The Biggest Little City in England

I have a lot of CDs, and in this day and age, I have burned them all onto my computer so that I could take most of them with me anywhere I went on my iPod. Because I walk a lot, travel a lot, and write a lot, I like to have the majority of my music with me at all time, and the iPod has been a godsend in that respect.

Until it stopped working. Those familiar with Apple know that the company prides itself on things not breaking down, and my iPod has not disappointed, working like a horse for the past three years. I tried my damnedest to get the machine working again, so that my walks through Aberystwyth, which are frequent, would have a soundtrack again. Something to distract me from the exhaustion I face walking up and down the hills. Sadly, there was nothing I could do. I needed the help of an Apple Genius.

The nearest Apple store as the crow flies would probably be Cardiff. Unfortunately the only way to get to Cardiff from here is a twice daily bus that requires a lot of attention paid to the watch, or going into England, to head back south and west into Wales. The easiest store to get to is in Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK behind London.

To put things in perspective for my American readers, London has about 12 million people in the city center and surrounding area. This would make it about the size of LA, without all the other surrounding towns in the LA area. Birmingham, as the second largest city, comes in just over 1 million people in the center and surrounding areas, making it about the size of Dallas, minus about 200,000 people. Birmingham would be just shy of the top ten largest cities in America.

That said, Birmingham was very surprising.

There are two train stations off the line I came in on; one conveniently goes to the airport, the other drops the riders at a heavily trafficked station in the center of the city. From there, I was able to walk across the street to a really huge shopping mall, in which was contained the Apple Store at which I had an appointment. It might be that the centralized nature of Birmingham that allows for one Apple store to service the entire population, or it might be that little lies between the Midlands (Birmingham and the surrounding area) and London, requiring fewer large shopping malls; regardless of the reason, the Bull Ring shopping mall was the most packed place I have ever been to, including the nearly 30 years I have spent in the Chicagoland area, the couple years I spent in the city and my trips to London, Paris and Frankfurt. There are times I see pictures of people milling about Tokyo or Beijing, I wonder how anyone could choose to live stacked up on top of each other like crates in a factory or fish about to be plucked from the sea, surrounded by an ever-shrinking net.

I have found that I lose my patients for large crowds as I get older. When I was younger, I used to love going to the Taste of Chicago, getting smashed into large crowds all enjoying a singular experience. I would press into the compact mass of people at the front of a stage to see Green Day or Godsmack. I lived like puppies with my brothers growing up. In short, space never much mattered to me. Until I lived in Monmouth, then Carbondale and DeSoto. There, I lived with space. I could drive down the main drag in Monmouth some mornings, and see one, maybe two cars total. On some later trips between Galesburg and Monmouth, my headlights might be the only ones blazing down the highway.

DeSoto was probably the ultimate in reclusive living. The town itself had 300 people, most of which were elderly, living in small two bedroom slab houses. My part of DeSoto was relatively newer, and set back from the main roads. In the little subdivision, my apartment was one of maybe thirty houses, all small families or quiet renters. At night, I would take my dog for a walk and not see another person. When the ice-storm hit and froze people into their houses, I walked the icy streets with my dog, enjoying the quiet of the streets.

Suffice to say, my experience at Bull Ring was anxious, at best. As I crested the escalator to the third floor, I tried to stop and see if the Apple Store was behind me (which it was) but was carried by the foot traffic into a different corridor. The hallways were filled wall to wall with consumers milling about listlessly between the stores. Luckily, the British are polite to a fault, so even when I was clearly aimlessly wandering around, no one shivved me.

I managed to get into the Apple store on my second time through the mall, but I found not respite from the crowds there. It was literally difficult to impossible when trying to walk around the store. It was not Apple's fault as they arranged their tables in to parallel rows that were perpendicular to the wall. One should have been able to run full speed from the door to the cashiers without stopping to slow down. Unfortunately with the people milling about as they were, walking for more than a step was near impossible, let alone finding someone to help me. Again, though, because the British are considerate people, there was little fighting. I've been to the mall at Christmas time, and in similar situations, Americans are less friendly.

Once I got my iPod, I was ready to get on the train, leaving a trail of burning destruction in the rubble of Birmingham. I was tired of the people, the experience, the expensive consumer goods for which I had no money (£55 for a vest!). I saw daylight and made a break for it, finding that I had exited the mall on the opposite side I entered, leaving a long walk to the train. This was serendipitous, though, as I saw one of the neatest sights ever: an old church surrounded by this gleaming mass of modern architecture. Smack between the mall and an open air market sat a Gothic-style, red rock church, complete with steeple and buttresses. That's one of the neat things about England, a country with more than two-hundred years of history: one often finds modernity juxtaposed with tradition. Here was a church from the early 1900's smack in the middle of a more modern, church of capitalism.

In the open air, I felt less claustophobic and decided to amble about for a while. I had purchased a map book from the train station, and had a few hours before I needed to leave. I took off in a Northerly direction. This was a good choice, as I stumbled in the city center, which was rife with history and cool looking buildings.

The Birmingham town hall is modeled after the Pathenon, sitting on the Western edge of the picturesque Victoria Square. On the Northern edge sat the original Council House, which is still in use today, though partly as an Art Gallery and History Museum. Walking into Victoria Square was a lot like what it looks like when people walk into generic European squares in Europe. The places was dotted with statues and monuments, tourists and locals sat about the stairs and benches, eating or taking pictures, and people meandered about.

Interestingly, Victoria Square has sat there for some time, the intersection of New Street, Colmore Row and Paradise Street. The Square was made official in 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria, removing a church that had sat there for some time. In 1993, Diana, Princess of Wales rehabbed the whole bit, commissioning several new statues. This site is considered the center of Birmingham, and most of the street signs point towards it in some capacity.

After I walked around the square for a while, I wandered down the very ritzy shops of New Street, before I had dinner at a charming little Italian joint. Here again, though, I was struck by the mass of crowds, as this must have been one of the few places with open restaurants in the area. Every place was filled to brimming, including the pubs which leaked out onto the streets. After a short wait of 15 minutes or so, I was seated and enjoyed a nice meal of garlic cheese bread sticks and a mushroom risotto.

After that, I had to head back to catch the last train out of the city at 8:30 pm. Had I missed that, I would have been stuck in Birmingham for the night. By that point in the day, though, I had had enough, and was looking for the solitude of Aberystwyth.