This is part II of an ongoing series of posts detailing my Winter 2006 Grand Tour. Part I is available here.
The plane touched down, and we stood in the customs line. My passport was brand new, and the first stamp in it was placed by the Heathrow customs agent. As we walked through the airport, I kept looking for examples and evidence that I was in a different place; that I was no longer home. Electrical receptacles, of course, and then we finally got to the London Underground terminal at the airport. My father had changed some money, so we bought our tickets, jumped on the underground and finally made our way to the hotel at Maida Vale.
London made two impressions on me. First of all, just walking around, it was evident that it was an old city. The stones on the side walk had clearly been worn by years and years of people walking over them. The buildings didn’t look like they’d been built 30 years ago, they looked like they’d been there for 300 years. Hundreds and thousands of people had traversed the same stones, and here I was, a wide-eyed American, walking on the same road trodden by Churchill, Oliver Cromwell and all the monarchs of England.
I made a decision to keep a journal on the trip, and before I left home, I purchased an old time marble notebook, the kind given to elementary school kids. I tossed it in the backpack along with some clothes, my passport and my Eurail pass. Our first night, none of us could sleep from the jet lag, but the 2nd night, I struck out on my own. I wanted to truly experience British life. Happenstance is a funny thing, sometimes you just happen to pick exactly the right time and place for something.
On the Kilburn High Road, there is a small pub called the Queens Arms. I walked in, and was greeted with what might be the most stereotypical British scene in existence. Four gentlemen, seated at small tables, watched a grainy football match on television. An older woman was tending the bar, the entire place was filled with smoke. There was a dartboard on the wall with a half finished game of darts on the scoreboard. Everyone had had a few pints. So I laid my two quid on the bar and got a pint of Guinness (my 2nd legal beer, the first in Ontario when I was 19). I sat down at the table, and began to write. After a while, the guys asked me what I was doing. I explained that I was an American and that I was keeping a journal. They were more than happy to talk to me, and just laughed and caroused. I left and headed back to my hotel after a while.
It was my first experience with people that were foreign. I could speak to them, but their whole experience, everything about them was completely different. The whole of their life experience before meeting me was based on a different set of rules than I was used to.
We travelled around London, seeing the sites and going to the museums. Particularly beautiful was the National Gallery. The Tower of London was also great, and the British Museum. To an extent though, my great happiness came from just seeing the people on the streets. Just walking around in London, knowing that I was thousands of miles from home, and that everyone around me was profoundly different, was wonderful. It’s very easy to take our way of life for granted, because it’s so ubiquitous. But even the simplest symbol, the fact that there were no American flags anywhere, that there were only British flags, was earth shattering for me. My short trips to Canada and Mexico didn’t impart this feeling, and the closest comparison was simply visiting a different pavilion in North America.
As New Years’ Eve neared, I wondered what would be ahead of me in Germany. It would be my first experience in a country where I could not understand the language around me. In fact, over the next month, I would not be in a country that spoke English. I made entries in my journal documenting my visits to the historical sights in London and riding around on the Underground. And then, in the early morning of 31-DEC, I left in a black cab for Liverpool St. Station, where I caught a train to Stansted, and then a plane to Berlin.
All of these events occurred in the winter of 2005-2006, and was my first major trip abroad. It’s very easy for folks that travel a lot to lose sight of what it’s like to be a novice travller and to experience things for the first time. In this series, I am trying to capture that feeling.
I had to laugh at the line about seeing British flags instead of American. That may sound like a “duh”, but it is a genuinely cultural shock moment when you realize that’s the FACT.
I hope that some time you will write about your impressions of the Tower and the British Museum in more depth–perhaps compared to the museums and monuments of DC.