Week 12 Impressions by Nicole Greenberg

For the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or which is better known as the NSPCC in their Fundraising and Appeals department. Although I am only working three days a week I have my own desk, my own computer and my own swipe card to get into the building, making me feel one step above all of the volunteers that come in and out of the fundraising and appeals department. I have had the opportunity to attend one of the events at Christie’s auction house which was a wonderful experience with a string quartet playing in the reception area, with champagne and the auctioning off of contemporary art to a crowd dressed in glittery dresses, and suits. I have to day that it was one of the first experience in London where I was asked to wear classy attire, what they call here as dressing “smart.” However, I have found that the most interesting and most entertaining events are those that allow for people to come together and battle it out for the title of quiz champion. The events are known as Quiz Nights.

For those of you who are unaware of what a quiz night is let me give you a little background: So people who are in charge of fundraising for the NSPCC have the opportunity to bring together colleagues from their work, neighbors from their communities, college students or a group of people for dinner, lots of drinks and a game, which in London is called a Quiz. To me when the event was described to me it sounded more like a game show of Jeopardy and the Weakest Link mixed together. The people who are interested in attending the event must purchase a ticket that can range in price from about fifteen pounds to forty pounds depending on the location of the quiz, the food that is being served and the amount of money that the event is hoping to raise for the NSPCC. When you arrive to the event they place you into teams of five and you then get to fight over who gets to be the team captain. Well of course everyone wants to be the team captain because he or she gets to wear this amazing plastic badge with a clip art picture of a boat captain…pretty cool huh? Once dinner is finished the game begins. Teams are quizzed on useless factoids ranging from knowledge about the NSPCC, celebrities and their personal lives, sports, history, music, taste tests of Krispy Crème donuts, jelly bean flavors and just about anything else you can think of. The team earns points for every question they get correct and loses points if they are incorrect, pretty simple right? In order to make it more interesting certain prizes are given out throughout the course of the game. One prize this week that caught my eye was a weekend trip to Paris, travel and lodging expenses paid. Along with the quiz the NSPCC can hold a silent auction. The one prize that caught my eye was box seats to a football match (aka soccer) between Manchester United and Chelsea that were auctioned off for seven hundred pounds by the end of the night. I know it is for a charity, and for a game that has been sold out for three months because it is the top two teams in the league, but I am still amazed that two tickets could go for that much!!!

The two quizzes last week showed the two extreme sides of the spectrum of a quiz night. The first quiz was arranged for a group of university males at a local Pizza Express, where all of the participants were intoxicated before the quiz even began. Although I was not able to attend I was told that it was pretty entertaining and my colleagues came back as the champions, something they were able to brag about for the rest of the week. The second quiz was a large corporate-sponsored event that raised a large amount of money for the NSPCC and took place in the Chelsea football stadium’s premier boxes. The event had a silent auction, dinner, desert and the main event was the quiz that had about twelve different teams.

I have to say that the hype up to the main event is pretty entertaining, especially because my colleagues are obsessed with knowing useless random facts and sharing all of the questions with each other before the actual quiz. The week before the quiz I kept on getting interrupted to be told that I should know one of the answers because it had to do with American history. Them not knowing that I have not taken a US history course since my sophomore year of high school, I got cut off by another one of my colleagues who knew the answer and then I was ridiculed for being a bad American.

Although I have learned many skills while at my service placement I have also learned many useless facts due to the obsession the British have with quizzes.

Week 12 Impressions by Maura Walsh

At the end of last week, I went to Lymington – a small town of about 15,000 located in Hampshire, right on the Southern English coast, south of New Forest National Park and north of the Isle of Wight (a popular English summer holidays destination). As so many locals (rather incredulously) inquired during my trip, ‘Why did you come to Lymington?’ Well, aside from my eagerness to spend every pence of the UK travel stipend LC offered us, I was dying to flee London, flee the bustle of the tube, the consumerism that bombards you during every walk to the tube – and most importantly, I wanted to go someplace small and real, someplace less touristy than the images London, Cambridge, and Bath had offered me – someplace where I would be the only non-local in a pub, and could spy on English culture that is not flashy or exciting, but simple everyday life.

I arrived at Waterloo station 35 minutes early – earlier than I believe I’ve ever arrived for a train. Disorienting but quite pleasant – if you can find a place to sit down, train stations are a wonderful place to kick back and people watch. However, I found that waiting around in train stations also requires a lot of strong-willed resistance, as it’s quite difficult not to give in to one of the many over-priced food kiosks that overwhelm you with their flashy signs and wafting smells – like Millie’s Cookie Shoppe – sinfully tempting. The train ride to Lymington was pleasant enough – save the obnoxious businessman who forcefully, boisterously and garrulously chatted on his mobile phone the entire way, causing another passenger – a salt-and-pepper haired man reading a book in Arabic – to exchange a weary and amused glance with me. No, Mr. Businessman, I don’t think the carriage does care how you handle copper extract details during your next business move…

I had to change trains in Brockenhurst, a small dot of a town where the Southwestern Train (which was immaculately clean and boasted impressive Automatic Everything) line ended. I sat for about 15 minutes in a slightly dilapidated waiting room in between two platforms, musing about my visit ahead, shivering from the cold, and examining the crooked snapshots of new and old-fashioned trains framed on the walls. A group of teens around sixteen years old joined me in the waiting room to grace me with their flirting and joking, letting me enjoy hearing all about the sixth-form (a level of high school) drama of their small English town. Then the Brockenhurst-Lymington train pulled up, which was rickety, barren, and sported manual doors that looked like they belonged to an old mobile home rather than a train (I later discovered that the railroad company decided these trains are decrepit enough to be advertised as ‘heritage’ trains – which is supposed to make them more appealing…?). I was utterly floored by how short the ride was between Brockenhurst and Lymington – furthermore, the two weren’t connected by urban sprawl but separated by veritable town edges with pastureland in between – re-establishing once again just how miniature-scaled the isle of Britain really is.

I was quite discouraged by the Lymington Town station, which apparently closes every day at 13.30 (1:30 pm), leaving me standing in the cold drizzle, waiting for June (the proprietor of the family-run B&B I would be staying at) to pick me up. I stood alone in the rain long enough to begin panicking that the entire town of Lymington would be as unappealing as the dreary brick-building lined street in front of me, and wondering why I keep thinking it a brilliant idea to pick tiny towns – of which I know virtually nothing – off a map and deciding to spend multiple days in them. June arrived (thankfully) shortly, a chatty older woman who began pointing out the modest ‘sights’ of Lymington. To my incredible relief, the town is much more charming than the station. The High Street (that is, the British version of a ‘main street’), rests on a little hill (which, after living in London, my elevation-deprived eyes appreciated greatly), lined with charity shops, businesses, boutiques, and a handful of restaurants. Apart from the obligatory Tesco Metro, Caffe Nero, and WHSmith, most shops appeared refreshingly independently owned and managed. A few beautiful churches and back-alley squares dotted the high street as well. We turned onto Church Lane, also alarmingly inviting and charming. It was lined with curving stone walls, old-fashioned lampposts, high hedges, and a plethora of large ancient houses with tidy front gardens. All the houses displayed stone plaques announcing cozy names, such as ‘Home Mead Cottage’ and ‘Rose Garden Home.’

A few places on the drive from the station to Jevington B&B were scarred by roadwork and building sites, and June explained that they were tearing down some old houses to build many tiny new estates in their places – which I felt was a damn crime, but kept the opinion to myself. Lymington’s well-ordered and charming streets, lined with quite a few rambling homes, combined with the fact that development is taking place, attests to the town’s wealth. Later that evening when I walked down High Street, I noticed quite a few estate agencies (not ‘real estate’ mind you – just ‘estate’) that displayed sundry adverts for homes in the town and surrounding area, none for less than 290,000 pounds, and most for between 600,00 to 1 million pounds. I guessed that Lymington can owe its preserved beauty and success to its convenient location directly between the New Forest and the coast of the Isle of Wight. (Later I discovered that the town is a coveted destination for older English yacht and sailboat owners. Furthermore, the Lymington Town Council avoided Lymington’s addition to the newly established borders of New Forest as a national park, meaning that the town is growing as an English holiday spot but not protected under park regulations that would curb exorbitant town development – such as the recently added Caffe Nero and the knocked down historic homes).

After enjoying the B&B’s complimentary tea and biscuits, I ventured back out into the dreary cold to find supper. The High Street was eerily deserted at 6:30 – apparently all the shops closed at 5pm – another shock after the bustle of London. I settled on dinner at Caffe Uno, and I amused myself while sitting in the cozy golden-painted restaurant by trying to inconspicuously watch the tables around me. One quite intriguing table consisted of four well-dressed and joyful older women – old age, I later learned, is a theme in Lymington. While the majority of Londoners are in their 20s and 30s, Lymington reminds me of my home town of Des Moines, Iowa, with a conspicuous dearth of 18-35ish year olds, and a plethora of young children, parents and elderly citizens. Discussions later with some of the few uni (university) students I came across revealed that, like Des Moines, most young people flee town after graduating from high school – and with Lymington’s wealth, it is becoming less feasible for young people to move back after uni.

My second day in Lymington, I spent the afternoon eavesdropping on chatty old ladies while browsing in the surprising number of charity shops on Lymington’s High Street – seven charity shops on one block, including the omnipresent ‘Oxfam’ and smaller charities such as ‘Help the Aged’ (which seemed appropriate for Lymington’s population). Charity shops, which are found all around England, are run by – surprise! – British charities, who receive donations of clothes, books and bric-a-brac, and then use the proceeds for their cause. A charity shop’s fare reveals a lot about its location – some shops, such those in London’s Kensington and Notting Hill neighborhoods, contain fancy displays of designer and vintage clothing; shops in less affluent boroughs are full of jumbled cast-offs you would find in the US in consignment and thrift stores; the Lymington charity shops are full of items that upper-middleclass seventy year-old women would buy and trade – sweater sets, children’s Wellingtons, doilies, and kitschy ceramic poodles to sit on said doilies. (I found out later that while the Lymington charity shops are well-supported, there is also a blazing drama about whether charity shops have a place on the High Street, or should move to side streets to make space for more up-market boutiques – quite the heated debate for locals to consider over their Hampshire cream tea at the many tea shops that also line High Street.)

Later in the afternoon, I rambled around the city to the ‘Old Town Quay,’ which, while chock full of buoyed white sailboats, was deserted on this gray afternoon during the off-season. I sat on a bench, wrapped up against the wind, drinking in the solitude that is so scarce in London. I listened to the accusing caws of the seagulls, the tinkling of tied-up sails whipping against their masts, the lapping waves, one lone fishing boat motor, and a small crew of fishermen loading and unloading gear.

The rest of the weekend continued to be wonderful in the same enlightening and pleasantly unadventurous manner. I went out with some local students home from uni on Easter holidays (which can apparently last the entire month of April). The students generously bought me multiple rounds of pints, which is a British custom (upon meeting a new person) that I thoroughly support. The next day I again wandered the High Street, which was now festively full of stalls for the Saturday market, which I learned is The Thing To Do in the area on Saturdays, attracting residents from all the neighboring towns and villages. I also wandered into one of the High Street churches, which was hosting a table sale advertised by hand-painted signs proclaiming the enticing ‘Free Admission! Bric-a-Brac! Books! Food!’ Apart from two ten year-olds selling home-made jam, I was the only person under 70 years old – buying or selling – in the entire church hall. After scoring some English-version Asterix comic books from the ‘60s for 50p each, from a timid, pearly-haired gentleman, I headed to the train station.

As soon as I reached Waterloo, I was swept back up into the crowded London chaos. Waiting for my District Line Tube home, I smiled as a jumble of languages hit my ears (British-accented English was the only language I had heard in Lymington), and a diverse mix of skin colors, hair styles, and clothing choices danced across my eyes (I had only seen one non-Caucasian person while in Lymington, a floppy-haired youth of Asian descent whose accent revealed he was actually a British native). While my three-day respite from London was much needed, I appreciated returning to this city where every wait for the tube presents a fascinating array of lifestyles and cultures.

Week 12 Impressions by Rocki Nicolai

To everyone back home,

Perhaps this has been mentioned in passing in previous blogs, but I don’t think it has quite received the attention it deserves. London is very much a city of walkers. And not just walking, but aggressive walking. Aggressive speed, aggressive approach, aggressive weaving between tourists who walk too slow, aggressive jumping in front of cars…In fact they have baby buggies/push seats (known in the US as strollers) with shocks so as not to unnecessarily jolt the children riding in them.

London is a fast-paced city. This is obvious, but the degree to which that would affect the pace people walk at, I did not expect. Even after a long day at work I find myself running between trains in the tube station, simply because everyone else is, not because I myself am in a rush…As we wait at a light for the green walk symbol people sprint across to the middle, with full knowledge that they will then have to wait there until the light turns green anyway, but that saves them approximately 1.2 seconds and is thus worth it…When on an escalator, unless moving at a sufficient pace, one must stand on the right (never mind that it actually is posted). In fact, even on stairs this must be observed. Lacking sufficient London savvy, we were literally thrown out of the way our first few days in London…the list goes on…

Perhaps because it means we can all leave 5 minutes later that we all sprint to the tube rather than enjoy a morning stroll. This explanation obviously has no validity to it considering people in London are perpetually 10 minutes late because the tube is perpetually 10 minutes (or more) late. So its possible that in an effort to make up for this lost time people walk so fast. But of course this has no validity either because every morning there is the usual grumble about the tube and everyone knows everyone will be late because everyone knows everyone uses the tube and everyone knows the tube is always late.

Regardless of the reason, I find myself walking at an ever-increasing pace. I’m shocked at the relative lack of shin splints in the group. One thing I think we can all thank the walking pace for is our amazing ability to constantly stumble, but never, or almost never fall. There has yet to be a time where we have gone anywhere without a, eh…mishap. But it only adds to the memories right…?

There are a few upsides to the amount of walking we have to do here. Unlike Portland, using an umbrella is not a sign of weakness or red flag that you are not a local. Because of the sheer amount of walking, also that Londoners don’t seem so “outdoorsy”, it is okay to use a brolly, as they are known here, or newspaper or scarf, or perhaps just walk even faster. We also get a bit of exercise, and amazing butt workouts due to the number of stairs we must walk on any given day. It also got us used to driving on the left side of the road. I cannot remember the last time I actually read the writing on the road that says, “LOOK LEFT” or “LOOK RIGHT”.

As our trip here is approaching the end I can say that many of us look forward to driving again. And many of us will realize it is nice to be back in Portland where the cars slow down and wave you past rather than speed up and blare their horn at you. And many of us will have to think to ourselves again “left, right, left” as we did when we first learned to cross the street/drive. But just as we will miss many other aspects of London, we will no doubt miss irreplaceable walking experiences. I mean, who won’t miss saying “zebra” (pronounced “zeh-bra”) so much, and dodging people running up the stairs to hop on the tube, and having someone laugh at you for stumbling over your own feet only to be able to pay them back five minutes later when they do it, and of course halfway jogging to keep up with everyone who is five inches taller than you and walking five times faster, oh wait, I think that’s just me… Hope all is well back home!

Cheers,
Rocki

Week 12 Impressions by Diana Freeburg

London has made me a bit more adventurous when it comes to my clothing, or maybe it has just made me more conscious of it. I have spent a lot of time looking at what other women on the street are wearing and considering if I would be caught dead in it. I want desperately to not look like the other groups of American girls we see going out to clubs. In their attempts to look cosmopolitan, they are completely over the top, teetering along in three inch ankle boots and black leggings, with some butt-grazing flowy top cinched above the waist with the inevitable wide black belt. Usually the outfit isn’t bad, but then it is ruined by a huge knockoff purse, a side ponytail, and the fact that you can see how much their heels are hurting them by the fact that their knees are bending in the wrong part of their stride.

Okay so I am coming off a bit harsh to my country women. It is most likely because, as much as I hate to admit it, we are these girls. Trying new fashion and not always succeeding. In February I bought this scarf that I really wanted even though it was the most overdone thing in the whole city. I bought a purple and white version of the black and white checked Palestinian support scarf, the one with the little tassels. Did I know it was the Palestinian support scarf? No. I just thought I was clever for not spending 18 pounds for the Urban Outfitters version and opting for the 5 pound street market one that was EXACTLY the same. I wore this scarf multiple times a week without ever knowing about its political meaning. I was completely clueless until my much more savvy NYC sister came to visit me and informed me that scarf is what she saw young Palestinian rebels wearing on the news everyday. Damnit. And I don’t even know whose side we’re on. My lack of interest in Middle Eastern politics bites me in the ass again.

So, Emily. What you’re telling me is that wearing this scarf is pretty much like me buying one of those Che Guevera t-shirts at Urban Outfitters and not having any clue who everyone’s favorite Argentinean Marxist rebel is?” “Um, yeah. Pretty much… exactly that.”

If London has taught me anything about fashion, it is to have a bit more sympathy for those who try too hard. I’ve been there. It was an honest mistake.

Week 12 Impressions by Nora Germano

The other day during our weekly group meeting Tom asked us to outline a stage model of our time spent here in London. We got into small groups and talked about how much things have changed since we first arrived here. Our group came up with three stages: the blind tourist stage, the busy commuter stage, and the wanderlust! stage. My favourite stage model, created in part by the always clever Diana, was the marriage metaphor. We began with the Wedding--lots of planning before hand, lots of nervousness, and then the Big Event--the plane ride into London. Next came the honey moon phase, characterised by our first four days in London. For these first four days we were left to our own devices. Having no obligations, we partied every night and spent every day rushing around seeing the various sights. We were in love! Then was marital bliss--we were just settling in, we were getting a sense of the city, and there was still lots to do. Next the lull--the reality of class and classwork, and then our internships.

I think what the ‘busy commuter’ and ‘marital lull’ stages get at is the sense that we are truly living here in London. The touristy period is over. We know the city, are masters of the Tube, and are working nine to five three days a week. Routines have set in, and London has really become home. Alex says this is typified by the fact that we are all really pissed off our favourite grocery store, Sainsbury’s, is closed. We must be locals now.

But is London really home? Our notions of home are complicated by all the shifting identities and situations we’re finding ourselves in as we study abroad. In London, when people ask me where I’m from, I say I’m from California but I go to school in Oregon. California is where I grew up but Portland and Lewis & Clark are home for me as well. In Dublin waiting in the rain in the middle of the night after a ruckus St. Patrick’s Day, Kate and Sasha and I couldn’t wait to get ‘home’, but home that day was our warm beds at my cousin’s house in the Dublin suburb. ‘Make yourselves at home’, my cousins said. We were free to make tea and raid the fridge just like we would at our houses in Oregon, California, Colorado, or Ohio. Coming back from his travels in Germany, Andrew was happy to be ‘home’, which for him was back in our South Kensington converted hotel residence hall. Some of us are even lying about home. Just for fun, one night at a club Lauren and Lauren were Mary Kate and Ashley from Alaska. On the more somber side, Katie and her friend Ally made up stories of ‘home’ to avoid being treated badly while traveling. During spring break in Italy and Spain, home became Canada or London. Describing home as the U.S. risked them being stereotyped and mistreated as 'ugly Americans'.

Spring has come, and that means it’s time to register for classes next year. As we pick out our classes for the fall many of us are also busy planning our housing for next year. Will it be an on-campus apartment or an off-campus house? Where will I be for the summer? Where will home be next year? Will I feel at home when I go back to my parents’ house? Will I feel more at home back at LC? Or will I be so used to London by then that I will want to go back home to my little dorm room at 3-7 Queensgate Terrace? Will I ever actually miss our tiny kitchen? These are all questions that remain to answered (ok, except for the one about the kitchen), but I think one thing is certain. All these shifting identities, experiences, and senses of home are what we wanted from this experience. This is what we signed up for. We’ve gained so much and grown so much.

Week 9 Impressions by Maura Walsh

Hello from London! Since this week finds the LC gang caught in the midst of term papers, final exams, and sundry other academic and internship responsibilities, I’d like to tell you what I did last week. I escaped the city’s bustle, consumerism, and jolting tube rides to spend nine days outside the quaint seaside village of Aberdovey, Wales.

If you’re a discriminate follower of the LC London schedule, you’ll know that we just ended our third week of internship placements. My internship is with Encompass Trust, an organization set up by an English family in response to their son’s death in the 2002 Bali Bombings. Encompass takes young people from Indonesia, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, the UK, and the US on ‘Journeys of Understanding’ (cheesy title, I know) in partnership with Outward Bound. The program goal is to bring a personal understanding to issues of global conflicts and injustices. The programs include daytime team-building adventures in the wayward and wild wilderness of the Welsh countryside, followed by evening discussions that confront participants with gritty issues ranging from personal identity to opinions about whether conflict in the Middle East deserves too much media attention.

My internship site supervisor realized that by stealing me away for the week, he would gain another American participant as well as someone to help organize both office supplies and evening discussions. Thus, I found myself staying with the 23 other high school and college students, at the crest of a steep hill, in an ancient red brick house whose floors creaked zealously and whose shower ceilings were black with mold. It was a difficult week, and a wonderful week.

To cite the ‘best’ parts of the trip is rather unfair, but seems well worth a try. To begin, getting out of London was literally a welcome breath of fresh air. I was transported to a lush landscape – where I got to go sea kayaking, hiking, and rock climbing – that made me quite nostalgic for the greenery and outdoor adventure of Portland. We ate lunch to the sound of a bubbling stream in a leafy gorge, rather than to the droning buzz of traffic on Gloucester Road. I was introduced to the brilliance of the flapjack*, which – judging from the British participants’ emphatic obsession – have an almost cult-like status in the British diet. I’m still not sure how I could have spent an apparently downright dismal first six weeks in London being completely oblivious to the wonders of the flapjack. I’m just relieved that my ignorance to the flapjack has now been reformed.

Besides learning more about British culture from the other Encompass members during my nine days in Wales, I had the opportunity to meet extremely inspiring individuals from Indonesia, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. I met a floppy-haired Indonesian whose agility and balance on the ropes courses was breathtaking. I met an atheist Jew who has an eerie resemblance to the French student my family hosted when I was thirteen. I met a goofy Israeli with whom I communicated in a hodge podge of gestures, Hebrew (of which I know none), broken English, and theatrical facial expressions. I met a homosexual Sufi Muslim who has a wicked sense of humor, an insatiable love for music, and who wants to be an artist but is bending to his parents’ will and studying IT instead. I roomed with a soft-spoken but fiery Palestinian who has lived in a refugee camp all her life, who hadn’t seen the sea for eight years because she is not allowed to travel from town to town without a visa, and whose nineteen year-old brother has spent the last two years of his life in Israeli prison for running an errand for his boss to a town across the border.

After the unique individuals I met, the new cultures I encountered, and the tiring days spent climbing around in the wilderness, it was rather disorienting to find myself back on Gloucester Road on a busy gray Monday afternoon. I’m still processing everything I learned on the trip – and before I know it, we’ll all be back on the road for a new set of adventures during spring break next week!

*flapjacks are a scrumptious brownie-sized chewy granola-honey-bar-esque concoction that can come graced with many different mouth-watering extra ingredients (such as chocolate, nuts, or toffee). Wikipedia points out how fatty and caloric the beautiful flapjack is, but I posit that (especially when doing strenuous physical activity on Outward Bound trips) the flapjack’s glory outweighs (no pun intended) its downfalls.

Week 9 Impressions by Lauren Haisley

If you want to understand London, take a ride on the tube. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “tube,” it is basically the subway system in London. However if you come here don’t call it the subway, call it either the underground or the tube to avoid being classified as an ignorant American. We are lucky enough to have received Oyster cards that let us travel anywhere in zone one or two. This card is probably my most valuable possession. In a game of would you rather, given the choice between getting hit by a bus and losing my Oyster card; I’d take my chances with the bus.

The tube is so much more than just the vast chain of underground public transportation; it’s basically the thing that makes London, London. Now you may think that I am being slightly melodramatic, and maybe I am, but despite all of the ethnic differences, social differences, religious differences etc. that Londoners face everyday, and we learn about for hours on end in class, the tube is common to everyone.

Now this commonality has its ups and downs. The fact that everyone relies so heavily on the tube to get to work means that a system failure would probably cause London to shut down entirely. As it is, we have discovered that it is totally acceptable to be an hour late to work and not take any personal responsibility. You can’t control the tube. Even when the tube works perfectly and the slow moving group of elderly English ladies in front of you don’t cause you to JUST miss your train, taking the tube to work takes a good chunk of time. I think it’s Andrew that wins this contest in our group with a commute that lasts 70 minutes and goes all the way out to Zone 4 (we usually stick to Zone 1 and 2). But don’t worry, there is plenty to keep you thoroughly entertained on your ride to and from work five days a week. Talking is not one of them. Before I came to London someone said that you will always know who the Americans and Germans are, because they’re the only ones that talk on the tube. While this isn’t entirely true, let’s just say that I am most aware of my loud American-ness when there are 15 of us giggling and talking loudly about the stop entitled Cockfosters. After living here for a month plus, I definitely understand the silence. In a place where you are surrounded by people constantly, any alone time you can get is sacred. Plus when you’re so packed into a train that you’re unintentionally grabbing the ass of the guy next to you, it’s probably best not to talk.

Instead of talking, most people read and listen to music. If you don’t have your own music that’s ok because most likely someone next to you will be playing theirs loud enough for the entire train to hear. It’ll also most likely be Prince, Beyoncé, or techno of some kind. On the odd occasion you might even be lucky enough to get serenaded by a drunk man asking for money, as we were one night on our way to King’s College Pub. He sang David Bowie and then after we wouldn’t give him any money, an original composition about how cheap, boring, and basically evil American twenty-somethings are.

You also don’t have to supply your own reading material because chances are you can pick up one of the highly prestigious London newspapers given out for free every morning and evening at your local tube station. These papers contain a mixture of celebrity gossip, event scheduling, sports news, political news, and in some cases mild pornography on page 3. So if you are lucky enough to get a seat, grab the LondonLite, crank up the volume on your iPod, enjoy the pseudo alone time and always remember to mind the gap.

A Side Trip to Rottingdean by Tom Schoeneman

Friday March 2nd was a day of promise, weather-wise. For weeks we had had the same daily weather profile in London: high of 51, low of 46, rain and showers with—if lucky—sun breaks, and a persistent stiff wind that erased any hint of mildness that a temperature in the low 50s might promise. But on Friday, there was no rain in the forecast and the wind was promised to be a sedate 3 mph. It was time to go to the beach!

Accordingly, Mary and I set off with our visitor, Diana, to Brighton. Mary was particularly keen to go: She had grown up within a stone’s throw of salt water. Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound were a part of her soul. We caught the 10:06 train from Victoria Station, the Southern Victoria line, with stops at Clapham Junction and East Croydon near the city, and then a straight shot at high speeds past Gatwick Airport into Brighton.

We arrived just after 11 AM. Emerging from the station, we looked southwards down Queen’s Road and saw, between the buildings, a horizon line with blue above and grey below: the English Channel. After a short walk and a detour to look into a Catholic Church, we arrived at Brighton Beach. So strange after 8 weeks of concrete and roaring traffic to see a sweep of glittering ocean whispering with a mild, hypnotic surf.

There were, in fact, two human intrusions into this idyllic seascape. To our right, a broken lattice of pilings and cross-beams rose out of the surf. This was the derelict West Pier, a Victorian construction that until a few years ago still supported buildings. For a fee, you could buy the use of a hard hat and a guide and tour this ghost jetty. The locals were always arguing about the merits and demerits of restoring the thing. That argument was settled by high winds and fire: There isn’t much left of the West pier but a few bits of infrastructure poking up through the waves

Down the beach to our left was one of the main attractions of this coastal city, the Brighton Pier. We descended to the beach and started walking toward it.

I am tempted to put the word “beach” in quotation marks, but won’t: There are all kinds of beaches, after all. When most of us think of the beach, we probably think of sand. The whole of the coast in these parts does have a beach, but no sand. It is a pebble beach, or perhaps more accurately, a stone beach: The pebbles are ovoid stones about an inch long. The size of the stones makes it possible to walk on these beaches; also possible, though, is a cascade of rolling stones underfoot on any kind of slope, resulting in the usual flailing arms and desperate, staggering steps: You’re either going down or remaining spastically upright. Neither option is dignified.

Progress along the beach was aided by a walkway. In the summer, there are a series of surf shops and coffee canteens along this promenade, but in early March, most were shut up. Nevertheless, the day was mild enough to possibly imagine the coming of summer: I actually had to loosen my scarf and unzip my fleece jacket!

We ascended a ramp to the pier. This structure juts out into the ocean for a length of about 300 meters. On its surface, in the words of our guidebook, are “a thriving jumble of fish and chips joints, bingo, amusement arcades and fairground rides.” That sounds like my definition of hell, but in fact, almost every venue on the pier was closed, either for the season or until 4:30 in the afternoon, when the lights went on at the amusement park at pier’s end. The exception was the games arcade at the near end of the pier: There was a sign outside inviting all to “walk on through” to the rest of the pier. Why would anyone but a middle schooler want to stroll through an onslaught of BOOM BOOM THONKA THONKA DEEDLE DEEDLE and bad high volume pop music instead of walking outside in the mild breeze listening to the surf?

The pier was quiet: I could imagine the teeming throngs during the high season, but for now, it was a nice place for an unhurried stroll out over the ocean. The farther reaches of the pier afforded an opportunity to look back at the coastline. The center, Brighton, was like many a beach town: A concrete jumble, not the most picturesque of urban vistas. The coast that swept away on both sides, though, was an impressive array of white cliffs topped with green pastures. These are the South Downs, the same chalky precipices that are immortalized in the nostalgic English song “The White Cliffs of Dover”. Off to the right, sitting alone on a green slope rising from a cliff was a massive structure, somewhat castle-like: What on earth could that be?

After lingering on the pier, we headed inland to take a look at the Royal Pavilion, a hilariously over-the-top palace done up in onion domes and minarets in a supposedly Hindu style. The Pavilion was the party house of the Price Regent, Queen Victoria’s son, in the first half of the nineteenth century. We strolled through the grounds but declined to pay the entry fee to the Pavilion itself, despite the promise of more excesses within. After organizing a cheap lunch at La Tasca, a tapas restaurant, we toured the very small Brighton Museum, where we saw an exhibit of 20th century furniture styles (including Salvador Dali’s couch formed in the shape of Mae West’s lips), a collection of world culture artifacts, and the most extensive assemblage of English pottery and crockery that I ever hope to see. Next we toured the Lanes, a maze of shopping streets. Anyone who is interested in hand crafted jewelry could spend days looking into the windows of the shops in the Lanes. For the rest, there are antiques shops, toy stores and bistros, plus the occasional abandoned storefront that still bears a sign proclaiming it to be “proudly family owned.”

By 2:00 in the afternoon we had pretty much done everything we’d wanted to in Brighton. It was too early to return to London: Time to go off-program. But what to do?

At the train station, we had picked up a local bus schedule for a route that went east from Brighton along the coastline to a town called Newhaven. And in a promotional brochure we read of a town along the route, just outside Brighton, called Rottingdean: It was described as an “antique English village.” So we set off to do some scenery-seeing from the top of a double-decker bus.

We found the correct bus and purchased £3 return tickets to Newhaven from the helpful bus driver, who promised to let us know when we reached our stop in Rottingdean. Once we were ensconced on the top of the double-decker, we started east out of Brighton. Diana, who is our next-door neighbor in Portland, has a knack for striking up conversations with local people: She asks questions out loud, ostensibly to me or Mary. “Which way is Hove?” she wondered aloud. The lady in front of us turned around and pointed to the rear of the bus. In no time, we had a guided tour going. We passed a huge marina and shopping complex at the outskirts of Brighton: “Not very interesting,” said our guide. The mystery castle loomed from the Downs on our left: Roedean, a private school for girls. “Very expensive,” noted our informant. We found out that the trip out to Newhaven was lovely and that we could transfer there and go even further east to Eastbourne. As we approached Rottingdean, our guide pointed out our stop and led us off the bus, pausing to consult the driver about any additional fare to Eastbourne (it was £1 more). On the sidewalk, she led us to the main intersection of town and pointed out all of the main attractions up and down the road before walking off with a cheerful “Enjoy your visit!”

On the surface, Rottingdean does not seem like a “destination,” in the tourism sense of the word. It is not in any of our guidebooks. On the map, it looks as if it would be a suburb of Brighton, thus conjuring up the horrors associated with all things suburban. Nor is the town’s name what an ad agency would prefer: I can see the branding consultants advising the local council to change the town name to Everdean or Mistholme. I am linguist enough to know that the word Rottingdean probably has nothing to do with decay but I am not fluent enough in Saxon to know what it does indicate. Luckily, a local brochure put me straight. A dean is a valley. The Saxon for “people” is ingas, and the people in question were known as the Rota. So we were in the Rota people valley—which, according to the brochure, is “The perfect location . . . nestled between sea and Downs.”

Our first stop was the sea: Down a ramp to the Under Cliff Walk. One side of a paved walk hugged the white cliffs while the other gave access to the rocky beach. Looking to the east along the shore, there was a seemingly infinite series of chalk cliff outcroppings, each one slightly hazier than its nearer neighbor (for you psychology majors out there, this is a depth perception cue known as atmospheric perspective). We could have walked for miles dwarfed by the towering cliffs, but we needed time to see the town. Before turning back, we did investigate a strange aspect of the distant water-line. The tide was out, and at water’s edge, there appeared to be white foam backed up by a table of black rock. How was it, then that a dog appeared to be walking on the foam? Mary was off to investigate, skating down a pair of steep slopes in the rocky beach caused, no doubt by the actions of tide and waves. The “foam” turned out to be chalk polished to a porcelain gleam by surf and stone; the black rock was seaweed on top of the chalk that had been exposed by the retreating tide. The whole beach was a giant chalk basin filled with rocks and shells.

Back up the ramp, we moved away from the water and into town along the High Street, Rottingdean’s main drag. This was a two lane road with very narrow sidewalks and an unending line of cars. The clogged road was an incongruity, because all of the buildings along it were two-story structures of whitewashed brick and natural stone with pitched roofs. It was an antique English village: The narrow road and walkways were a result of a failure to bulldoze the quaint houses for the sake of modern transportaton.

High Street was populated by small stores and business: A cottage-like building advertising Cream Teas, a wine shop, an estate agent, a pub called Ye Olde Black Horse, a post office. There was nary a KFC, MacDonalds or Sainsbury’s Superstore in sight.

Further into town, High Street gave way to The Green, a loop that surrounded the Kipling Gardens. It is worth quoting at length from the town’s promotional brochure to get a sense of Rottingdeanian attitudes and recent history:

"When The Elms, former residence of Rudyard Kipling, came on the market in the 1980s, it was proposed that a large part of the garden would be sold off to a housing development which was wholly inappropriate. When planning permission was refused the Preservation Society bought the land and transformed it from a derelict and overgrown wilderness into a most beautiful garden with a number of enchanting sections. It was later presented to the, then, Brighton Borough Council for all to enjoy in perpetuity."

A pretty accurate description, I think. The two acres did indeed contain a number of “enchanting sections” separated by high walls built of fist-sized rocks and connected by walks through formal gardens and past a croquet lawn. These walks curved around and passed through arches in the walls; almost invariably, they led to a dead end. The Elms itself was a handsome two-story house with tall chimneys at either end of the roof. The brochure noted that it was open seven days a week (“No ball games, radios, or dogs permitted”) but our informant on the bus told us the house was privately owned and not available for tourism. Whatever the case, we left Kipling alone and proceeded further along The Green.

At one point, we encountered a sign on a drive that led to something called Hog Plat. The sign also promised a livery and access to the nature preserve. When Mary saw the word “livery,” there was no stopping her. Sure enough, around a bend we found stacked bales of hay next to a fence being nibbled by four horses. Four very small, pettable horses. (I believe the technical term is “ponies.”) Beyond the ponies, the drive ascended past a crazy quilt of community gardens and suddenly became steep. We carefully climbed the mixture of chalk and dirt and emerged onto the nature preserve: A thick carpet of grass, broken only by widely scattered clumps of daffodils and a big black windmill. We were on the Downs west of town. (Down, by the way, comes from dun, the Saxon word for hill.) We turned to look behind us and discovered that Rottingdean certainly is a dean. From our vista we saw the roofs of the town nestled in a valley, flanked by green hilltop pastures. We stood at the crest of the western hilltop and looked across to the eastern meadows, where I could see tiny figures of horses and white cotton puffs that were grazing sheep.

We made one other stop along the Green at St. Margaret’s parish church. Compared to the churches I have been visiting—St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminister Abbey, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, Canterbury Cathedral—St. Margaret’s seemed to be a small squat matron among the nobility. The church was reached by a path through a surrounding graveyard. The front door was open: Inside, there were pews and stained glass windows and not a single soul besides ourselves. It was refreshing to see a working church, one that was really not a tourist venue but open to all and any nonetheless.

We never made it to Newhaven or Eastbourne. Our time in Rottingdean was short and swift. It had already gone 4:00 PM when we queued for the bus back to Brighton. The sky had clouded and the air cooled: Rain was coming and would arrive during the bus ride back. How typically English. The weather report had been so promising that we had decided to leave our umbrellas behind. There were no complaints, though. We had seen a glimpse of spring for most of the day, smelled the salt air and listened to waves lapping the shore. Even better, we had stumbled into one of those unplanned discoveries that make traveling worthwhile. The Rottingdean promotional brochure had used the right word: enchanting. Damp and delighted, we headed back to London.

Week 7 Recap by Niku Schreiner

The week started with high expectations and ambiguity as our schedules changed to accommodate our internships. Everyone was pleased to be rid of the three and half hour classes even at the cost of an evening class ending at 8:30 on Tuesdays. This left little time to prepare for a small fiesta for Nora’s 21st birthday consisting of breakfast for dinner. An abundance French toast, bacon, and fruit salad was enough to feed an army left many feeling satisfied and perhaps slightly bloated. The event concluded with the traditional happy birthday song and some tasty cake before it became necessary to run upstairs to finish/start a brief progress report.

Valentine’s Day coincided with a first workday at our internship of which everyone experienced riveting tasks such as net surfing, filing, and compiling lists of how co-workers like their tea. Everyone enjoyed the first experience at a British workplace even if the day started with breaking copier machine.

Falling into the work slump school slipped into the backs of our minds as we anxiously awaited the weekend. Friday was promised to be slow for the long day Saturday but few were inclined to remain steadfast. This made for quite the trail to arrive at the train station in time for the planned trip to Cambridge but everyone made it and several opted for the mid morning nap on the train.

The first stop was lunch at Pizza Express on Jesus Lane. The restaurant was found with some difficulty; we were surprised to not find a typical example of a pizza joint but rather a classy eatery where one could choose from a list of gourmet personal pizzas. Once satisfied with our lunch many wandered around Cambridge finding the copious amounts of low-quality bikes puzzling because of the well-known wealth of the many students at Cambridge. A small market located near the heart of Cambridge provided most of the essentials and a few more. Watches, wooden puzzles, and ox hearts could be found on display. Little time was allotted to wander, as a group tour was next in the agenda.

It was pleasing to find an exuberant woman to lead our exhibition through Cambridge and describe to us the finer details and habits of the 31 colleges. The first stop was a description of student attire, which describes not only the college that the student attends but also tells of their status in sports. Next was the King’s College Chapel that really emphasized beauty of 15th century gothic architecture. The entrance consisted of the dragon of Wales across from the emaciated dog of King Henry IV. The University was beautiful although the grass could not be trodden upon unless one is a senior member of the university. Many similarities could be drawn between Cambridge and Lewis & Clark including the fanatic rowers sacrificing a portion of their sanity. Our guide was nostalgic for the days where the well-trimmed males dominated the river, where now it was filled with Amazonian woman.

Finishing the tour, many decided to leave because a long night was allocated for the celebration of Nikki’s birthday. Dinner and preparation took until the late evening of 11 o’clock but intentions had been made to stay until closing of 7am. The renowned club Fabric consisted of three separate dance floors with amazing lighting. Although we arrived as a group people, we became engulfed by the crowds and it was nearly impossible to keep track of one another. Many decided to leave early (3am) while other decided to stay to the bitter end. The result of the party made Sunday a true day of rest and unproductivity, allowing people to be cognitively ready for a new week of excitements in London.