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Alex Rewey - London Study Abroad Program, England

Country Hopping

They say that England is the gateway to Europe. A foggy little island off the coast, so close, yet a world its own. The rest of Europe, an entire continent, is right there for the visiting. The thing you sometimes forget is just how close everything really is. The distance I used to travel from Milwaukee to St.Paul covers hundreds of years of culture here, thousands of years of separation, warfare, history, and what not. And to think I used to think Minnesota and Wisconsin had rivalries. On Thursday nights and Friday mornings, you can hop a train to any one of the remote airports outside London, hop a flight for cheap and just enjoy the ride.
Just like that and you wake up in Spain. Saunter into Scotland. Skip over to Holland. Stumble out into Norway. Turn around in Germany, and so on, and so forth. These things become a standard. Everywhere you look, Brits are out and about around Europe, a nice relaxing weekend away from home in the warm sun of Barcelona where you walk on the beach before renting bikes to ride through the city faster. You stop to watch a religious parade with large paper mache statues of patron saints held by children before stopping to eat paella near the coast and trying to keep up with the Spanish residents at night. In Scotland, you explore medieval cities and towns; you walk by thousands of year old ruins while humming a current pop song underneath sunglasses. You trek through the misty highlands, past landscapes of storybooks and fairytales, but nevertheless right there in front of you. Your guides tell you myths of rivers and streams, rocks, and cliffs as you’re standing right then and there. In Amsterdam you rent bikes again, hostel hop a bit, visit the Anne Frank house, and the Van Gogh museum, sample waffle after waffle and wonder how anyone can walk in clogs.
In Norway, the sun goes down at four and doesn’t come up until nine. So, you wander through green statues of leaders and kings, Vikings and such. Outside royal palaces, you watch guards march which kind of reminds you of The Wizard of Oz, so you can’t help but giggle just a little. Outside a fancy hotel, there’s music and lights, which turns out to be Norwegian music awards that you just happen to stumble upon. It snows a lot and you go back home. After spending the night at Stansted airport, side by sleeping side with hundreds of other travellers doing the exact same thing, you catch a flight to Berlin, which you decide is the quietest country you’ve been to. You hop S-Bahn after U-Bahn after whatever, until you pretty much get the hang of it. See the Brandenburger gate and the Berlin Wall, and street after street where the twentieth century and the fate of the world was decided. You sit under the wild modernized buildings like the Sony Center, where the massive glass of the ceiling changes colors from moment to moment and the all the buildings over town seem to say, “whatever we do to ourselves, we will rebuild.”
These places are real you find out. All your friends do too, as you amass this flock of photos of you dishevelled and displaced, with a funny face and pose in front of monuments to war, peace, history and progress. A large chunk of human history is layed out before and you touch it and smile, snap some pics and wake up in hostel after hostel after hostel. The funny part is stepping on the tarmac again in merry, old England, taking a breath of cool English air and thinking, “Ahh…I’m home.” London’s your base, London’s you home away from home. From here, it’s all before you. Your friends do the same and swap stories like trading cards, pass recommendations and suggestions. You chart your own path, pave your own way and just do it, anticipating the day when you look back and say, “I was there. That was me” as a smile appears on your older, and wiser face. That’s what you do, and it’s the norm here.

Centers

So, I took a tube south, through the city proper to catch the Docklands Light Railway from Bank down through Canary Wharf towards Greenwich. Canary Wharf’s skyline appears distinctly different in traditional grey, foggy London town. Towers of polished steel and glass stand on grids like Superman’s Metropolis, instead of the traditionally sprawling random spaghetti strands of the rest of the city, so odd for Europe.

              Our train, elevated from the street weaves in and out of the buildings, our view unobstructed by a driver or operator. The front windows are ours to marvel and smile through with lots of “oohs” and ahhs” as the ultra modern train car rattles back and forth, on and on, like a slow roller coaster through the future of urban development. Further down the track is Greenwich, a point of interest put forth by our incredibly British tour guide Nigel some weeks before. Up the green grass hill on a nice sunny day, I’m standing on the Prime Meridian of the world, the arbitrary center of both time and space. A few steps down the line at the rail, you can look across the city. North West is the city of London, finance epicenter of Western Europe. To the west is Covent Garden, theatre center of the western world. Everywhere from there, pockets of ethnic and cultural centers, Chinatown, Soho, Brixton, Camden town, Harrow, and Brent. This list keeps going.

              Here, there, everywhere is a center, a tiny representation of somewhere, something, somebody in the whole, wide world. Walking through London is like flipping through the rolodex of the known universe. It’s all here, and not hard to find. Few places give the same kind of fingertip access to the globe. It goes beyond the food, or the clothes, or the music. It goes beyond the people. The cultures themselves are here and breathing. They’re all tucked away in some street or neighborhood, in some shop or restaurant. Standing at the top of the Royal Observatory, they feel all for the taking, all for the experiencing. They’re all right there, somewhere in that maze of concrete and steel, blacktop and greenery, through all those walls and windows, behind all those doors, bricks and stone, through all that progress. Standing on the center, they feel like they’re all for you, from Chinese New Year to the Notting Hill Carnival.

              Walking through the figurative buffet line, you can sample them all in this world city, truly and unarguably the very definition of Cosmopolitan. It’s one of the great charms of this place. I remember once on the phone someone asked me if I’d met any British people in London and I said, “I think so, they’re in there somewhere.” Somewhere, in the mix of it all is everyone, and now me. Just going about the little things in life, sitting at the Laundromat, waiting in line for the post office, getting groceries, you feel like you’re taking part in this great mix. Somehow, if you hadn’t been here, right here and now, this place would be different. Even on the tubes and busses where everyone stares forward, crammed together as close as physically possible, on the escalators, where everyone stands on the right so the runners on the left can sprint up and down unhindered, there is a subtle sense of togetherness. Nobody makes eye contact, but it feels like we’re all in this together. We all bring something here, to add to the mix, right here at the center. This is where it’s happening, right here and now. London isn’t the window to the past like some may claim; it’s a glimpse into the future, globalization for better or worse, the entire world within reach. It’s all here.

Settling In

You learn. You learn to get up while it’s still dark outside. You learn to plan for the sporadic, spontaneous London mist and rain. You learn to hop the busses and tubes. You learn to walk through the twisting, narrow cobblestone streets without thinking and your feet just get you home. You learn to drink tea.

You can pick these things up pretty quick.

After class I can pick up a few sites here and there. Big Ben for the five o’

clock chimes, The lights of the London Eye at dusk, Changing of the guards, Piccadilly Circus, Chinatown, Tates, Statues, Squares, Oh my.

Then again, that’s not really why I came to foggy London town. Classes let out and the real education begins. From the posh west end mansions through the bizarre Camden town market mazes all the way to the east end corridors that still smell of old Victorian poverty, just with a shiny new coat of paint. I keep on walking past street after street, borough after borough. I have my hands in my pockets with an Ipod on shuffle that keeps going till the batteries die. I keep on walking for miles through the city past plaques and monuments.

This building was destroyed here. So and so lived there. This street is referenced in a song/movie/book, etc… It’s all the norm here. Dates are everywhere. Never again will I be able to hold my laughter on American tours back home when they point out “historic” sites of the last century. Suffice to say, there’s something intimidating about standing in buildings older than your home country.

There’s an eerie calm about walking through London as an American. It’s like returning home to your parents’ house after years away. Here and there are dusty photos and relics long before your time. Details of the room may change with time, but are most quaintly set in their ways. Yet, you get this sense of homecoming, a return of some kind. Somewhere beneath the surface, somewhere in all of those red buses, in all the black cabs; somewhere in the streets and buildings, the art and culture are the seeds and beginnings of your life. In the National Portrait Gallery hangs a painting of George Washington with a slyly bitter two line caption summarizing his significance, nearly a quarter of typical length, the black sheep in family photos. All you can do is smile.You’re a stranger here, yet not; foreign, yet of distant relation. You nod to Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders, siblings of sorts in this parent land.

London was mythical to me once. It was a footnote, a blurb, a punch line, never a real place. Yet now I walk around it, like all those people in plaques, and the scores of those without them. London is real. London is here. This place is engrained in my culture, beneath the surface, down at the beginnings. It has become a pilgrimage home, not as a descendant of family, but as a descendant of culture. So many Americans have come home here before me. Now I’m here for a glimpse.

Arrival

Six hours into a flight out of O’Hare and out the window, reds and blues of morning appear on the horizon, my first view of Europe.  An hour later, we’ve landed in Paris where we take a bus down winding narrow streets as Parisians make their way to work.  On a boat trip down the river Seine, the most beautifully lit sights are not lost, even though we’re all a bit punchy and slow from jet lag.  A good night’s sleep later finds us wandering Paris for the sights.  I make the standard tourist stops before wandering off the beaten path for some sightings of the real Paris.  I have some insanely good crepes in the Latin Quarter, wander up the cobble stone streets to the Basilica du Sacre Coeur.  Turning around, the bright, sprawling lights of the city glow in yellows, whites, and neon reds, as if it was meant to be seen this way.  We walk down the hill through Christmas light lit trees in minute courtyards hidden from the droves of tourists.  In shop windows, real French people go about their real French lives while all we can do stare in amazement and bewilderment.  Seven hours by plane, yet a whole world away.

The next day we’re on a bus heading through the French countryside toward Belgium, a country I now absolutely nothing about, something about waffles, right?  We arrive in Brugge at dusk where our superhuman bus driver snakes our coach and trailer down winding corridors.  After checking into very European hotel rooms, we all start to wander around the sleepy night of this small medieval town.  All of the buildings sport building dates all around the 14th and 15th centuries.  Somebody says, “this is like giant Epcot exhibit,” except real.  The gothic church steeple glows high above in curious yellow, the sole navigating landmark.  In small groups, we wander through barren streets before stumbling into nearly empty restaurants where the food is generally incredible.

The next cold and windy day finds a few of us at the top of the town’s bell tower.  Up more steps than I can count, the wind is intense and the bells start ringing so loud, you have to cover your ears, but we can’t help but smile and laugh even if we can’t hear it.  Back down on the streets, we wander into chocolate shop after shop sampling the best you’ve ever had.  In the center of town stands a modest medieval church that we wander into.  Inside is the most ornate silver alters and murals we’ve seen yet.  Music plays softly from speakers, but we can only hear it because nobody really knows how to describe what we’re seeing in words.

The night finds us in Brussels, capitol of the European Union.  What I despairingly expect as another DC turns out to be sleek buildings sprinkled with gothic architecture and small European streets.  The modern and the classic brought together.  We stop in the rain to take pictures of the Atomium, a giant steel molecule I’ve never seen or heard of before.  Staring at its size, I don’t really know why not.  When night falls we meander into into more winding streets, with more little restaurants as the workers compete for our business.  We settle for mussels.  In Brussels.  In a word, amazing.

Twelve hours later we’re on train bound for England.  Less than two hours away is a world away.  As we exit the Chunnel, out the window the countryside passes by at obscene speeds, the pace of my mind in the last few days.  Green pastures lead to gray buildings, lead to black roads and the sprawl of the city.  I look outside and think:  This is London. And I made it here.

Pre-departure

Finals are winding down and I have found myself packing up my things.  The house is quieting down as my roommates and I are studying for that last push through finals.  Lately, I’ve caught myself with this strange restlessness.  It’s the restlessness of anticipation.

With less than a month ago, all of my thoughts are towards my trip.  How will the flight be?  What will it really be like when I get there?  In the last few weeks, my thoughts have shifted from my initial imagining of life in England to the possibility that it could be nothing like I imagine.  It could very well catch me completely by surprise.

In my mind, all these tired fictional images of London surface.  The dirty cobblestone streets of Great Expectations, the Beatles running from a mob of girls in A Hard Day’s Night, the changing of the guards, fish and chips, double-decker buses, red telephone booths, and the fast-talking cockney gangsters of a Guy Richie movie.  They all sneak into my expectations in one way or another. Ultimately leaving me quite helpless in my attempt to actualize London.

I’ve been outside the country, and I’ve been to almost all of the fifty states.  I’ve seen lives so incredibly different to my own.  Yet, London doesn’t seem quite real yet.  It’s a picture in my mind, made up of thousands of other pictures.  I suspect by now that none of them actual resemble the real London.

Yet, this only brings a smile to my face, followed by a soft, almost nervous laugh.  I realize that no matter how I try to envision British life and the bustling streets of London, not quite knowing what to expect is half the adventure.  On January 7th, I will step on that plane not quite having a clear picture of what awaits me when I land in Europe.  I’ll step off into the unknown, the unwritten. That’s just fine with me.  The more I think about it, I can’t wait to be surprised.