Right! First order of business was to hop on the tube and start heading out of London. A quick ride to Euston Station and then onto the National Rail for the hour-ish ride for my 40 or so mile trip. I had thought of this destination after a pint or two watching the Wales/Portugal match debating on what to do for a full day. I could do all the touristy things in central London, but when I come back with Kari, I would be doing them all again. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, but I was trying to think of things she would have no interest in at all. Interests... geeky stuff... That's when I started reviewing my hobbies and books I've read and remembered something from Cryptonomicon back in the early 2000s. The founder of modern computing was from here. The Association of Computing Machinery that I belonged to at University studied him (as well as several of my courses mentioned him). Alan Turing. I'm going to Bletchley Park.
Stepping off the train at the Bletchley Station and looking around, it wasn't much to behold. I make it out of the station itself which leads pretty much directly on to a road. Bletchley Park is a mere 1/4 mile away down the road. As I walked up its previously well-guarded entrance, I'm struck by the serenity of the place. It's only 9:24AM but the noise, the hustle, the ... movement of the city, of London, has been left far behind. This place is calm. I'm sure 75 years ago it was anything but. These are colliding, juxtaposed thoughts as I stroll up the drive and towards the visitors center where there are about ten others waiting to enter. It opens at 9:30. In a few moments time, we are greeted and allowed entry into the queues to pay for entrance. I also picked up a guidebook for £5, an inexpensive but good souvenir to look through later. I use it to hold receipts and the map of the area and I walk past the cashier into the first of the dioramas depicting what life was like during World War II. I see actual print outs of Enigma enciphered text and on the back, glued on is the decrypted strips of German and under that is the English translations. Amazing...
As I leave the visitors center I'm offered a self-guided audio tour that I can use as I wander the grounds at my own pace and in my own desired direction. Bletchley Park is wide open and you are free to walk everywhere. There are certain buildings that there is no public access but some can be accessed. After listening to the intro on the audio tour, I'm instructed to head to the lake so I do. However, before I get there and hit the tour's information on the lake, I see Block B - Museum. I read about this museum. It houses the largest collection of Enigmas available for viewing. Choices: go look at a beautiful lake and continue my tour or go look at 70-80 wooden boxes in a museum? Right, so into the museum I go where a curator very helpfully suggests that I start downstairs where the Enigmas and Bombes are. I barely manage to control my excitement and rush downstairs and ask about what is upstairs. Upstairs is the Lorenz history, how the Japanese ciphers were cracked and other bits about Colossus. The curator also says that they'll be running the Bombe soon but it may not be for another hour or so. Ho. Ly. Crap. I knew they had an operational one, but the fact that they demoed it too! WOOHOO! So down I went!!
The first thing I see is a massive machine, open in the back
with two people standing around it inside a rope perimeter: a Bombe. As I take in everything in the room I see a long room divided into sections and the next section I would enter contains glass shelves filled with Enigma devices. All of them appear slightly different: three- or four- wheel
variations. Ones for the navy or the army. Some Italian but most are German. My concentration remains on the large device and the instructions the older gentleman seems to be giving a lady: operating instructions. It seems I may not need to wait an hour. He's describing oiling and the like at the moment and myself and another curious museum goer are standing around excited but obviously we'll be waiting a few minutes so we chat a bit. A curator is standing very nearby, actually between us and another Enigma machine in plexi-glass case and he answers most of her questions. She moves on to asking about the Enigma. I have read about these and have looked into buying one (HA! One in the condition this is in would be about $350,000.) Kits to build your own are reasonable and I will probably do that, most of the electronics and wiring is a lot better than the original as well. We move over to start taking a couple of pictures and that's when the curator asks THE question: "Would you like me to open the case so you don't get any glare for your photos?" OMG... YES!! But I say, 
The Enigma had three or four rotors which had all the letters in the alphabet with each rotor having its letters in a different, mixed order on the rotor. The rotor itself was wired internally and the wiring would be changed by its ring setting. Basically you could spin the letters around to a pre-determined setting on the rotor. So to encrypt a message, the sender and receiver knew the ring setting for each rotor and which rotor was put in which order. See, you could have it with rotor 1-2-3-4 and encrypt or 2-4-1-3 and encrypt and would get completely different cipher text. All of this led to Enigma having a total of 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. One of its weaknesses though was that no letter enciphered could actually end up as itself. So if you enciphered 'K', it would never yield 'K'. Ever. Once there was a possible code to try, a Typex machine was set up in the Enigma settings and a typist would type in the enciphered text. If the setting was incorrect, rubbish would come out on the tape on the right side. However, if the settings were correct, then German would come out.
The bombe works not by trying every single combination, but eliminating the impossible ones. Several bombes would work in conjunction and get that staggering number down to only about a million possibilities and then down to about 600. From there it was up to cryptanalysts and clever crib finding (guessing for known words in weather reports, etc.) and discover the Enigma settings for that day... for that branch of military... for that theater of the war. It was a massive, massive effort. The Bombe meant they could break the code in hours and not days like it used to take. The efforts of Turing's and the others' work shortened the War by up to two years which saved countless lives. It even allowed for the US's success in the Pacific.
Thoroughly humbled by watching that display I head through the rest of the displays of Enigmas and look at history of them. At one point Germany suspected it was being broken so they decided to change their rotor settings nightly instead of once a month. The naval Enigmas were the hardest with their fourth rotor and nightly changes from the start.
Upstairs it was a fascinating display about the Colossus and how it was created to help the war effort. Due to its secrecy most history books credit the ENIAC as being the first electronic computer, but Colossus was running two years before. They had it up and running a week before Operation Overlord where the Allies invaded at Normandy. The Lorenz and Japanese history of codebreaking did not have a huge presence but was equally as humbling to witness. It is understandable that the German side of the museum would hold more pieces and information as that was the main threat to England at the time.
As I head to the lake and press play on the audio tour, its appeal has waned and the tour guide's information no longer seems important. I decide to wander instead. I would like to find Huts 3, 6, 8, and 11. These are where the code breakers worked and where the Bombes originally were housed.
A short walk past very similarly fashioned buildings and I arrive. Hut 3... this is where deciphered text would be pushed through a wooden chute from Hut 6 to be translated and then enciphered with allied cypher techniques and sent to the appropriate areas as deemed necessary. What was amazing about this and the other Huts that were open was you could actually walk into them and touch everything in them. Nothing was behind glass or anything. Hut 6 was where the decoding work happened. Before Bombes the would have large sheets of paper and poke holes through them with possible combinations. After stacking them together, if there was a hole all the way through, then that was a possible valid code to try.
Next to Huts 3 and 6 is 11. They're working on Hut 11a to make it a display of more Bombe stuff. Walking into what the women of Bletchley Park that worked in this hut called the Hell Hole, you can smell machine oil and hear the clacking of the bombes. It's just a demo and there's nothing actually working in here, but you can get a sense of what it was like: no windows, barely any ventilation, the noise of dozens of Bombes working endlessly for your 8-hour shift. The heat and noise was probably unbearable which I'm sure lead to its moniker.
Throughly humbled again, I head back (forgetting about Hut 8) and go to the mansion on the ground which is nice to look at. It has some movie props from The Imitation Game, a movie, by the way I did not initially want to see - fearful of how the Hollywood depiction of Alan Turing and the effort that went on at Bletchley would be portrayed. It is a decent work and I can only hope it serves to show the world what a brilliant and tragic figure Alan was and how much we owe to him not only from his work at Bletchley but if you use any computer or mobile phone, you have him to thank for that.
I wander back towards the visitors center and resign myself to pick up something from here. I grab another book, a coaster, and a magnet for the fridge back home. I make my way back to the station and realize that I'm starting to get hungry. Time to make plans for lunch. My return ticket is for Euston and I'm sure I could find something there. I hop on the train and the train inexplicably is packed. Meh, I decide once at Euston, that I will walk the 1/2 mile to King's Cross station and eat there. I've always had a desire to go there ever since hearing the Pet Shop Boys song, King's Cross, back in the late 1980s.
Once I get to King's Cross I realize there are a bunch of "quick bite" kind of places but seeing as I have some time to kill, an appetite to remove, and a thirst for ale to sate, I look for other options. Ah, Yelp wins through again! I head over to The Parcel Yard to work on all three aforementioned items. As I head over there though I see a bewildering site: a massive queue just standing there waiting at a wall. As I round a pillar to see just what the heck is going on, I see a rickety old trolley near the wall and, in brass on the wall, a big 9 3/4. Ooooh right! Harry Potter left from King's Cross! Neat! On the other side of the queue is a Harry Potter shop which is understandably crowded, but I go in anyway and look around. As I'm looking around I spot, behind glass, examples of characters from the movies wands. Brilliant! It is a very neat shop.
Stomach reminds me that we are close to food, so I head up the stairs and feast on a pork loin sandwich, London Porter (x2 as they were the best beer I had while in London) and enjoy the cool air for a bit as I text my sister, a Harry Potter nut, about what I've stumbled across. Unbeknownst to me, London is very high on her bucket list and she is tres jealous. I tell her just to make a plan, Airbnb it and do it. Well see if that happens ;)
Lunch done, I hop on the tube for another of my desired locations: Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC. Unlike last night, the walk to this stadium is not that far at all. I take a couple photos and head into the Mega Superstore of all things Chelsea and see what I can get. I would like to get a shirt at a minimum. It takes me a little while to decide on one, but I eventually do and when I head downstairs through some other smaller items, I find a largish box of sunglass bags with a sign proudly proclaiming "Take One". Not to be told what to do, I take two. Looking at the time it's about 4PM now and I can waste a bit of time wandering tourist stuff before I head over to The Laughing Halibut for dinner. So, to that end, I head to the tube and make my way to Westminster Station to wander around Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.
As I exit the underground I am greeted with a throng of people around Big Ben and the Westminster Abbey area. Oh, right... Saturday. Well, let's cross over Westminster Bridge to the London Eye instead. I could wait in the line/queue there for a good view of the city. As I'm half way across the bridge and get my first good look at the queue, I decide that maybe finding a place to sit and rest would be better. Yelp locates for me a nice local place: The Camel and Artichoke. This is a place that tourists would not easily stumble into. It is much out of the way and I like it all the more for that fact. I enjoy a pint or two as I let the phone charge back up from my battery pack and plan for my trip across the Thames again to grab my luggage from my hotel, get dinner at the Laughing Halibut, and then head to my Airbnb all of which is 10 minutes' walk away from the hotel.
Much rested and feeling good I push through the groups of tourist causing traffic jams and head to the hotel, grab the bag and plug in the address for The Laughing Halibut to make my way there. Google maps helpfully informs me that it may be closed by the time I get there. What!? Looking at the hours, they're open from 11AM - 4PM on Saturday. You have got to be kidding... Well, new plan now. I spot a local pub in the middle of the neighborhood where the Airbnb is and it has decent ratings for its food. So off I go.A short walk by a gorgeous park and through old neigborhoods (I don't think London has much of anything but these), and I get to The Royal Oak. I see there are three other patrons sitting in the common room so I maneuver my bag to an out-of-the-way spot and pull up a chair and look at the menu. I order the fish and chips knowing they probably won't be as good as The Laughing Halibut's, but alas, it was what I have been craving all day. It was okay. The beer was also okay. I get a message from the Airbnb owner that they'll be about thirty minutes late due to some traffic. No worries, another beer incoming.
Time being up I head over to the Airbnb and meet the owner, get the instructions on how to open the flat door, where things are in the kitchen, take off shoes when entering the house, she hands me the keys and then heads out. I've booked a private room with an en suite. The other two rooms in this flat share a bathroom. Lucky me!
I step in to use said bathroom and get a wet sock for the effort. I think little of it thinking that maybe it's left over from cleaning up since I had to check in late and all. So after I try flushing the toilet and it doesn't work do I realize that the whole edge of the bathroom is covered in water and it's slowly leaking from the toilet. I quickly message the owner to let them know of the issue so they know it was like that when I arrived and mention that I can use the other bathroom for the remainder of my stay. It turns out, I did not need it at all, so that was fine.
So for this whole time I didn't hire/rent a vehicle. Instead work suggested that I use a car service. Brilliant, it's like a taxi but scheduled and cheaper. It works a bit like Uber, but a bit more professional. So, since I had checked in with my flight earlier and knew the terminal I was flying out on, I could book my car as well. One problem: apparently Sunday morning there will be a 10K in the center of London and all their pre-booked cars are already spoken for. It mentions I can use the "Book ASAP" feature when I'm ready to leave instead. So, I have to hope that someone will be around in the morning the pick me up to get me to the airport in time. I work out a plan for the underground as well, in case there are no cars to pick me up.
In the morning after getting woken up again by texts from the US at insane times, I get ready, look at the app and it says that I could have a car as soon as 15 minutes when I request it. Brilliant. So I get everything ready except getting the shoes on and request the car and wait for the text telling me where the car is. I wait. Then after some time, I wait some more. Finally I get the text: they're three minutes way. Shite! Well, I gather up, slip the shoes on without tying them and quietly leave so as to not disturb the other residents at 6:15 in the morning. Out the door (carefully shutting it to not make noise), through another door, down the lift, into the lobby, crash into the locked front door as my car pulls up. Perfect timing. Yes, I crash into the door as pushing the handle does nothing on either door. Ah, locked. I look around for the button to open it. Nothing. I signal the driver and wave to him that it's the idiot in the foyer that is their passenger they're waiting for. He pops out and asks if I can get out. I quickly go through the same motions. There is a spinning deadbolt looking thing on the left door, but it just free spins so that appears useless. I look all around the lobby for a green button or something. Eventually I tell my driver that I'm going to see if there is an exit I can use from the basement and I'll meet him on the street. He asks if there's a lock on the door you can open, I try the free-spinning lock to show him there is but it's useless and that's when I feel some resistance when I spin it clockwise a few times. After doing that the door magically opens. Well, the owner never mentioned that part of the process, but that may be a common mode of egress in a lot of buildings so I'm not faulty her. The driver and I have a bunch of laughs about that whole process and I'm off to Heathrow.
Usually in travelling internationally, something will go not entirely as planned, I'm hoping for my return home, the locked door is the only thing. It turns out to be true as I find out 23 hours later. Until next time England...
