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]]