spare time, you can go through the sites by public transport or rented bike. Witness the bike and car lanes here. I like this urban-planning. We'll discuss later about the public transport. But first, a small tourist stop at the main site of the city. The Tower Bridge is one of the most famous and expressive bridges in London. It is a singular draw bridge on the River Thames. It was build through 1886 to 1894, according to one of the many projects. The construction was so difficult, that the insurance company marked it as a boat. It is always taken for London Bridge, which is a couple kilometres away from it. And it existed in the First Millenia when London was Londinium. London Bridge was many times reconstructed. Some time ago it has houses built on it. Its modern version looks quite bland. Its previous incarnation was bought for 2.2 million in 1968 by an American businessman, who moved it across the pond. And later reconstructed it in Arizona. Right now it's surroundings look much better. But I hope this fate wouldn't get to the Tower Bridge. From the point of Urban planning, since 1930th to 1970th there was a beach under the Tower Bridge. It was closed because of excessive pollution. Although, the Thames is one of the purest rivers in Europe, the beach is not here. It would be nice, though. The bus price also includes a boat ride along the Thames. I liked it much more than the bus, as everything was accompanied by witty regards from one of the crew members. Secondly, the Thames is the main logistics artery of the city. Therefore, the majority of the buildings are facing the river with their good sides. We're crossing through the London Theatre, which is year-after-year is selected as the ugliest building in Britain. The British don't like brutalism, the style they invented. Apart from the architectural feast, the Thames trip is coloured by one ubran detail. It is prohibited to put advertisements near the river. It's a very important point, as the ads here would cost immensely. The people here appreciate the authenticity and aesthetics more. By the way, a random fact: not many people actually saw the Big Ben. Because this is the Elizabethan Tower, and the Big Ben is the bell inside. On this note we leave London's downtown and head to Wordsworth, where one of the most famous attractions is located. It is more interesting for millennials. So, after a bus and a train, I arrived at the Warner Bros studio. I can't call myself an avid fan of Harry Potter. However, as many in my generation, I read all the books, watched all the movies. And it was one of the most important cultural aspects of my growing up process. When I saw that there were a few spare places for the tour — they are actually booked weeks in advance I couldn't miss the opportunity. It's not a museum or a thematic park. It's a real studio, where the movies were actually filmed. That's why I'm here. In other case, I couldn't care less to spend £52. So, when the studio is vacant of filming, the pavilions are full of tourists. It starts with the Grand Hall. As many other pavilions, it was built from the scratch. Every details is over meticulous. For example, they brought real rock floors, that are similar to real castles. It was not cheap. After that, there is a big exposition of different pavilions and decorations that were used for filming. They seem to walk right from the movie set, apart from some changes. They're playing the backgammon. Well.. One of the most difficult locations build for the films is the Ministry of Magic. It is twice as big and difficult than the Grand Hall. For the later movies, they even built a real statue where the muggles are crashed on. Magic is Might — the sign says. What inspired the designer? Probably the London Metro. Usually, when watching the movies, we don't really pay attention to such detailed works of set and costume designers, or the art department. It's important to note that we already know how everything looks like, the costume, decorations. But when the movies were filmed, it had to be done from the scratch. Read the books and imagine everything firsthand. Of course they had some references from the real life, I'll visit some of them. If I do, here's a small teaser. First of all, it's an unimaginable creative level to imagine and create all of that. There's also a big queue to take a photo here. You can experience it like one big thematic photo zone. In details is the key, as you can get to figure out many engineering details about movie making. Harry Potter started filming in the 2000th, so there was not a lot of greenscreen. Most often, the team needed to engineer the scenes. This Hogwarts model as used for filming the first few movies. The great Hogwarts gates is just a miniature model which was filmed from the right angle. There are more robots and mechanisms that I could've imagined. Of course, the later movies used 3D technologies more and more. For example, the Ukrainian Ironbelly, the biggest dragon in the Harry Potter universe that guarded the Gringotts. And if it existed in the real life, and not just in the movies or this hologram. It would be nice to bring it back to Ukraine. So there's no need of F16. About the Gringotts Wizarding Bank. It's interiors and details where made in real life, and all of the goblins where played by the people with height disorders. Everyone of them was made suits, masks, and hands. — So these are for sale? — No — Alright. — Certainly not. Anyways, they're ugly. So I don't think they would fit me. — Yeah, goblins aren't so nice to look upon. To cut it short, it's a real manifest for the preproduction. Because each scene is days and weeks of planning, designing, and filming. A funny fact, to film the scenes with the Knight Bus, they put together three double deckers. And yes, there's also a queue. However detailed and interesting the locations are, they are really a thematic photo zone. Even in workdays, there are queue to make a photo. I can't only imagine how much people are there in the weekends that they had to make three copies of the carts in the walls on the Hogwarts Express platform. By the way, the real London Station King's Cross also has a cart in the wall. And a lot of people in the queues. Despite my irony, I wanted to stand in one of the Harry Potter queues for 15 minutes. However, the goal was not the likes in Instagram, but rather the taste buds satisfaction. You can try the exclusive Butterbeer that is only brewed here. It's basically a cream soda with ice cream atop for 7 pounds. They earn their living on such fools like me. Ok. The price also includes the souvenir cup that you can wash in here. It's one of the cheapest merchandise you can find here. Everything else is just Expensive. It's no news, really. Of course, through the tour you can buy the merch of different qualities and usefulness. And if you ever wonder, if people really buy that stuff. There are queues for the cashiers. And Harry Potter has sold souvenirs and merchandise worth $15 billion. Probably only Star Wars can compare to this master class of fooling the tourists for money. Of course, these money don't only buy the replicas of wands and clothes. They can help the fans feel connected to their favourite story. However, Harry Potter is not the only movie made in England. You don't have to walk far from here. Nolan filmed his Black Knight here. If you want to count every character and hero that was filmed in London, one video would not be enough. One of the most famous of them is Agent 007. James Bond doesn't really have a separate studio, as the movies are filmed in real places. This one is one of the most famous of them. The MI6 Headquarters in London. It's real headquarters, even Google says that. But, as expected, there are no excursions inside. There are a few reviews on Google Maps, that show the real British humour. The building itself is very serious. It's surrounded by a high fence and is covered with safety cameras. By the way, London is the first most surveilled city in Europe and in the world, apart from Asia. They appeared here one of the first in the world in the middle of the 20th century. Because of high criminality rates and the need to observe the traffic. In some way, the surveillance cameras are one of the symbol of the city. Just like the red booth. However, let's come back to the filming cameras. London is home for many cult classics. I was anticipating the most to see this small street. It looks just like one of my favourite shows or recent years. It feels like Lasso will come out the corner of the street and a man will call him some English slur. It is a TV show about an American football trainer who happened to lead the football club Richmond. But it's not just about the sports. It starts like a simple comedy of getting to learn England. Throughout the series, it becomes more moving. It touches on the topics of friendship, love, relationship, self-belief, and mental health. It is the warmest shows that I've watched, and the finale for the third season got me in tears. I recommend it! Some of the locations are situated in the real Richmond. It is located to the South West of the city and is very cozy with its Georgian buildings parks, and banks of the calm Thames. It is also one of the most elite and expensive in London, justifying "rich" in Richmond. However, the football club doesn't really exist. All of the scenes were filmed on the Crystal Palace Stadium. Which is on the other side of the city. But the pub where the fictional characters watched fictional matches does exist. It is called The Princes Head. Ironically, over the bar stand you can see the rose of the club. The merchandise doesn't sell here. The license to the fictional club belongs to Nike, which sells it on its official website. Therefore, the clothes from Season 1 is just for the showcase, as well as photos of the founders of the pub and the actors. Demonstrating the pride for the football tradition of this district, which does not exist. Although, it bought the love from many fans across the world. — There you go. Where are you from? — From Croatia! — Cool. For me this show became some sort of therapy. So one of my London bucket list points was to come here and have my cup of tea in the park that was beloved by the main character. This place is called Richmond Green. And the area is well-known for its Richmond Park, which is located a couple kilometres from here. The park is just a simple park. With woods, grass, and deer, if you're lucky. "Lucky" was a bit redundant, because the deer are so many. But it's not recommended to come close to them, as they are wild animals. And the contact with people, or bloggers, may disturb their calm London life. Their life is usually disturbed by regular shootings. Yearly in November and February, the hunters are killing as much as 300 animals. This causes an uproar among eco activists, but the official position of the resort is that the park is not huge. So the population control helps prevent the deer to die out from hunger. Richmond is one of the few parks located inside London. It was founded in the 17th century and dedicated to breeding the deer to hunt them later. It's a standard Anglo-Saxon practice. Before the park, this place was just some royal lands. One of the most interesting places in this park, is the King Henry's Hill. Historically, it was a viewing point from where you could see the Windsor Palace and London. During the 18th century the territory changed and it was decided to create the Vista Line on the St Paul Cathedral. The trees are still cut here, to make for the view. There's that St Paul Cathedral in the distance. To see it better, you have to use this instrument. So, this window in the centre of London is being kept for several centuries. Of course, not every tree is for cutting. This royal oak is estimated to be 750 years old. I'm not a naturalist, but this fascinates me, really. Let's pray for its wellbeing and long life. The Richmond Park is the oasis of wild nature inside London. I loved it's natural imperfection, and primacy. The main problems are its location and length. You need to have much time to have a walk here. The English capital has many places to connect to the nature inside the city. Although London is huge, it's very green and animal friendly city. You can't really surprise anyone with squirrels or foxes on the streets. It's a completely normal thing to have farms beside business centres. Not a zoo, a real farm. This place is called Mudchute. It is one of the biggest farm inside the cities in Europe. It is located on the Isle of Dogs, which is best known for its ship docks and industries. It was one of the main objectives for the Blitz bombings. So, you can still find an aerial defence gun, which is here since the WWII. Just inside the farm, beside turkeys. After the WWII, when this place was not really used, it was planned for building over. But the community decided to reserve this potential expensive district for a farm, breeding domestic animals, allowing the locals to establish contact with them. Got tired from your businesses? Ride a metro. Scratch a cow. And everything's fine. I will not scratch the pigs with my last hand. Because I know where does the saying "As greedy as a pig" comes from. If you know, you know. What's up? Sup? Sleeping? I enjoyed this farm contrast immensely. So, here it smells like cow excrements, and there — like big money. This skyscraper wall is the Canady Wharf, one of the main business hubs in the world, where many financial companies are located. And which appeared here pretty recently. In the 1980th when the docks here became unprofitable, this territory was sold to investors. They started building their own Wall Street here. In essence, it's private property with its own rules and even the Police. In coming years, so many skyscrapers appeared here that there was a court case between the managing company and locals, because the metal buildings blocked their TV signal. The citizens lost the case, as it was stated that the signal loss was akin worsening of the window view. Canady Wharf still stands out from the rest of London. Here is 5 out of 10 highest buildings in Britain. And the highest and most famous skyscraper in the UK stands lonely on the other side of the Thames. It was meant to be called the Tower of the London Town. But so many citizens hated the project, calling it a shard of glass. Therefore, the building came to be known as Shard. By the way, other 4 highest skyscrapers of Britain are also located in London. They are elite office buildings. But, recently, big companies tend not to rent big spaces in these glass phalluses. They build their own headquarters. For example, this building was built here in 2017, and is one of the most interesting in the city. It is the office of the Bloomberg company. Let's come inside and see what it's famous for. You understand that you're in a real business place, when the corridor is an art object. Upstairs there is a great hall with spiral staircase and a lounge zone with a view over the historic town. Downtown London has a law that prohibits buildings over the height of St Paul Cathedral. For it to be observed from every side. Therefore, this office building came up with a cool solution. This glass is made in such a way, that allows you to see the cathedral the farther from it you stand. It looks just like an optical illusion. As it goes in big business, there's also a bar with unlimited drinks and snacks for the office plankton. This is the most futuristic coffee machine I've ever seen. You can change the concentration of your espresso on the sensor screen. Of course, you can't just come inside and drink coffee. Here is my personal pass, that was given by my friend Kostya, who we played basketball with in the University. Right now, he's working here as the Senior Software Developer. Before getting in here, he also studied in the Australian and English universities. But his base knowledge comes from the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics. Bloomberg's code is written mostly in C++, which came in handy as I studied it in Kharkiv. Also the management skills, agile methodology that I brought from there. — Did we study in different universities? Agile, like the Occupational Health? — Scram. It is all made according to Agile methodology. — So you're saying that the Ukrainian education is not so useless. — Yeah. Of course, you can get IT education much faster by following the link to Made Academy. Now, we're trying to figure out why is there so many IT specialists here? Many of you know Bloomberg as the company that writes about the news in Finances. But it's really a technological giant. Their main product is called very ominously — The Terminal. What is it? If you watched any cool--investor movies, there were interfaces with graphs, shares, etc. This is The Terminal, which aggregates the info from different sources and brings it on screen for cool investors. It is expensive as hell. And the sells of this program is the main source of income for the company. In the whole world, there is more than 300,000 users of the Terminal. So you can easily count on why they spent a billion of pounds on this headquarters. To compare with, Shard was $450 million worth. Let's try to figure out why it's so expensive. From the outside, the building doesn't look really impressive. But it's filled with technologies that makes it the most sustainable in the world. The roof is designed to gather in the daylight. And each of the ceiling is unique, with integrated lighting, ventilation, and heating. They were made to individual order, so they were expensive. The spiral staircase is the masterpiece of the art of engineering this whole thing was build around. Norman Foster is the architect of this building. — The one that pledged to rebuild Kharkiv. — Yeah. He planned this building as the one, where people wanted to work in. So, when we go down to the workplaces, they are circular, so the people could talk with each other any time. It was build over the ancient Roman site, So this place sometimes gives recognition to the historic memory of this place. There is an art object called Roman Rubbish, that consists of pitchers that were dug out here. This weird stream right at the entrance is not canalization but a fountain that commemorates the river that flowed through here. There was an old Roman road right in this place. It was decided to retain the historical accuracy of the place so there's also a passage. Below, there is a Metro station and one of the most important archaeological sites in Britain. The London Mithraeum. The temple was found here in the 50th of the previous century, and when this building was built it was deconstructed, moved to another place, and the returned to place. Now, there is a museum that has a free of charge entrance. The Mithraeum is very stylish and modern. It's not just a museum but rather a light-noise performance that starts once in half an hour. It tries to replicate the atmosphere of the ceremonies that took place in the temple. I was asked not to film the performance, but the ruins were welcome to film. Although, London has better places to look at ancient things. This is the British Museum, but it is not really British. Not British at all. This is one of the oldest in the world National Museum with the biggest collection of exhibitions. 8 million. Mostly, these are, let's say, souvenirs that were brought here by British researchers, conquers, and colonizers from all over the world. The most important piece in the Museum is the Rosetta Stone. It is a stone monument discovered in the 18th century. It helped decipher the Egyptian symbols. It's so important, because in the 4th century AD the hieroglyphic writing was lost. And for over a 1000 years no one could understand what was said on it. The Egypt is the main source of artefacts for the British Museum. You can find everything here. The sculptures, old tombs, old wall fragments, even the famous mummies. Yes, behind the glass there are real Pharaohs in London. They even brought the cat mummies. There's a joke, that the pyramids are still in Giza, because they were really difficult to transport to the British Museum. A logical question, why not turn everything back to where it belongs? There is a law that prohibits the British Museum to do just that. The nuance is that the British themselves wrote the law in 1963. I can imagine the discussion behind it. — Guys give us our Pharaohs back. — We can't( It's the law. — You wrote it yourself. — Just look at the Greek Collection! To cut it short, this place has a bleak background. This is a big trove of stolen stuff. But from the scientific perspective, it's just a hypermarket among museums. In just one visit you could experience so many antiquities. As you can imagine, London has many museums: galleries, old royal apartments, technological and nautical museums. The majority are free of charge. But the majority are not worth your attention or the time in the video. The Natural History Museum is the one that is definitely worth the attention. It started with the British government buying out the collection of old skeletons and dried plants from the private collector. It all shared place in the British Museum. In the 18th century it was getting crowdy in there. And they build this one in the South Kensington, with a complete terracotta cladding. So the walls won't get black from the fumes of the early industrial time. The most famous chamber in the museum is the Hintze Hall, which has a skeleton of the blue whale under the roof. This monumental hall is also built using terracotta. It is designed to look like a temple of nature. And it's not for nothing. The founder of the museum didn't share Darwin's views on nature. He thought that everything bore God's intent. Although, Charles Darwin is sitting himself in this temple. And the museum has a built-in section — Darwin Centre. This is a scientific research laboratory, where they research objects of nature. There's also an 8-floor cocoon, that barely fits in my camera. It contains a variety of specimen. You can walk freely on two floors of the cocoon's not so interesting exposition with bugs, butterflies, and other presentations. The area and hypermarket quality of this museum is similar to the British Museum. You can find arachnids here, as well as the collection of ancient skulls. There's even a geological section with different minerals and things made from them. The most precious exhibits are located in a separate hall of the main chamber. The term "Dinosaur" was invented in this museum. It has one of the oldest and richest collections in the world. It looks like a meeting of those who love to Viber and MySpace. By the way, you can also find one of the most famous dinosaurs — Nyasasaurus. The names are wonky. I have something in common with this dinosaur. The museum is free of charge, but some exhibits require additional fee. For an additional charge you can see the life size model of the Titanosaurus. The biggest one to walk on Earth. Here's me, here's Titanosaurus. He's really big. To say that I just paid 16 pounds. Like the video. The main characteristics of this museum are the big crowds of school children walking around the place. This is probably more interesting than school science lessons. You can visit the museum in many ways. You can just come by, look at the whale bones. Or you can spend a couple of days in here. But the place is really worth the visit. Let's move forward. After that I decided to sit back and feed some ducks. I stayed in London a bit longer than I planned. Kostya let me stay overnight in his place. He and his girlfriend live in an amazing apartment complex. Where there's a duck pond in the backyard, and a green garden with foxes running amok. This is a masterpiece of urban planning. A real Japanese garden with a pond, fountains, and hidden benches deep inside. Only the residents can come inside the garden, which also has an underground parking. The only bad thing is, the rent, which is around £2,500-£3,500 per month. Or you can buy it for a £1 million. You can understand why it's so expensive. It's near the Tower Bridge. Even apartment complexes in London are worth your attention. At the end of the video, I wanted to mention my former employers the Altexsoft company. And their initiative called "Ne z neba". They plan to supply one new unit of the Armed Forces with drones and components, which will be paid for by the company and the donations from the employees, and those who want to support it. So, every link is in the description. There are also vacancies in the company, as they continue to hire. If you're searching for something, you may find it there. Coming back to London. The longer I stay here, the more there is to see and visit, get acquainted with, talk to. So I need to put a semicolon and break this tale into two parts. In the second one we will get inside the urban aspects of living in London. It's just Hell. You can't simply go to the doctor. We don't have a shop but we have a pub. We'll talk about the unique local transport and infrastructure. I would live in London just in the sake of these bike lanes. About whether the country really support Ukraine. — Prytula! — Prytula? We'll also come back to the marathon, talk about London football, London food market. And different aspects that make this Kingdom and city so unique. So, if you don't want to miss out on the video. Don't forget to subscribe. Leave your feedback in the comments below. As always, thank you for watching this video. See you in the next one. — Romane, I think we're doing something wrong. — Think we're breaking the system?