Saying Good-Bye to the Home-Away-From-Home: In which I reflect on what makes a home and resolve to keep alive my (dis)comfort wherever I live.

On the way home from spring break, my travel buddy and I took a bus from Gatwick airport into London.  For the majority of the ninety minute journey, I had no earthly idea where we were.  English plains and suburbs, while beautiful, all look more or less the same to the untrained foreign eye.  As our bus rolled closer to central London, however, I began to recognize aspects of our surroundings: stations for the London underground; public maps set into pillars upon the sidewalk; red double-decker buses; the River Thames.  I was surprised by the emotions that these familiar sights stirred in me – relief, hope, comfort, contentment . . . the emotions experienced by one returning home.
 
London was never meant to be home.  Before coming here, I had termed this my “vacation semester.”  Sure, I was going to be sleeping, eating, doing schoolwork, and all the normal life stuff while in London.  But more importantly, I was going to be living life to the fullest!  I was going to be visiting each museum, eating at all the pubs, seeing every show currently in the West End, developing a beautiful posh English accent, finally going to Hogwarts, etc, etc.  I wasn’t going to be bothered by the mundane parts of life.
 
I look back at those notions and have to laugh at my past self.  Although I still refer to this as my “vacation semester,” these past four months haven’t just been a vacation, and they never could have been.  These past four months have been part of my life.  I have lived here.  When people live, they don’t just vacation leisurely.  They settle.  They develop habits.  They familiarize themselves with their surroundings.  And this settling, this habituation, this familiarization – this all led to London becoming a place that I identify with.
 
It’s not quite that simple, of course.  I am still acutely aware of my “otherness” wherever I go here, whether because of my accent, my obsession with maps, and/or my inability to keep the many London coins straight. Nonetheless, London is now a place that I am comfortable in.  London is now, and I think always will be, my home-away-from-home.
 
I have developed many comforting routines here, but I have also continually pushed myself into new and uncomfortable territories.  Despite my discomfort interacting with strangers, I have spoken to many strangers and stayed with a host family.  Despite my difficulty with public bus systems, I have become familiar with London buses (or at least a few of the routes).  Despite my firm belief that I am inclined towards the humanities and not the sciences, I took and enjoyed a Psychology class.  Despite my squeamishness, I made it through a haunted-house-type amusement park and through an incredibly gory production of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (and, okay, I did nearly pass out, but I still lived to tell the tale).  Despite my former inability to cook, I have cooked for myself nearly every week and made (mostly) edible things without causing myself serious damage.  Despite my distrust of city streets that have no grid pattern, I have become comfortable both navigating London streets with purpose and allowing myself to become lost amidst all the quiet treasures of this city. 
 
Doing all of these things that scare me certainly has not conquered all my fears.  Rather, doing these things that scare me has made me aware how thrilling and rewarding it can be to push myself into discomfort.  Routines are lovely, soothing things, but discomfort is what allows us to grow.
 
I want to maintain this attitude when I return to both of my other homes (Seattle and NYC, respectively).  I want to keep this comforting sense of familiarity, to enjoy and appreciate the routines of home.  But I also want to keep alive the sense that, even when among the comforts of home, there are still things that can scare and excite me.  I want to remember what my home-away-from-home that is London taught me.

[image of one of the dragon statues that mark off London's boundaries, taken by me]

Tips for London Living: In which I offer some pearls of wisdom for students who want to study abroad in London.

So, fellow NYU student, you want to study abroad in London?  Excellent decision.  Let me offer you a few personal tips for London living:
 
1)      Get a physical map.

 
Yes, GPS systems are wonderful and have helped me out on more than one occasion.  But technology is faulty.  Paper is permanent (well, if it’s laminated – and you do want it laminated, otherwise the rain will have a field day with your paper).  Plus, the streets of London are diagonal and strangely placed, so a lot of GPS systems struggle with how to depict them accurately.
 
2)      When looking at a bus sign, if the line is colored black (and the other side is colored white), that means the bus is going in the direction of the black line.  Cross the street if you need a bus going the other direction.
 
This might seem like a fairly ‘duh’ tip, but, well, it took me a while to figure this out.
 
3)      Timberyard Coffee House on Old Street is a fantastic place to study.
 
You can literally camp out all day with schoolwork and they don’t mind whatsoever.  Also their drinks are delicious and, while not “cheap,” they are cheap considering the quality of taste and of service.
 
4)      Explore the historically preserved houses.
 
Museums are fantastic, but what I’ve come to love even more are the preserved houses of famous Londoners (or even some people, like Sigmund Freud, who just had their entire house moved from Vienna to London.  No big deal, I guess).  They give you a great sense not only of the particular individual who lived there, but of how people of that era and class lived.
 
5)      Explore by yourself.
 
While doing the touristy things with friends is awesome, you can’t really get a good sense of London until you’ve wandered around by yourself with no particular aim or destination.  In the words of Virginia Woolf, “To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.”
 
6)      London is not New York City.
 
Another phrase that might provoke a ‘duh’ reaction, but this is another thought that I grappled over for a long time.  One of the reasons that I chose London was to avoid a huge cultural shock.  From most of my favorite films/books, I’d gathered that London was basically just a European NYC: both are cosmopolitan and globalized cities, its citizens all speak English, and there are lots of culturally significant places like theatres and museums.  While these statements are all true, they do not capture whatsoever the great differences between these two cities.  While at first I was frustrated by how different the actual London was compared to my fantasy London, I soon began to realize that we travel precisely so we can disturb our misconceptions about foreign places and come to appreciate these places on their own terms.  If you are able to explore and accept London as it is rather than constantly comparing it to NYC, I promise that your frustration will turn instead to love.

[image of me embracing the London life, taken with my camera]

Sustained Attention: In which I attend a theatrical performance and learn something about theatre, travel, and time.

In February, I had my first immersive theatre experience at a play called The Drowned Man.  For those unfamiliar with this type of performance, immersive theatre essentially erases the typical divides between performers and audience members.  The audience is allowed to wander through the performance space and interact with sets, props, and actors.  In the case of The Drowned Man in particular, audience members don full-face masks before entering the performance space of a five-floor warehouse in which approximately thirty actors, each with their own narrative strand, perform.

From the moment that I began watching the many performers interacting in and with the theatre, I was hooked.  The way that each performer reacted so uniquely to the space and to their fellow performers astounded me. 

Within the next three hours, I decided while watching a riveting combination of modern-rodeo dancing and acting, I had to see all the performers.  I had to witness every scene.  I had to find every nook and cranny on each of the five floors.  I had to touch all the props.  I had to figure out how these thirty narrative strands all connected.  And if I was going to do all of this within the three allotted hours (three hours!  Once that had seemed an infinite amount of time for a show, yet now it seemed no more than a breath),  I needed to stop watching this particular scene and get moving onto the other scenes.

But despite my desire to see everything contained within this show, I did not desire to leave my current location.  I wanted to watch the rest of this dance, to explore further the pub set design, to observe the characters’ carefree mannerisms and tangled relationships, to note the lights flashing from yellow to blue, to breathe in the scents of beer and wood paneling.  My choice was pretty simple – stay or go – but I felt stranded by its weight.  I realized that if I went, I would certainly have time to see everything, but I would not have time to experience it – and if I stayed, I would not have nearly enough time to see everything . . . but those things that I did see, I could experience from every angle, with every sense, as complete and unified wholes.

I decided to stay.

This epiphany impacted not just my time at The Drowned Man, but my entire semester in London.  Many times, I was confronted with the choice between trying to see everything (going on a whirlwind day tour of all of London, walking through the entirety of the British or Victoria & Albert museum, food sampling my way through a festival) and trying to sustain my attention on one or two things (touring a single district of London, loitering in two or three rooms at a museum, having a sit-down meal).  It wasn’t until attending The Drowned Man, however, that I was able to articulate these oppositions, or that I was able to realize my preference for the latter. 

It’s easy to bemoan all of the things that I did not and will not do this semester.  But my commitment to maintaining sustained attention for the things I did do has created memories richer in detail and happiness, and I owe that to the theatre.

Who ever said the arts aren’t beneficial to our real lives?

[image via the National Theatre]

My Fair (Stranger) Lady: In which I discuss the Londoner’s willingness to converse with strangers.

I think that I’ve had conversations with more random people during these past four months in London than I ever have during my two and a half years in NYC or my eighteen years in Seattle.  By a conversation, I mean more than an “excuse me” as I bump into someone on the sidewalk, or a “grande latte with skim” to a barista.  I mean an actual exchange of thoughts, whether about our personal lives, popular culture, and/or aspects of England.  People in the other big cities I’ve lived in tend to keep to themselves and their already-established networks.  Here, however, speaking with strangers seems to be not only socially acceptable, but socially desirable.
 
Am I more open to speaking with people than I used to be?  Are Londoners friendlier than New Yorkers and Seattleites?  Is there something about my Americanness that prompts people to strike up conversations?  Is there something about London itself that fills people with the urge to connect with strangers?  I’ve struggled and failed to come up with answers to these questions, but the fact remains that I’ve had many more temporary, but nonetheless meaningful, encounters with strangers here in London than I’ve ever had in my life.
 
One of my favorite chance encounters with a stranger occurred last month at a bus stop.  The stranger, a middle-aged woman with a face framed by blonde locks and with a voice like Audrey Hepburn, opened conversation by complimenting my dress.  I thanked her and was about to tell her where I’d purchased it, but then hesitated, because the dress was from an American store and I’d had enough American-cultural-awkwardness already that week.  The woman, whose name I soon learned was Alice, was nonplussed by my klutzy conversation skills, and continued to talk excitedly to me about how she couldn’t wait to get home and watch some political talk show, because tonight was the debate between so-and-so.  At this point, I decided to stop masquerading as a Brit and admit my foreignness, and so Alice happily informed me about the current English political hullaballoo.  The conversation meandered to our respective moves between England and America, to college degrees, to West End theatre, to marriage advice.  She leaned in close to me as we spoke, as though this talk show were personal information meant for my ears alone; within seconds, I had been taken in as her confidant.  At first, I felt unnerved by her intimate body language and conversation; soon, I felt honored, and took her into my confidence in turn.
 
Our exchange was cut short when my bus arrived, and I haven’t seen my stranger Alice since.  But our random encounter brightened my day considerably, and thinking back on our conversation still makes me smile.  Traveling, after all, is largely about being open to new experiences, even those experiences which may not go any further than a single moment in time.

[[photo of the Knight Bus at the Harry Potter Studios, taken by me. And no, alas, I did not meet my stranger Alice at that particular bus stop.]]

A Riddle of Contradictions: In which I attempt to describe London’s spirit through architecture, local habits, and vegetables.

London is busy but relaxed.  Like any city, London is a hub of activity.  There are more things to do and see than one can possibly fit into a single vacation, maybe even a single lifetime – but goodness knows that this fact doesn’t stop Londoners and tourists alike from trying to do it all.  Yet despite this constant hustle and bustle, London is also the most leisurely city I’ve ever come upon, and I don’t just say that because the tube closes at midnight (which, by the way, is really annoying).  No, I say that because, although Londoners know how to keep busy, they also know how to purposefully relax.  To put down everything and take a break from the continual motion.  As a New Yorker, I find such intentional and extended rests strange, but a pleasant change, too.
 
London is crowded but spread out.  Geographically, London is huge, but the city’s giant scope is often not felt in one’s immediate area.  The buildings are relatively short for an urban environment, and it’s not peculiar at all to wander down empty streets in the middle of the day.
 
London is friendly but reserved.  I’ve lost track of the number of times that a Brit has approached me while I stand on a street corner glaring at my map.  Locals are not only generous with helping lost tourists, but will go out of their way to do so rather than waiting for the tourist to ask them and then grudgingly give directions (as more frequently occurs in NYC).  But this London friendliness is not exuberant; tones and faces remain calm, and to offer more help than needed pushes into the territory of rude.
 
London is the familiar made strange.  Sometimes, for brief moments, I will forget that I am not in America: everyone speaks English; the buildings, although generally squatter and older, resembles NYC’s gorgeous mish-mash of architectural styles; and the weather is more-or-less like the temperamental Seattle weather I grew up with.  But then I remember my location again with a jolt: I have to press floor ‘0’ in an elevator, rather than floor 1, to get to the ground floor; the speaker inside the tube announces in a distinctly British posh accent to ‘mind the gap’ as we step inside instead of to just watch your step; and the plethora of British coins is not only confusing, but very heavy inside my wallet.
 
Does this riddle of contradictions help at all in describing the spirit of place within London?  Hopefully a simile will help.  For me, London’s genius loci, its characteristic atmosphere, is much like mushy peas.  Mushy peas, for those unexposed to this gem from English culture, are essentially mashed potatoes, but with peas instead of potatoes (and no, that’s not the technical definition or recipe, but that’s how I think of them).  It’s an English comfort food, served frequently with pies or fish and chips.  Peas are not a difficult vegetable to acquire in the western world nowadays, but the specific peas required for mushy peas (marrowfat ones) are harder to locate if you’re not in the U.K.  The sight is bright green, not a sickly green, but rather a healthy shade of growth and harvest; the taste is soft, a substance flavored rather than dominated by its vegetables; the smell, too, is soft, a delicate scent of mingled gardens and salts.  Mushy peas do not overwhelm the palate with distinction, but rather comfort with a familiarity that, although strange, is welcome.
 
If you can’t tell, although there are some days when I miss my good ol’ American garden peas, I really do like mushy peas, too.

[image via http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00118/82547106_chips_118500c.jpg]

Woolfian London: In which I attempt to reconcile Virginia Woolf’s London with my London.

Although Virginia Woolf’s London is not even 100 years old, it is still a very different London than the one I’m currently living in.  In The London Scene, Woolf chronicles different aspects of her hometown in six essays that were originally written for Good Housekeeping, taking us everywhere from the cozy home of the London dweller to the hustle of cargo around the Thames. 

It’s hard for me to picture some of the images that Woolf paints so well as being more than images, as being the landscape of a place she lived and of a place I currently live: sail ships dotting the Thames, stray cats wandering the busiest warehouses, or tortoises being sold alongside flowers and shoes at an outdoor market (6, 13, 20).  Am I really wandering the same streets that Woolf wandered?  She only wrote these essays in ’31 – how can so much change in such a relatively short period of time?

Woolf herself, however, provides me with the answer.  In her words, “The charm of modern London is that it is not built to last; it is built to pass” (23).  I struggled over this idea for a little while.  Of course I know that people, and thus cities, change over time, but I am used to thinking of London itself as a historical museum: even though the particular artifacts on display may alter through the years, the structure of the building itself will remain.  

But Woolf, a direct inheritor of the modern world from the old – someone who had seen firsthand the collapse of what were once believed to be permanent structures in the wake of WWI – knows better.  As she witnesses the constant cycle of demolition and creation upon Oxford Street, a garish yet attractive shopping district and neighborhood, she understands that this need to “prov[e]” that “stone and brick” can be made “as transitory as [Londoners’] own desires” is a constant source of not only delight, but of innovation (24).  To constantly demolish and rebuild entirely is a creative act, and a purposeful one, too; London’s contents can be rearranged, but London the city will and does remain.

Not everything that Woolf describes feels as though it arrives from another era.  St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey still stand proud, along with the preserved houses of writers such as Dickens and Keats; Oxford Street is still a great shopping hub; and the Port of London remains a bustle of activity. 

I was particularly struck by how contemporary Woolf’s musings upon government felt.  Woolf expresses concern over the fact that government used to call for great individuals, yet now government merely produces “instruments” to function well within “committees” (61).  The danger, Woolf suggests, is that government has become too much like a machine in which people operate and choose not as they believe, but as the political faction they have been pressed into would like them to believe.  Woolf praises the House of Commons for ushering in a new era of democracy that takes into account commoner voices, democracy that does more than listen to individual aristocrats (62).  Her praise, however, is measured by the worry that the political machine will grow beyond man’s control.  Given the ongoing debates in the western world on the individual versus the society, on the prevalence of divisive political parties, etc, her words could not feel more timely.

[image from Virginia Woolf Society]

Regents Canal: In which I escape from city life, converse with a stranger, and harangue about rude cyclists.

Regents Canal is a hidden gem.  Buried amidst the hustle and bustle of city life, one doesn’t expect to stumble upon a body of water with a pedestrian walkway while one is taking a morning walk through London.  At least, I didn’t expect to stumble upon it.  But that’s exactly what happened two weeks ago.  I left my house with no particular intention, only to become more familiar with my neighborhood, find a new favorite lunch or coffee spot, decide upon my future dream housing complex, etc.  Such intentions were completely derailed when I found Regents Canal. 
 
I was, and continue to be, delighted at my discovery.  Granted, millions of people before me have discovered, indeed created, this place, but it’s a place not often frequented by tourists.  Regents Canal is a wonderful, picturesque break from city life without the same jam-packed feel of, say, Hyde Park or Russell Square (which are lovely too, don’t get me wrong, but often overcrowded).  Boats dot the walls of the canal on either side; tangled vines grow along the walls separating the walkway from the motor traffic; the water gleams not quite blue or green, but instead silver, metallic but soft.
 
Although there are plenty of people always around the canal – pedestrians, bicyclists, joggers, and boaters alike – there don’t appear to be many tourists.  It seems to be a great meeting place; it’s not uncommon to see friends greeting one another for a walk or jog, or even for strangers to strike up conversations with one another. 
 
While on my morning walk, I stopped for a moment on a small landing, gazing out at the water.  As I stood there, a woman I’d never met before approached me, and I was filled with apprehension.  What did she want from me?  I wasn’t in the mood to be hassled.  But she only wanted to know if I knew about the rules for bicyclists on the canal.  I didn’t know, of course, but heartily agreed with her that they were rather annoying (sorry to any bicyclists, but look, when you’re clogging up the whole pavement, don’t give me the dirty look when I don’t immediately jump aside!).  We harangued together about bicyclists, then conversation turned to locations (as it turned out, she went to Barnard College and her father taught at NYU.  Small world), and how we’d both ended up in our respective cities.  It wasn’t a particularly long exchange, and we didn’t even trade names, but I walked away from both her and the canal feeling at ease.  Rejuvenated by my break by the water, I was ready to reenter the congestion of city life.
 
That in particular surprised me about Regents Canal, the ease with which strangers interact.  In London – in any city I’ve ever been to – strangers generally only chat to one another if they are in want of directions or money.  Here, however, has been carved a different sort of space.  A space without any want but to be there.  Much as I adore living in cities, there’s something comforting about knowing that, whenever urban life starts to swell around me, I can go to a place in which neither location nor people are buried under the city’s weight – even if only for a few moments.

Animated History: In which I discuss interactive museums and express gratitude that I don’t wear 1700s undergarments.

Museums in Britain bring history to life. 

I’ve been to a decent number of museums in America, but I haven’t seen many that offer interactive exhibits.  Here, however, it’s completely not a surprise to find interactive displays within the midst of informative plaques and archaic artifacts.  Be it offering visitors period dress to try on, paper and pen to compose their own sonnet, or facsimiles of old books to thumb through and scan for changes between middle and modern English, British museums desire to engage with their audience, to animate history in a way that two-dimensional displays sometimes cannot.

Now, before I get too far into this post, I want to say that I do not intend to bash more traditional museums without interactive displays.  Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago at age seventeen was one of the happiest days in my life (George Seurat, anyone?), and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve gone to the Met for an afternoon just to relax and breathe in ancient Egyptian or Greek art.  There is something valuable in the act of being a witness, in standing in the presence of history, in directly observing what most people perhaps only see in a book or on their computer monitor.  But I believe there is also something valuable to being immersed in that art or history. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s house, the former residence of the London writer and lexicographer, has been transformed into a museum that offers both traditional and nontraditional exhibits.  The house contains much of Dr. Johnson’s original furniture, books, and belongings for visitors to admire – and it also contains five period dress outfits for visitors to try on, two giant replicas of Johnson’s original dictionary for visitors to read, and a smattering of books that Johnson himself owned (in their modern editions) for visitors to peruse.  To walk through a preserved house is to observe; to engage in that house is to participate actively history.

It could be argued that I’m overstating my point.  Does the fact that I’ve now read portions of Johnson’s original dictionary mean that I fully grasp what it was like to read the first comprehension English dictionary in 1755?  No, it doesn’t.  Or does the fact that I’ve now tried on panniers and bustles mean that I fully understand what it was like to be a woman in the 18^th century?  Of course not.  But being able to live out both of these actions, even (unavoidably) within my modern era, helps me gain a better perspective on these lives from the past.  Book nerd though I am, I know that there is only so much I can glean from text.  And there is only so much that I can glean from interactive museum exhibitions, too.  But maybe by triangulating the two, as so many British museums are doing, people of this era can reach a better understanding of those eras gone by.

Because let me tell you, getting to try on all those women’s clothes has made me respect women of the 18^th and 19^th centuries so much more than I ever have before – those undergarments are terrible.  Like I-am-wearing-a-portable-prison-of-fabric-and-wire terrible.

[image of a replication of Johnson's dictionary, taken by me inside Dr. Johnson's house]

Authenticity of (Common)Place: In which I continually try and fail to be British, admit my nerdiness, and happily drown in tea.

I am constantly torn between the desire to be authentically British and the desire to behave like a rabid tourist. 
 
There are some days when I firmly keep my map in my bedroom, my camera in my back pocket, and my cash in my wallet (so that I don’t humiliate myself by squinting at the millions of British coins as I try to deduce their amounts).  I am a local, I tell myself,I am cool, nothing fazes me.  I belong.
 
And then there are days when I wander everywhere with a battered map and wide eyes, stop at every street corner to snap pictures, and squint at all the coins while answering the cashier with pride when they ask what country I’m from.  I am a tourist, I tell myself, so I might as well own up and enjoy it. 
 
This past weekend, I visited a friend who goes to school in Norwich, a city that’s about two hours as the crow flies away from London.  I found continual joy in the mundane aspects of her life in a way that I sometimes do not in my own: living in a house as opposed to an apartment; eating Sunday roast and trifle; seeing a university production of a musical; going out for tea rather than just grabbing a to-go cup with a Twinning’s bag.  I was delighted by the chance to experience what life is like for a ‘real’ British student – to be that real British student.
 
Of course, I’m not a real British student, and despite my (attempted) assumed coolness while sipping cream tea or living in an actual house for the weekend, I could never entirely forget that.  The very fact that I found all of these commonplace British things so exciting revealed how not British I am.  As much as I enjoyed the experience of being a local for the weekend, I remained – perpetually, inevitably – a tourist who delighted at mundane novelties and spoke with a funny accent.
 
I’m trying to embrace this sometimes awkward position of the long-time tourist as one who becomes involved in local life yet remains outside of it.  Some days ago, I did a very nerdy thing that I have wanted to do for six years: I walked around Fleet Street while listening to aSweeney Todd themed audio walk.  It’s a tour that takes listeners around the areas that Victorian Londoners would have frequented, while also pointing out spots specific to the Sweeney legend and the musical.  You can laugh at me – goodness knows I have laughed at myself – but it was a fantastic experience. 
 
Now, while walking around Fleet Street with earbuds and giggling hysterically to oneself is likely only something a tourist would do, there were decidedly local elements to my tour.  The audio walk took me through a variety of streets that I would have walked straight past without its guidance: streets filled with office complexes, residential courtyards, and other places only locals frequent nowadays.  The tour took me to a London that I would not have experienced by myself, both a Victorian and a modern one. 
 
Now, was this entire experience one that a genuine Londoner would have?  Probably not.  It’s a staged experience, to borrow Dean MacCannell’s ideas on tourism.  It is an experience designed for a tourist, an experience that gives the impression of reality without being an authentic experience for real locals.  Still, that doesn’t make my experiences inauthentic.  Whether I’m pretending to enjoy cream tea with practiced calm or grinning stupidly at my scones as I snap several photos, that sort of moment is as authentic as the long-term tourist can get.  

[image taken by me, of me, in a moment of completely relinquishing the idea of not behaving like a rabid tourist. Because, sometimes, it's just more fun to be behave like a rabid tourist.]

The Bristling and Waking of Picturesque Lumps: In which I discuss the Londoner's awareness of his/her role within a globalized world.

[[a general heads up: this one is more academic than usual, as the assignment for this week was to read a book about our study abroad site and discuss it briefly. Still, I tried to keep it engaging and filled with the usual dose of self-deprecating humor]]

“All European cities have these lumps of dead history… they obstruct the mind, lie inertly across it for centuries and do no more than alert the fancy for an hour or two in those happy times when a sense of the past is… a passing wonder before which we congratulate ourselves on our progress… But a real sense of the past cannot exist without a sense of the present… These picturesque lumps bristle and wake up… The Tower means murder now, torture now, stranglings, treacheries, massacre, the solitary cell, the kick of the policeman’s boot.  The scratchings on the walls of the tower are the scratchings of Auschwitz… It may have astonished Victorians that Wren’s uncle, a harmless, dull, and climbing bishop, was shut up here for eighteen years; but that sort of thing does not astonish us today…  The Tower… is awake again” (Pritchett 97).

It’s amazing to me how V.S. Pritchett’s sentiments still are so contemporary even though he wrote London Perceived fifty years ago.  The past has always existed in the present, but living in a globalized world makes us aware of it more so than ever before.  No longer does the western world witness only the implications of what occurs in our household or town; now we see rebellions in Eastern Europe unfold across our televisions, or children with swollen bellies in India begging on billboards for us to donate a dollar.  Now, whether we cause it directly or not, we see everything, even if we can’t comprehend the full reality.

Brits are astoundingly up-to-date with the news.  They know not only the past and present of their own country, but about virtually every other country, too. The average English citizen seems to be able to discuss economics in China, Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential run, and their own class conflicts from 1066 to today, all without batting an eye.  Sure, I know who Sarah Palin is, and I know about American socio-economic classes, but I certainly couldn’t tell you the British equivalent of Palin or explain how their class system works.  It’s all I can do to remember everything I Googled about U.K. politics just two days before arriving here, including the current prime minister.  Yes, that’s embarrassing to admit, and not fitting with the highbrow portrait of myself that I typically like to paint.  But my point is that the English are more globally attune than the average American.  The English feel the past heavily, and as a result, the present becomes heavier.  The medieval or Georgian buildings are not just of a time, but of alltimes.  And while today we might see the scratchings not of Auschwitz but of perhaps Darfur, the scratchings of Auschwitz are there, too. 

It fascinates me that, although America and England are both aware of our increasingly globalized world, this awareness manifests so differently.  Whereas Americans are determined to lead global trends, the English are determined to observe them.  I make this generalization with hesitation, but without judgment, as both action and observation are necessary instruments for change.  Pritchett cautions both his era and ours to use action and observation to effect, to have the fore- and hindsight to make decisions that are conscious of humanity on a global scale.  It’s easy to mistake the Tower as an archaic relic that’s fun to look at but reveals nothing pertinent to our own lives, but Pritchett claims that to do so is to ignore the fact that the past is alive and well in the present.  From what I’ve seen so far of Londoners, they are heeding – perhaps have always heeded, without needing instruction – his advice.

[[image via tripadvisor.co.uk]]

Habituation: In which I tirade against the cost of London living and combine studying with urban exploring.

“Oh, London!” various friends and family would exclaim in the months leading up to my departure for England.  “How exciting!  Such a beautiful city.”

“Yes, so I have heard!”

And, then, inevitably, they would add, “Very expensive, though.”

And I would laugh and, just as inevitably, rejoin, “Oh, trust me, I’m used to expensive – I’ve lived in NYC for over two years!”

Oh, how ignorant the Anna of two months ago was.

An average pub meal with a drink here is around fifteen pounds.  My weekly grocery run comes to about twenty-two or -three pounds.  A one-way ride on the tube within central London costs two pounds and twenty pence (for comparison, a one-way ride on the NYC subway is two dollars and fifty cents).  A morning tea or afternoon coffee costs two pounds.  My phone plan of 100 minutes, 400 texts, and 1GB data comes to ten pounds per month. 

Now, all of this might sound pretty reasonable at first.  It did to me.  But let’s not forget that a single pound is equivalent to more than a dollar sixty.  So when I get excited about the fact that my £1.95 tea at Costa Coffee is equivalent to my $2 tea at Starbucks, I must correct myself that I’ve actually just paid over $3 for my tea.  Basically, most things in London have the same numerical value as those in NYC, but cost more because of the extra weight (yes, pun intended) of the pound. 

Oh, except the laundry at my dorm is three pounds a load.  There is absolutely no American equivalent to something that outrageous.  Never again will I complain about dollar loads in NYC.  But I will spare you my full-blown harangue about the modern society’s abuse of confused college students.

While I can’t say that I’ve learned to live frugally, I’m getting better at cutting corners.  I’ve started cooking a lot of my meals.  This might not sound like a big deal, but for someone whose biggest culinary accomplishment two months ago was knowing how to scramble eggs, it’s huge.  Even huger is the fact that, despite my many juvenile mistakes (forgetting to wash fruits, neglecting to oil the pan before boiling my rice, attempting to cut root vegetables with a regular knife, etc), I’ve found that I enjoy cooking.  It’s a creative outlet; I now use cooking as a homework break.

On the subject of homework, school dominates a fair portion of my daily routine.  This should not come as a huge surprise to those of you who know what a nerd I am.  Although I don’t feel as though I have an ‘average’ day in this city, my somewhat-average weekday consists of homework in the mornings, class in the afternoons, and theatre in the evening (two of my classes visit theatres semi-regularly). 

To keep myself from becoming a total academic hermit during the semester that I am supposed to be exploring a fantastic European city, I have decided to make my studying an exploration game: I am determined, within the four months of my stay, to find the best café study spot in all of Central London. 

So far, my favorite is Timberyard, a darling place about a mile away from my dorm.  It has everything one could possibly desire from a studying café: plenty of tables, ample outlets, free Wi-Fi, friendly staff who don’t mind if you camp out all day, clean bathrooms, and reasonable prices (well, as reasonable as this stupidly expensive city gets).  They even bring your drinks and food on a tray, accompanied by a bottle of water, and take your empty dishes away when you’ve finished.  If you order tea, they even bring you a little timer so you know how long the leaves have steeped.  I find everything about this place adorable, even (perhaps especially) those bottles of water and tea-steeping-timers. And yes, I am often delighted by the little things in life.

[image of my Timberyard tea, water jug, and tea-steeping-timer, taken by me]

Communication Gaps: In which I share my love for Downton Abbey and am excluded from the special inner circle of Britishness.

Can I be honest?  I didn’t just choose to study at NYU’s London site because of the fantastic architecture, my love for literature/theatre, and my obsession with British accents.  I also chose NYU London because I wanted to study abroad in a place that speaks English. 

My mind spiraled out of control the moment I contemplated choosing a study abroad site where English was not spoken fluently: what if I got lost and couldn’t ask for help? or needed to go to a hospital and couldn’t tell the doctor what was wrong? or needed to find a bathroom and couldn’t remember the word for toilet?  My worries ranged from the mundane to the solemn, so I decided it was best to avoid making those concerns manifest into reality.  I have great respect for those who do choose to live in a place where the language spoken is not their native tongue – but I am not one of those people.

Communication for me in London, however, is not a cakewalk.  Daily, I find myself challenged by slang (it still takes me a second to process that take-away equates with to-go), vocabulary (although cash machine is a more logical name, I still ask confused Englishmen where the nearest ATM is), and pronunciation (don’t get me started on “Lester” Square). 

The biggest communication hurtle is culture.  I never gave it much thought, but much of our daily conversation is shaped by the common knowledge of the particular culture we live in.  This fact first became clear to me last Friday evening when I attended The Only Way Is Downton, a theatrical parody of the television show called Downton Abbey. 

I knew from the moment the lights went down that I had made a brilliant purchase.  The single performer (who also wrote the script for the show) knew the television show well, as it was riddled with references – not to mention his impressions of the rather large cast were both hysterically funny and startlingly accurate.

As the show went on, however, the parody extended beyond merely Downton to poke fun at a wider array of British culture: reality television shows, Olympic medal winners, and “Oxbridge” students, to name a few.  While I could grasp the gist of some jokes, the particulars went over my head.  While the entire audience roared with laughter at a crack about some Olympic diver’s Twitter account or the details of Dame Maggie Smith’s bedroom life, I could only manage a weak grin as I tried and failed to mentally dissect the joke inside my suddenly-feeble-seeming American brain.  What is so funny?  I longed to cry out.  Or, more appropriately, Don’t keep me out of the special inner circle, guys!  I want to laugh, too! 

At first, I kept a mental list of jokes that I wanted to Google later, but the list became too extensive for me to recall.  Although I was upset for not remembering later on, I don’t know if it would have mattered even if I had: the moment had passed.  And even if someone did explain the references to me, there’s a high chance I would still not find the jokes funny, given it is not cultural knowledge that I am intimately familiar with. 

Besides, there is value at times to being outside the inner circle, to have no choice but to watch and observe.  Perhaps I did not, and still do not, understand why the collective-audience-minus-myself found the subject of that Olympic guy’s Twitter so hysterical – but I do now understand that this cultural knowledge binds them together, even if such a bond is normally unseen.  I do now understand that, as much as I embrace Downton and all the other artifacts that embody “Britishness” as I understand it, there will always be a divide between my understanding and the reality.  I do now understand that, although Brits and Americans speak the same language by all technicalities, the ways we communicate amongst ourselves are vastly different, and it is this communication gap that is part of why going abroad so intriguing.

But if someone does want to explain the humor of that Olympic medalist’s Tweets to me, I would not be opposed.

Tears of Anger, Tears of Joy: In which I learn to read maps, to trust people more, and to always have a loaded Oyster card.

On the first night of Hanukkah, when I opened a gift from my mother, I wanted to cry.  And not tears of joy, mind you, but rather tears of fear and bewilderment and anger.

The gift was a map of Central London compacted into seven doubled-sided panels.  It is incredibly detailed, filled with all the streets and landmarks, and it is also functional (it comes laminated, an essential feature when one must battle that force known as the London rain).

Why, then, did I want to cry?  Because, for the first time, I realized that London is not NYC.  I had been excited to explore a new city, but I’d assumed there would be security to my explorations.  I did not think I would ever find my way back home without the comfort of that logical grid pattern.

A month later, when I had been in London for a little over a week, I wanted to cry again.  And this time, they were tears of joy. 

My laminated map had become, and continues to be, among my dearest possessions.  It is something that I pack with me everywhere I go, as automatically as I pack up my wallet.  Never before have I understood the importance of maps.  As someone weaned off MapQuest and GPSs, I didn’t find them necessary.  It was easier to ask Google, so why would I plot out a route myself?  I realize now that, due to this map aversion, I never grasped the interconnections of a place.  It is one thing to know by heart a certain route to destination A and another for destination B; it is entirely another to know how to get between the two without returning to your original departure point.  For the first time, I am starting to do the latter, and it’s thrilling.

All that said, while it is not impossible to teach an old dog new tricks, it is – without question – difficult.  Getting lost is not always a time of proudly navigating the streets with my friend the map.  Sometimes, I really just want to get home and yet I cannot. 

Last Thursday, because of a tube strike, I had to take a bus home from the National Theatre.  Fine.  I wanted to get better at the bus system, anyhow.  Unfortunately, due to a series of miscalculations, I ended up taking several buses that were either the wrong route or direction.  By the time the clock struck midnight and I’d been riding buses for over ninety minutes, I was near tears.  I could not find where I was on my trusty map, and I did not have enough money left on my transportation card to catch another bus home (buses do not accept cash).

When I finally confided in my current bus driver how lost I was, I felt ridiculed when he exclaimed that where I wanted to go was in the opposite direction.  Gee, thanks for the novel information.  I clearly already knew I was lost, given that I had a useless smart phone in one hand and an equally useless map in the other, not to mention the rising tears in my eyes that I was trying to prevent from falling – did he have to rub it in that I was totally pathetic?

So I was completely surprised when he stopped his bus, marched into the road, and hailed another bus for me.  I think I thanked him, but I was so floored that I honestly don’t remember if I did.  This other bus driver, when I (tearfully) asked if I could pay in cash, said yes. 

And so, more than two hours later for what should have been a twenty minute journey, I finally made it home thanks purely to the kindness of strangers. 

As a pessimist, that is a surprising thing to find myself typing.  Yet I am glad to be typing it.  Because a place – any place, every place – is more than a single route from point A to point B.  And while there’s nothing wrong with having that route, it never hurts to learn the many other possible routes, or to meet the people who dwell alongside them.

[image of my friend the map, taken by me. And yes, I probably should give him a proper name.]

Accompanied By Myself: Discarding the rose-colored glasses

Even when travelling to new and exotic lands, the banal cannot be avoided.  Last week, I woke up at five in the morning nearly every day, and while I had several lovely strolls through the early London fog, I could only at times jealously dwell upon my snoozing roommate who seemed not to suffer from insomnia as I did.  On Friday, as I went on a walking tour around Buckingham Palace, I continually chided myself for having only shelled out five pounds instead of fifteen on an umbrella, for if I’d paid more I surely would not now be wandering around looking like a drunken cat.  Sunday morning, as I took in the delightful sounds and tastes of the Chinese New Year, I was nearly crowd-crushed several times and found myself silently cussing out the entire human race (and cussing out myself for being a part of said human race and not, say, the drunken cat that I already looked like several days ago).  Yesterday evening, as I watched Simon Russell Beale give an outstanding performance in the National Theatre’s King Lear, I continuously wondered when the next musical interlude would break through the long dialogue – not because I wasn’t loving the show, but because I’d come down with a cold and needed to blow my nose constantly but did not desire to disturb the communal silence of the theatre.  And the list goes on.
 
Even though I logically know that my insomnia, my penny-pinching tendencies, my dislike of large crowds, and my weak immune system accompany me wherever I go, I didn’t think about these things when I first started contemplating my time in London (I mean, who does?).  Instead, I fantasized about visiting all of the archaic cathedrals, finding every single free museum, trying all varieties of English ale, crashing through Platform 9 ¾ and finally attending Hogwarts (don’t laugh), and seeing every single West End and Off-West End show currently running.
 
And while I have done, or have started to do, all of the above, I have also been – for better or worse – accompanied by myself wherever I go.
 
It would be easy for me at this point to write that, oh, well, such is the experience of traveling, and from now on I will embrace both the commonplace and the joy of my time abroad.  But I don’t want to try and delude myself that it’s that easy.  I don’t think it’s ever possible to fully embrace the mundane.   What I believe is possible is to experience both the mundane and the extraordinary.  Because of my insomnia – while it is hardly enjoyable to fall asleep at half past one in the morning only to wake up four hours later – I have some novel memories of wandering London in the early morn, headache behind my nose and wonder in my eyes.  Because of my broken umbrella and the subsequent downpour, I got completely drenched last Friday, and I’m not going to pretend that I enjoyed the experience – but at least I know now to invest in a better umbrella, and besides, now I can say I’ve been in a proper London rainstorm. 
 
Maybe in a few years time, these memories will naturally give themselves rose-colored glasses, and all I’ll remember of those early morning walks is the beauty of the fog-streaked sky and the towering architecture.  For now, however, I’m going to choose to remember the good and the bad, the stunning architecture above me and the tension headache behind my eyes.  For now, I accept that living in London means dealing with throbbing headaches and broken umbrellas even amidst experiences of wonder and joy.  And rather than let these things take away from the joy, or try to convince myself that they overrule the joy, I’m going to just let them exist.
 
And hey, tomorrow evening I get to see King Lear again, with the talented Beale and my congested head and all.  

[photo taken by me during a bout of insomnia. Said insomnia is probably fairly self-explanatory due to a) the Tim Burton-esque dark circles beneath my eyes and b) the fact that I intended to take a picture of the view and totally did not realize until after I took this selfie that I had not, in fact, captured the view. Alas. 'Tis a good insomniac story, at least.]