36 hours in Birmingham, the UK: Chaotic but charming, with diversity in every corner

Birmingham, The UK. (Photo: Visit Britain)

Birmingham, perhaps, rings a bell for its news of the Indian diaspora. Yet the sun shines brightly on its other attractions too. Swing by the city and there are days you feel you haven’t stepped out of your local neighbourhood. Inside restaurants like Slug & Lettuce, and cocktail bars called The Alchemist, there will be enough Indians to make you feel right at home. But at other times, Birmingham will jolt you wide awake. It will bring surprises and swirls of cultural influences to the table.

For me, the charm lay in seeking out the confetti of immigrant communities shaping the way people think about food. I discovered Esmie, the canary yellow Caribbean food truck in Brindleyplace, and realised how cooks and ingredients can be an expression of immigration, a symbol of the city. When the curtain of smoke from Esmie’s charcoal grill parted, I could see a menu scribbled in chalk. A Caribbean meal called out, almost from a faraway land with sounds of the ocean, promising rice, plantains, jerk chicken and fried dumplings. That, in a nutshell was Birmingham for me. It is a city where ocean currents of the global population have been meeting across centuries, throwing up diversity, that is often chaotic but always charming.

Friday

10 am: SEA LIFE Birmingham aquarium

The National SEA LIFE Centre, Birmingham, the UK. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Head over to Sealife in Brindleyplace, on the Water’s Edge. Here all kinds of marine creatures share their home with coral life as vibrant as kites ribboning through the sky. Nuggets of information pop out for children like thought clouds of cartoons. One learns that the garden eel “lives in a burrow, with only the top half of its body visible in the water,” and that huge colonies of the fish can make the sea floor resemble an “underwater garden of eels.” The main attraction, in this behemoth aquarium are the Gentoo penguins, permanent residents of Antarctica who have booked some ice-draped rooms here. Most often, they can be seen waddling across their freezing rooms, checking out an everchanging parade of visitors with expressions of equanimity. At other times, they dive into the freezing swimming pool that has been offered complimentary with their glass-fronted residence. While paddling with flippers, their brush tail can be seen twitching furiously, doodling an imaginary circle of mist in the cold aquarium air. A wise thing to check before booking tickets is the opening schedule of the penguin exhibits, which can stay closed during certain times of the year.

2 pm: Indian lunch in a UK restaurant

Kebab at Lasan restaurant, Birmingham. (Photo: Susmita Saha)

We all know that Indian food is as British as it gets. Paeans to chicken tikka masala have testified to this craze. So, head to the Dakota Buildings on James Street for plated Indian food at Lasan. Awards have been showered on the restaurant for its inventive use of Indian ingredients and cooking techniques. Winner of Gordon Ramsay’s "Best UK local restaurant" award, the eatery offers classics, including the Sikandari Lamb, charred lamb shanks in a smoky Kashmiri spice mix and Seafood Moilee, an assortment of prawns, halibut, squid, mussels and octopus in a moilee sauce. Second- and third-generation Bangladeshi owners come to your table, diligently enquire about food preferences in clipped British accents and bring art-work like dishes floating in a cloud of smoke.

4 pm: Library of Birmingham

Birmingham library. (Photo: Susmita Saha)

The Centenary Square, which was awash in the colours of the Commonwealth Games in 2022, has the Library of Birmingham bang in the centre. It is a library all right, but also much more than what we identify reading spaces with. The highest concentration of selfie stick-wielding tourists can be found outside on the square, but lovers of the written word will always find a reason to get inside the grand shrine of books. Indeed, there’s much to take in and introspect in the library, apart from the forests of books, journals and catalogues. Giant poster installations quietly ring the alarm bells on the vanishing idea of "free press" while spotlighting terms like "powerful media owners", 'swayed elections", and "fake news" — reminders of the zeitgeist of our times. Escalators take you across the 10 levels of the library, accompanied with visuals of bookshelves backlit with fairy lights. Beyond the shelves there are treasures to be found — entire racks devoted to Bengali literature, titles that frame voices from both India and Bangladesh.

5pm: Boating

Birmingham's canals.

Birmingham’s canal network stretches out in all directions, much like brain synapses. Wrapped around the city for 35 miles, these waterways, built in the 1700s and 1800s, were meant to transport coal, iron and other goods during the peak of the Industrial Revolution. Today, goods get delivered to the remotest corners of the globe with a tap on the smartphone screen. Hence, waterways have lost their original purpose. No one, however, denies their relevance even now. Today cyclists, walkers and boat riders trace the canals of Birmingham through their outdoor rituals while restaurants and pubs lining the waterways offer fresh brews on tap. So, hire a self-driving boat, which requires no prior water navigation experience and chug along the canal maze. The banks of these waterways offer calmer sights of Birmingham life. Find time to take in the 70-year-olds catching up over their favourite pint before a flower-draped window or parents pushing strollers festooned with balloons.

Saturday

10 am: Cadbury World, Bournville

A chocolate-making session at Cadbury World, Birmingham, the UK.

Confectionery from British brand Cadbury was a rite of passage for Indian kids growing up in the '80s. When no child in our school had the luxury of choice in the chocolate space, there was the purple Cadbury wrapper peeking out of glass jars in the neighbourhood store. It was the flavour of our growing up years in India. For people like us, the Cadbury World in Bournville delivers the promise of nostalgia and memories of taste in one fell swoop. Head there to watch films about ingredients that go into the making of the milk chocolate, or experience 4D cinema peopled by a host of Cadbury characters. Live chocolate making sessions is a top attraction here. So, follow the smell of cocoa to land up in rooms that teach you traditional chocolate-making techniques and allow you to hurtle down the rabbit hole of memories rimmed by a bright purple wrapper.

1pm: Lunch at Cadbury World Café

The identity and history of the British brand is cemented in food. It makes much sense to devote at least one meal of your life to Cadbury World, not the least because you have trekked all the way to Bournville. The brightly-lit candy shop and the adjoining café are a good place to understand what a confectionery brand has come to mean for generations of Indians in the pre-liberalisation age. Inside the café, calories are listed next to every menu entry, possibly because one tends to throw caution to the winds in a chocolate-themed ecosystem. The highlight, of course is the Cadbury chocolate pizza (a weighing scale tipping 1,410 Kcal), that seduces even grown-ups with marshmallows, fudge pieces, Curly Wurly (a caramel ladder swathed in Cadbury milk chocolate) pieces as well as white and milk chocolate buttons.