London Calling: Part 1

I was in London, staying not too far from the city center, for three hectic days in 1996. Instantly, I fell in love with the city. The old world style, the history, the pace: everything seemed to speak directly to my soul. Of course, I was sixteen and had similar feelings in Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Germany and parts of Austria. Years later, though, after the frenzied tour had faded the call to London persisted. I returned to London for four days in 2004/2005 to celebrate the New Year. Instantly, even while still in the airport, that familiar feeling was rekindled, and then as an adult, I decided that I was going to live there. No matter what it took, I was going to move out there and I was going to be a Londoner.

Of course, life has an odd way of detouring you around your dreams. The situation at the time was not very conducive to moving to London: I had a job, it looked like grad school was going to be a second dream deferred, and I was in the middle of a long-term relationship that, my girlfriend at the time, made clear was not about to be moved. I gave myself one more attempt to apply to school, with the hopes that for my PhD I would move to England. Somehow I got into Southern Illinois University, and after three years there my situation was different: I was single, without any real job attachments, and needed a school for PhD work.

I applied was going to apply to 15 school (I ended up applying to 14), and in a moment of fancy, sent an email off to Aberystwyth seeing if they would be interested in an American studying comic books. To make a long story much shorter: I was accepted here, and my dream of living in London was this much closer.

Now, Wales is not really England, and Aberystwyth is a far cry from London. Depending on who you listen to, London has between seven million people and twelve million people (the discrepancy arises between the definition of where the city stops and what metropolitan areas should be counted). As a city is in the top 25 largest; as a metropolitan area it is in the top 20. Wikipedia, that bastion of unquestionable truth, claims that 1,130 people per square kilometer, which makes it more crowded that New York, but less so than Los Angeles (and a far cry from Karachi, Pakistan with roughly 10,700 people per square kilometer, or the top three most populated Indian cities). It should be noted that all three of my trips to London have not strayed much further than Zone 3, so my understanding of London is hardly encyclopedic. Still, this is as close as I have been in my life, and for now I feel good about it.

Patiently, I waited for someone to come visit me so I would have a good excuse to be released into London again, and Erika's trip in March was just the opportunity I was waiting for. She arrived on Friday morning, red-eyed from the overnight flight, and we stayed until Sunday afternoon. Again, like when I was sixteen and twenty-five, I felt London's pull calling me to move there for good.

We stayed in Acton Town (the Piccadilly Line and District Line have tube stops there), which was the furthest from the city center I had been. Initially, I was a little nervous. Assuming this city was no different than other cities, I was worried the further we got from the city center, the less safe the neighborhood would be. We picked The Windmill out in Acton after careful consideration from Hostelworld.com, which suggested it was in a safe part of town. Still, the Piccadilly Line from Leicester to Acton passes through some pretty sketchy parts of town, and I reserved opinion until we were settled. While I doubt I would leave my doors unlocked at night, I really like Acton. There were a wide variety of accents and nationalities which made me feel less like I was in a stranger in a strange land. The people were genuinely nice, particularly at The Windmill. Feeling peckish one night, we went to a pizza joint down the street from our room, and the young man at the counter forgot to charge us for the two sodas we ordered. While this could have been an issue, he gave us the sodas and let us leave with a smile.

We went to church that Sunday, and the mass was pleasant. The children, which were plentiful, were taken out of the church during the majority of the readings, and when they returned, half a dozen of them presented the new information they learned to the congregation. The people around us were very warm and friendly, warmly shaking hands during the sign of peace with very welcoming smiles.

Though Acton was nice, we didn't spend much time there. Most of our time was spent in the city center. That Friday night, after we took care of the bee in our room (see the last blog entry), we took off for some night sight seeing. We went to the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, and walked along the Thames. I was reminded of an article that claimed one of the Queen's of England was presented to Inuits as a present. In her free time, she used to watch the Inuits hunt swans on the Thames not far from where we were walking. The same article claimed that these Inuits were the inspiration for Frankenstein's monster. I tried my damnedest to imagine what that must have looked like.

True to form, I was asked for directions from a group of Italian tourists. When they approached Erika and I, in perfect English, they asked where Trafalgar Square was. I had a vague recollection, and started off on an explanation that they needed to get to Charring Cross road. About three words into the sentence, I was stopped.
"Wait. We...Italians. Slower."
Luckily, Erika can understand some Italian from the years speaking Spanish, and between the three of us, we managed to tell them that we had no idea how to get where they were trying to get to.

The next day, we had grand aspirations to get up, go to Leicester Square early, get tickets to see Waiting for Godot, see some sights, return to see the show, and then finish with some quiet time in a local pub enjoying pub snacks. If you are in London, the TKTS booth sells discount tickets to see most shows, but the word on the street is one needs to get there early to get tickets to see the more impressive shows. Waiting for Godot is not everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but this particular casting included Sir Ian McKellen of X-Men (Magneto) and Lord of the Rings (Gandolf) fame. One of my favorite actors from two of my favorite movie trilogies in my favorite play of all time: the trifecta of favorites. We returned from our adventures Friday with big plans.

As Hemingway said: "The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs." Saturday, when the alarm went off, getting out of bed was not an option. Erika was still in Central Standard Time, and I hadn't slept much in the two days prior to her arrival. We slept until nearly noon ("Come on," I said, "it's vacation."), and after a big breakfast at the pub, we made our way to Leicester Square. Tickets for Waiting for Godot were still available, and though Erika wanted to see Phantom of the Opera, I persisted. I promised she would not regret it.

After that we made our way to the British Museum. This museum is, of course, famous for pillaging treasures out of Egypt, Africa and other placed England traveled to in search of knowledge. Recently, especially in Egypt, there has been a cry for these treasures to be returned. Among the chunks of burial tombs, mummies, small coins and jewelry, the museum's marquee artifact is the Rosetta Stone. This stone tablet, with the same story written in three different languages, allowed for most modern translations of hieroglyphics. Inside the stone tablet, they found ancient, overpriced CD-ROMS that taught the early British explorers the ancient languages by the most advanced language acquisition software at the time.

Like the Mona Lisa, I found myself amazingly underwhelmed by the Rosetta Stone. It was less impressive than one might imagine. I always pictured a huge obelisk with enormous and meticulously detailed images engraved on the stone so black that light itself could not escape. In actuality, it was little bigger than a small table top at McDonalds. Due to several moves and being really, really old, the stone tablet was missing huge chunks, the largest of which was taken from the hieroglyphics story. The exhibit was mobbed. One small Asian man elbowed people out of the way making space for his enormous tripod and his long range SLR camera. Erika wanted to see it, so I pushed our way to the front and she was able to take a look.

What was more impressive was the collection of mummies that the museum had spanning all over the Mediterranean. There were mummies from Roman and Greek areas. Italian made mummies, and of course scores of Egyptian mummies. Despite having been on display for decades, these mummies were very well preserved. As were the enormous chunks of pyramids that dotted the museum floor, often times acting as entry ways, built right into the wall of the exhibit. Being among the remains of ancient societies, hundreds of years older than me, was really humbling. To bad Satan placed all of these tricks in the soil so that people would falsely believe the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. Nonetheless, these were some convincing lies.

To be continued...