London Semester Blog 2008

Sue Parman, Resident Director, CSUF London Semester 2008

January 7, 2008

            Every journal should start with a disaster.  That way, you’re prepared for anything and don’t take ease for granted.  You are grateful when schedules are kept, trains come on time (or at all), and ankles aren’t sprained.  You are surprised by the diversity of life rather than annoyed by its complexity.

            That is, after all, the whole point of traveling.  If we didn’t want to be surprised, challenged, or stunned by the unknown, we’d stay at home.

            Our journey on Sunday, January 6, to London started with a disaster.  The United plane that was supposed to take us from LAX to Chicago had mechanical troubles, and we were delayed for four hours.  One by one we found each other (by the bright yellow AIFS tags on our luggage, or by looking like people going to London--who knows how fellow travelers find each other?)—the group of students from Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach that were taking the pre-tour to Paris, Bruges, and Brussels.  We told each other travel horror stories and felt better (This is nothing compared with THAT), and dozed from the adrenalin high of rushing and then having to wait. 

We should have missed our connecting flight in Chicago, but I guess the thought of putting such a large group up for the night in Chicago was worse than inconveniencing a hundred other passengers;  the flight waited for us.  We stumbled blearily onto the plane after dashing through O’Hare’s gargantuan halls, and immediately took off.  My first thought, after relief, was:  What about the luggage?  (After years of travel, you learn one simple rule:  never leave home with anything heavier than a toothbrush, a pad of paper, and a ballpoint pen.)

My second thought was:  Who cares?  We’re off to Paris.  We all made it.  And the disaster helped to bring people together.  It also revealed our character traits:  the Lone Wolf (who kept wandering off by himself);  the Complainer (who expressed vocally all the worries everyone else probably had);  the Organizer (who, by the time we left LAX, had arranged for all the students staying in the apartments to get together for a communal wash/study day at the local laundromat).  Of all the potentially traumatic cultural differences, the high cost of doing laundry was what seemed to worry the students most.  Also, there were ugly rumors about the poor quality of bathing opportunities.  I told them that there were ugly rumors about Americans in Europe:  that they took long showers and hogged the bathroom; that they were loud;  that they were too happy.

One student looked worried and then said, “You’re joking, right?”

That’s why it’s so important to travel.  You can’t tell people things;  it has to hit them between the eyes.

January 7, 2008

A miracle:  not only did we arrive safely in Paris but our luggage did too.  The relief on students’ faces, as we wait in a foreign airport surrounded by people who look sort of like us but different (sleeker, more polished, rather like otters vs. drowned puppies), not knowing if we’ll be met, is palpable.  Things!  We touch them, we feel ourselves.  Some of the students have brought way too many bags;  not only were they charged extra, but it made traveling uncomfortable.  Weighed down, anxious about keeping track, they missed a lot of the surroundings;  and they were turned even more inward with their heavy layering of technology—their cell phones, ipods, laptops, electronic books and even an occasional real book (well, okay, most of the books were textbooks, but one student brought along for “light reading” Voltaire’s Candide—sometimes I have hope for the future of the past). 

A second miracle:  AIFS, the organization handling the students’ experience in Europe, is at the airport to meet us in the form of a handsome young man named Peter, who although only 23, has just come to work for AIFS from a similar job in South America;  he speaks Spanish, French, the usual European etcetera.  Although some of the students arriving on their own have to maneuver the taxis or the Paris Metro by themselves, we have taken the group flight and are pampered.  I notice how happy the students are now with simple things.  They cheer when the first piece of luggage shows up;  they are relieved when Peter leads them to a bus.  After a disaster, you no longer take things for granted—the first important step in the transformative process of cross-cultural experience.

            A bus takes us to the Mercury Hotel right beside the Gare du Lyon (one of the many monumental train stations in Paris), an incredibly convenient hotel within view of the Bastille monument, its gold statue twinkling in the clear sky down one of the spokes that branches out from the train station.  At the hotel we meet Jen, perky in purple-colored layers and a pixie haircut, very French-looking (although she is English, from Liverpool, of Irish/Scottish heritage from the years of the potato famine)--our primary AIFS guide for the tour.  She warns the students: watch out for pickpockets;  leave your passport in your room;  tip 10%;  don’t look like a tourist.  She teaches the students a few of the basic phrases, of which the most important is “Pardon.”  They listen, but the more serious form of culture shock is in living arrangements:  they must share rooms.  Those who shared the disaster of the delayed flight at LAX adjust easily;  but those who came on their own are like new dogs that have to be sniffed and vetted before being allowed into the pack.  There are murmurings.  But the next cultural jolt—a clever AIFS maneuver--bonds everyone together. 

Jen gives everyone a Metro ticket but says they’re on their own after that.  The Metro ticket gets us to Pont Neuf where we were told we would have dinner before catching an evening boat ride down the Seine;  but once reaching the bridge where we are to meet to go on the bus ride, she sends us off to find our own dinner.  There is palpable shock at being turned loose in a big city in which suddenly WE are the ones speaking a foreign language.  Where to go?  How to order?  What are the rules?  Mommy!

Shakily, forming small groups or taking off on their own (the Lone Wolf), they break loose reluctantly from the collective hoard, cross the street, and disappear down narrow alleys lined with shops and cafes.  The streets are labyrinthine, non-parallel.  I join up with two students, and we try to locate the Pantheon (where Victor Hugo, the Curies, and the inventor of Braille are buried), for which there are many signs, but we never find it;  but along the way we find a church hung with gargoyles, and a plaque and sculpture portrait of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; we sit outside a café, French-style, eating cheese, legume soup, salad with lardoons (crispy ham bits).

A third miracle:  we all manage to find our way back to the bridge.  As we walk along the Seine (cobblestones;  yellow lights and dark shadows;  a man walking his dog), I listen to the students talking.  Can’t you just imagine Jason Bourne running along here?  I’m afraid to use the hair dryer in my room.  Why doesn’t MacDonald’s have lettuce and tomato on their hamburgers?  My boyfriend didn’t want me to come on this trip.

We head down the Seine.  Lights and shadows in the water;  huge buildings like French ladies, going for height and a cool grandeur;  bridges with separate personalities and histories;  the Eiffel Tower sparkling, dressed in gold lame.  The cold air off the water reminds them that what constitutes “cold” in California is inadequate preparation for a European winter;  they need gloves, hat, warmer layers.  But they forget the cold as they haul out their expensive gadgets for capturing the moment.  Their cameras are complex and their images beautiful.  Do they know what this or that building is?  Not necessarily, but they’ve got a great picture of it.

Afterwards we walk back to the Metro, and Jen suggests that they share expenses by buying a “carnet,” or set of ten tickets.  After a moment of shock, they begin to form alliances.  It is difficult to move en mass through a crowded underground, but they manage;  and when one of the student’s tickets doesn’t work, they don’t abandon her.  They cluster around on the other side of the barrier, hand over their own extra tickets, share.  What a concept.

January 8, 2008

            The hotel has modernist décor with mirrors and patterns of black and white, cactus set in enormous glittering vases.  Breakfast is in the mezzanine, and we are directed to a large room at the end of the hallway, past other rooms in which French businessmen in suits eat, according to rumor, a higher quality of food.  We are in coach vs. upper class, kept separate to avoid cultural contamination (or could it be that we pollute the atmosphere with our loud voices?).  There is nothing to complain about the food (except the invidious comparisons created by separate spaces):  yogurt, ham and cheese, croissants, honey and butter, even scrambled eggs and limp bacon;  juices;  coffee machines that dispense a variety of flavors and treatments.

            A coach picks us up for a morning tour of Paris, guided by Janine, a Scotswoman married to a Frenchman who keeps us in tow by holding up an umbrella with a handle in the shape of a green frog (“Follow the green frog!”)—an umbrella that is smuggled for her into the Louvre by one of the students (we are quite a team now).  She is knowledgeable and funny, the perfect combination for a tour guide.  We hit the usual highlights (the Pantheon—at last!—Napoleon’s tomb), but we also learn about the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, owned by an eccentric Englishman who keeps dozens of cats and takes in impoverished backpackers;  why policemen are called “chickens”;  that Hemingway strangled pigeons in Luxembourg Gardens for his dinner;  that, like pieces of the true cross, Napoleon’s penis keeps turning up for sale.  We all stood on the bronze star outside Notre Dame (one of the many gold stars throughout Paris that mark the old meridian that was eventually replaced by Greenwich) and learned that if we made a wish, we would always come back home to Paris.  While the students streamed into the cathedral or off in search of crepes, I watched as, one after another, French families took pictures of their young sons and daughters standing on the star (were they leaving for university or travel abroad?).  The young people standing on the star closed their eyes;  they were focused on the solid ground beneath their feet, and I could almost see a magnetic line of force linked from the star to their feet as they shook themselves and walked off.  Dorothy clapping together her ruby slippers.  I want to go home.

            That night, Jen takes us on an unscheduled, voluntary expedition to Montmartre, the high hill with its sacred Catholic church, the home of artists and an incredible view of Paris—the Eiffel Tower an exclamation point in the glittering array of lights.  Much walking, especially uphill.  More crepes and photographs.  There is more sharing of Metro tickets but less concern about sticking together.  Two stay behind to have dinner in Montmartre.  One student gets left behind on the way back but makes his way, beaming with confidence. 

January 9, 2008

            Our final morning in Paris is spent at the Louvre, where Janine recounts the plot of The Da Vinci Code as her green frog bobs from the Mona Lisa (now air conditioned behind glass, a tiny face seen only at a distance, more symbol than substance) to the Madonna of the Rocks (within touching distance, or what’s more important, within seeing distance—one can see Leonardo’s marvelous sfumato technique, the smoky integration of figure with landscape).  We see Delacroix’s famous painting of 1830 in which a woman, for the first time, represents revolutionary France (the first of many “Mariannes,” and the inspiration for Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable).  We learn about the strict rules of acceptance into the French Academy (women could not be admitted because, after all, they could not attend the required anatomy classes);  and although woman have been permitted since 1968, the total membership in the Academy (a lifetime membership) is limited to 40.  (Although the American and French revolutions are closely tied in spirit, they are worlds apart in their operational definitions of equality and liberty.  The ghosts of the aristocracy linger in France.)

            The green frog takes us on a representative tour (Elgin marbles, Egyptian treasures, French crown jewels) and then turns us loose until the bus leaves for Bruges.  I overhear one student say, “I’ve had my adventure;  I want to go home.”  Another sits down for an éclair and an espresso and writes on a postcard, “I will never again drink Starbuck’s coffee or eat a Dunkin’ Donut.”  As we get on the bus for Bruges, one student asks another, “What did you like best about Paris?” and gets the answer, “The cheese.” 

            On the bus, the students haul out their technology.  Although the bus has a DVD player, it won’t play American DVDs (thank god).  Two students share earphones and play chess on a laptop.  I lean against the glass and watch the graffiti and the names of the many trucks (Grimonprez, Cheveaux, Marck Schubel, Transports Internationaux, Clement Logistyka), and notice that the paintings in the Louvre showed skies the same color as the skies I’m now watching—a kind of pastel blue with cotton-puff clouds.  We pass the sign for Disneyland.  Jen says that in northwest England, where she comes from, they have Camelot.  The driver of our bus pays forty Euro to drive a stretch of tollway.

            We arrive after four hours in the small, medieval town of Bruges.  After checking into a chain hotel (Ibis), which is clean, streamlinedly modern, and totally out of keeping with the surrounding architecture, we go on a walking tour with our guide, Eric.  He is low-key, efficient, serious in demeanor, and tells few jokes.  I notice that the plane trees (as in Paris, referred to as the “lungs” of the city) are severely clipped and tied in horizontal lines (these are Germanic lungs).  Eric would prefer to stick to his agenda but waits tolerantly as the students stop every few feet to take photographs.  I realize that his sense of humor is alive and well (if Germanically subdued) when he says quietly, “Now I will talk to you about what you have photographed.”  The humor runs like fine gold beneath the concrete exterior.  “We have 25,000 in Bruges, but in the summer 3 million because of tourists.  Why do they come?  Because we were too poor to industrialize, and therefore we didn’t get bombed.  Yesterday our medievalism and poverty seemed archaic, and we were ashamed of it.  Today we are rich, simply because we didn’t change.”

            Bruges was an important place of pilgrimage.  “Our knights went on crusades, and came back with pieces of the true cross, a drop of Christ’s blood, a drop of Mary’s milk.  If all these pieces and drops from around the world were joined together, we would have a forest of trees, and a river of blood and milk.  Pilgrims came from all over and stayed in the Hospital (a place of hospitality), and if they were lucky they had to share a bed with only one or two other people, and none of these people were sick.  And if they were really lucky, they came on one of the two days a year when they washed the sheets.”

            I asked what language would have been spoken in Belgium during the 11^th century.  “The common people would have spoken medieval Dutch;  the clergy, of course, spoke Latin, and the nobility spoke French.”  I asked what money they would have used at this time.  “They used pounds, which had the same units as the English monetary system before they went metric.”  I hadn’t known the origins of the British system when I struggled to learn it as a student doing a year abroad at the University of Edinburgh in the 60s;  and having mastered the confusing system of penny (once divided into four farthings), thruppence, sixpence, shilling (equal to 12 pennies), half-crown (two shillings and sixpence), and pound (equal to 20 shillings or eight half-crowns), I felt devastated when Britain went metric (100 pennies to a pound?—what’s the fun in that?).  Eric added, “The French, of course, used the ecu.”  I suddenly remembered that when the European Union was formed in 1992, the original plan was to use the Ecu as the European “dollar”;  during what culturally significant political battle had the Ecu succumbed to the Euro?

            The town is protected by its canals, which became so polluted that people had to drink only beer and wine.  Rich men had wells and controlled the manufacture of beer.  I asked what effect global warming would have on the town.  Eric said, “We have always had flooding.  No one thinks it will be any different.”

            I go to dinner with Jen, and we include a student who wanders in.  The restaurant has a burning fireplace and small spaces.  It is warm and friendly after our long walk through the crisp cold.  We drink a glass of ruby-red kirr.  I have cauliflower soup and Flemish stew (lamb, dark gravy, herbs), followed by ice cream sprinkled with chocolate flakes.  I want to move to Bruges.

January 10, 2008

            The group is beginning to divide itself into the matutinophiles and matutinophobes (those who rise early or late).  Some students stay late in the hotel bar (24-hour service;  the staff go to bed when the patrons do);  when I leave the bar they are, amazingly, still together as a group rather than split up, and they are playing a group game that involves holding up ten fingers and taking turns naming things they hadn’t done (“I’ve never eaten meat”;  “I’ve never ridden a bicycle”;  “I’ve never had a one-night stand”), the person with fingers still held up winning the game.  They have also been playing communal word-games on the bus.  Another group of American students sulks in a corner playing card games, reminding us of how well we get along.  The students take this for granted;  I think, “How lucky we are.” 

Nevertheless, I don’t expect to see them the next morning until we leave for Brussels.  I think I’m early as I head out, but I meet one student who has already walked to the outskirts of the town and discovered the windmills (“I have to go back!  It was too dark for a picture!”).  I want to hire a boat, but learn they are closed in January.  I see several boats along the canal, and watch as they throw a grappling hook into the water and come up with a bicycle;  two;  seven altogether as they turn a corner.  Why would people throw bikes into a canal?  Some looked new and expensive.

            I meet students on their way to rent bicycles.  I wonder how often the garbage collectors find bones among the trawled debris of the canals.  (“Finger bones of Christ!”—tourists would provide an infinite supply.)

            I climb the endless steps to the Belfry and remember Eric’s comment about the meaning of “Belfry”—that it refers not only to where bells are kept, but to the fact that the building in which they are kept symbolizes the freedom of the city, the carefully preserved autonomy, the power of the burgomeisters.  After a fire destroyed all the papers in the Belfry in 1280, a new treasury room was created, with stone vaulting added in 1300 (most buildings were of wood), and wrought-iron grills by Erembald de Smid.  It was sealed with nine locks and required that the burgomeister and all 8 deacons of the trade guilds be present to open the chamber—a collaboration continued today in Belgium’s complex politics that requires a coalition to govern (rather than the absolutism of two parties, as in the U.S.).  What, by the way, do Europeans think of American politics?  Most prefer Hilary Clinton in the current contest;  and many are deeply disgusted by the Supreme Court’s “appointment” of Bush.  One student had the grace to admit, “I’m embarrassed.  They know more about the American political process than I do.”

We gather on the bus at noon.  Some of the students are very groggy, others invigorated.  Some managed shopping in the morning—lace;  postcards;  a chocolate penis.  The student who went back to take pictures of windmills is late;  he assuages the group by passing out chocolate.

            We pass green fields filled with short-legged, long-haired, thick-bodied horses.  The driver broadcasts the radio, and the language sounds like a mixture of French and German.  We enter the mega-sprawl of Brussels—as large in geographical area as Paris but with half the population;  expanding rapidly because of the EU;  stuffed with Eurocrats.  After we check into our Novotel (another chain, this one with red tones and a basement spa), we hop on the bus for another tour.  Our guide is funny, self-deprecating, a master of the strange sound “phfft” (used with the words “stupid” or “dumber”).  We learn that Belgium has 10 million people, speaks 3 languages, has five political parties and no guns.  Like Paris, it has a river called Seine, which was covered up after an outbreak of cholera in the 19^th century.  Because Belgium produces so many comic strips, 33 comic strip murals have been painted on walls (we pass Tin Tin and his dog).  “Our beer is better than Dutch.  We expelled the Dutch.  Before we were Dutch, we were French, and before them Austrian, before them British.  Only Portugal and Russia haven’t invaded.  Phfft.”

            We whiz past monuments, palaces, gardens.  “All these great things are because of King Leopold, who was a megalomaniac and very wealthy because of all the wealth from the Congo.  Look at that flag.  You may think we copied it from the German flag, but in fact they copied it from us, phfft.”

            We pass huge skyscrapers and glass-fronted buildings.  “The Belgians, they hate the EU because it can tear down buildings but they can’t.  But they love the EU because it brings jobs.  The Swiss are not EU, so phfft.”

            Belgians must attend school until they are eighteen;  can drink beer when they are thirteen/fourteen but not whisky until they are eighteen (phfft).  Taxes are 50% but cover school, social security, health care.  A student asks about energy sources.  “Nuclear plants.  We built them near the Dutch border, just in case.  The French build theirs near the Belgian border.  Phfft.”

            Thirty-five percent of the population of Brussels are foreigners, primarily Americans, French, and Turks.  Anyone who has lived in Belgium for five years is eligible to become a citizen.  The primary rule is that no one can preach extremism or intolerance.  Everyone is accepted as long as they behave.  Preachers are civil servants who can be fired;  foreigners can be expelled.  “We are tolerant because we have to be.  We are happy with our royal family, who are neutral in all things political;  we have no guns;  and we accept everyone, except if they are intolerant of others.”  Three years ago, an American was expelled for intolerance. 

            I asked if he varied his tour in relation to his audience.  He said that Americans are especially interested in economics, the British in the Belgian royal family (King Leopold was an uncle of Queen Victoria).  The French prefer folklore, food, and Belgian jokes.  He proceeded to tell me an elephant joke.

            We go to the Grand Plaz, with its Cathedral topped by a golden St. Michael, guild houses, and a 19^th-century Gothic Disneyland construction.  “Real Gothic there, fake Gothic there, Phfft.  During the war we were bombed but not the Cathedral.  A miracle, yes?  No.  The Germans used the tower to aim their bombs.” 

            Like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (another “miracle”).

            Every beer has its own special glass.  “If you go to a place that uses the wrong glass, walk out.  They don’t know what they’re doing.  Phfft.”

            He smiles.  “We are always partying.  Why is that?  Belgium is always the battleground.  Between the French and the Dutch.  We have Waterloo, the Battle of the Bulge, all major battles.  Belgium is a crossroads for battles, languages, cultures.  What else can we do but laugh?  Phfft.”

            He leaves us to our own devices.  Students drift to the waffle stands and get big chunky waffles slathered with chocolate.  In store windows, fountains run with chocolate.

January 11, 2008

            We catch the Eurostar to London and pass from sun to rain.  The British and the French appear to be getting along better, since French visitors alight from the Eurostar at St. Pancras rather than Waterloo.  Students are taken by van to student apartments, or to the AIFS office on Malet Street in Bloomsbury until they can be taken by taxi to their home stays.

January 12, 2008

            The rain is gone, the sun is out.  (Sun?   In wintery London?)  We gather at the Student Union (ULU) for orientation, followed by a bus and walking tour of London.  I ask the students how their housing is.  The home stay students are thrilled with their families;  the students living with each other in apartments are more ambivalent (old building, small space).  We head through the theatre district, over to Buckingham Palace and Westminster, then across to south London, where we visit the new Tate Modern (in an old factory) and the Globe (built by an American, who couldn’t believe the English didn’t have a shrine for the sacred Shakespeare).  We walk across the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul’s Cathedral, where we catch the bus home.  Some of the things we learn:

• London didn’t get a university until the 19^th century;  all higher education was handled at Oxford and Cambridge, and was for young single Protestant males.  The various branches of London University train women, Catholics, old people.

• A “key square” is a garden that can be accessed only by local residents who have keys.

• London now charges a “congestion tax” of eight pounds a day for people to drive their cars into the city;  but still they come.

• Smith and Sons sells only umbrellas.

• London is 60 miles inland on the Thames;  it takes seven hours for the tide to come in, and five for it to go out.  Do not try to swim in it, like the dozen or so each year that after several pints bet their mates they can do it. 

• The City of London occupies the original Roman city;  the streets have been kept the same even after the fire of 1666 and the German blitz. 

• The Bank of England currently contains twenty-three billion pounds.

January 13, 2008

            Free day on Sunday.  I practice riding buses and visit the British Museum to look at the exhibit on the Atlantic Slave Trade that my class will be visiting. I eat lunch at Wagamama’s, a chain of Asian Noodle restaurants where you sit at long tables.  The couple beside me have just started going out together, and I listen to them psychoanalyze their mothers.  I wander in and out of narrow lanes, and sit outside in the crisp wind to eat a delicious pastry at Maisson Berteaux on Greek Street in Soho.  A very skinny teenager, wearing only a shirt and a scraggly beard, begs for change.  I offer to buy him a pastry but he walks off, disgusted. 

            The cost of food varies enormously in London.  A sandwich shop near the university sells sandwiches and soup for less than two pounds.  A restaurant at the top of London’s tallest office building has meals for several hundred pounds.  I stop to read the menu of “Richard Corrigan at Lindsay House (Restaurant and Private Dining Room)”.  For fifty-six pounds you can get a starter of frog legs sautéed with Herb Gnocchi and Watercress Puree, an entre of Monkfish with Octopus Daube, and a choice of Farmhouse Cheese from Our Islands, or Cheesecake with Clementine Marmalade, Cranberries, and Hot Nuts.

            I head for Trafalgar Square to catch Evensong at St.-Martins-in-the-Field, but am waylaid by the celebration of the Russian New Year.  Trafalgar Square is packed with people watching a Russian rock concert.  I get around the square by going through the National Museum, and get caught by a public art project in which the public is asked to vote on five choices for a plinth in Trafalgar Square.  One entry is by Antony Gormley, who did the beautiful figure walking on water in the underground crypt at Winchester Cathedral, as well as the Angel of the North.  He proposes having one person an hour stand on the plinth and do whatever they want to do, 24 hours a day, for a whole year.  The public is invited to write or record their views about public art, and their choice;  and the area is mobbed with people eager to do so.

            I make it to St.-Martins-in-the-Field in time, and bathe my ears in the sound of harmony.  Afterwards I step out of the pew and, not realizing there is a step, go sprawling in front of the altar, giving my ankle a twist and my ego a blow.  American tourist, phfft.

January 14, 2008

            Ankle too painful to walk, so missed the first British Life and Culture class, which apparently was a fantastic overview of London.  I take the day to get acquainted with my flat, owned by an American professor of Shakespeare.  The library is excellent (instead of Da Vinci Code, John Grisham, and Steven King, I find Angela Carter, William Boyd, Doris Lessing, Jane Austen…and am happy to sit down and ignore my ankle with the help of Julian Barnes’ History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters).

January 15, 2008

            Ankle strapped, I make my way to my first class.  Many took the pre-tour, and I ask what they’ve learned so far about London:

• The appliances aren’t reliable.

• People push on the streets and in the tube.

• Girls should order half-pints with lemonade in pubs, not full pints.  (Cries of dismay and disagreement.)

We discuss the nature of friendship (slower but deeper here;  American friendships tend to be quicker but more superficial, because Americans must be prepared to move around during their lifetime);  “rudeness” of workers (Americans are more mobile, must be more sociable;  a British worker is likely to stay in the same job);  function of royalty (identity, not governance);  spatial bubbles;  role of music, sports, and movie stars to bring the world together.

On the way home on the bus, I listen to three girls not more than 12 or 13 open a box of condoms and read aloud the instructions—at the top of their lungs. 

January 16, 2008

            Ankle still sore but mending.  I strap it again, and after class head home to rest it before meeting the students at the play, “Cinderella,” at the Old Vic.  We are up next to the rafters, at an angle;  but we can see and hear Stephen Fry’s wry takeoff.  The humor would be rated R in America;  here, it’s a performance for both children and adults.  We clap, we shout, we get up and down.  The audience is part of the play.

January 17, 2008

I ask the students if they got the jokes in the play, and they said they did.  Many of the jokes seemed very England-centered, but there were also many references to music and current events.  A good start to their London theatre experience.  After class I go down to the Leicester Square Theatre Booth and get a ticket for Ackroyd’s “Absurd Person Singular,” and then head for the Tate Modern.  I take the bus to King’s Cross and the tube to St. Paul’s, and walk over the Millennium Bridge.  The exhibit on surrealism is wonderful.  I meet old friends (Max Ernst, Paul Klee) and find new pieces, some awful (I like the long, hopeless horizons).  Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth” (a crack along the length of Turbine Hall) is too intellectual;  I am more moved by the double row of birch trees planted outside the Tate, which create a sense of arctic beauty outside the stern brick façade.  A Wood comes to the Bankside Power Station.  When I walk back across the Millennium Bridge, the sky is a rich dark purple, opaque like poster paper, a backdrop for St. Paul’s floodlit, battered whiteness  I’m back in time for the 7:45 PM opening of “Absurd Person Singular” at the Garrick.  The seats are too narrow, I can’t see around the head in front of me, and my knees are wedged against the row in front of me;  but the play crackles with class humor.

January 18, 2008

            Day trip to Bath in the rain.  Nigel from Kent is our guide, a man who spent almost 30 years as a policeman.  He describes his training as a Blue Badge Guide;  both knowledge and presentation are important, and he demonstrates both on the trip.  Many of us are more interested in his training as a policeman.  What’s it like to be one of almost 35,000 policemen in a city like London, when you can’t wear a gun?  We learn about the armed vehicle units that cruise the city, ready to respond to calls.  We learn that crime rates are down, in part because London is subject to extensive camera surveillance.

            He describes our route west.  “It would have taken a week for the Romans to march from London to Bath.”  The town of Bath lies in the valley of the river Avon, benefiting from the hot springs that well up from below.  Water from the river trickles down through limestone to deep within the earth’s crust, and the heat and pressure force it back up.  Over a quarter of a million gallons of hot water flow out of the springs every day.  The Celts used it long before the Romans came.  The baths are easily accessible, and every year a drunk or two goes for a swim.  It takes eight hours to drain the water to get them out (the policemen refuse to go into the water to haul them out).

            We walk through spitting rain, imagining Beau Nash being carried in a sedan chair from the baths;  Jane Austen penning her distaste for social backbiting;  the Freemasons inserting their designs into the city.  I am particularly interested in the curses scratched on pewter, folded over, and dropped into the springs.  I learn from Nigel that the round seed pods of the plane tree can be crumbled up and used as itchy powder down someone’s neck;  and how to make sloe gin (place blackthorn berries, an ancestor of the plum but very bitter, into a bottle with sugar and cheap gin, leave for 3-6 months, shake regularly, then filter for a distinctively tasting gin with a beautiful purple color). 

            At the end of the day, Nigel pulls me aside.  “You’ve got a good group there,” he says.  “Most of them head for the shops.  But they took the tour seriously.”

            Yes, it’s a good group.