One of the best parts of travel is the unexpected discoveries you make – whether a food market overflowing with delicious food just around the corner from your hostel, or a fantastic street music you stumble across. So what if you could make those discoveries right in your home town? World in London, a fantastic new project and hopefully soon-to-be new app, aims to bring those amazing discoveries to Londoners and to show the incredible experiences our city has to offer. Recently, the founder Ed Hewitt gave myself and a few other lucky bloggers a taster of the World in London – come along for the journey!
The Hackney Peace Mural
Our journey began in Dalston, an area of London I’m not familiar with at all. Ed explained that it’s a great place to experience the many cultures that London can offer as Hackney is such a diverse borough – no nationality forms more than 10% of the total population. Many of them are represented in the Hackney Peace Mural, finished in 1985 and all about opposing nuclear arms.
The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden
The Turkish population is a big part of London now, but has been popular with Londoners for even longer – the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden is not just a great place to hang out now, but in the nineteenth century was the site of a bustling Turkish bath complex.
Despite the clue of the initials, when Ed said that this building represented a large immigrant population during the nineteenth century, I was seriously baffled. In fact, it’s the German Hospital, which was primarily built to cater for the large German population at that time in the city, although it took in any needy as well. Of course this population dropped significantly after 1914, but up to that point it had flourished, with the growth of a successful middle class.
As a bit of a foodie, I was fascinated by the variety on offer in Ridley Road market – from Ghanian to Great Britain and loads in between. We had gozleme fresh off the grill plate and tried not to gawk at the more unusual meat cuts on offer, saving our staring for the spectacular sunset.
One of our last stops was Azizye Mosque. Originally built as a theatre and at one stage showing a mixture of martial arts and softcore sex films, it had a huge change of pace in 1983 when it was converted into a mosque specifically for the local Turkish Muslim population. I loved both its beautiful colours and how you can imagine what it might have looked at in its original incarnation.
It was fascinating to get a glimpse of London’s hugely multicultural side with Ed and World in London. They are currently crowdfunding to enable Londoners (and hopefully more cities after that!) to easily experience the very best of what London has to offer from every nationality. For those unfamiliar with the concept, crowdfunding is an alternative way of funding projects that allows individuals to make their ideas a reality and to support fantastic new concepts.
If you like the sound of World in London, click here to learn more about their crowdfunding campaign or have a look at the video below – donations can start at just £1, and there are some amazing rewards on offer (I’ve heard the Burmese supper club is where it’s at!). I love the concept of the app, which will curate the 10 best experiences on offer in London for each nationality, and I really hope that with a little help from everyone it can become a reality!
