Lindsey Twigg: A Scamper Through Belgravia

 

 I am not a spontaneous person.

 As much as I would like to be, spontaneity does not seem to be a part of my person. I plan. I execute the plan. Executing the plan is fun. Consequently, I am not one who will burst through the front door and be caught up in a whirlwind of starry-eyed wanderlust. This is most disconcerting.

The plan was to wander the Victoria and Albert Museum until closing before meeting friends for dinner in Belgravia at seven. Plan: see the controversial exhibition about protest, Disobedient Objects. Plan executed. Plan enjoyed. Katherine and I emerged from the hulking monolith that is the V&A googley-eyed and drooling (not really) in sheer wonder of its worldly treasures.

An hour and a half till dinner. Plan: walk five minutes to see the Harrod’s store windows then catch a bus to the restaurant. The luxury department store had just unveiled their Christmas displays, so as hundreds of high-heeled shoppers exited the building with the signature green-and-gold bags and stepped into their respective limos and taxis, we perused the miniature winter wonderlands full of tiny mice in footman’s jackets, ballet dancers dressed in Alexander McQueen, and generally many things we wish we could put on our Christmas list.

And here’s where things got a bit wonky. The bus system was complicated and neither of us had the means to navigate it. Fed up with my apparent lack of adventurous spirit, I moved that we simply suck it up and walk the mile-and-a-half from South Kensington to lower Belgravia. A moment of discussion later, we both decided to ignore the glaringly apparent question “Is it safe at night?” and just go for it.

The brisk walk from point A to point B turned out to be one of the most beautiful city walks of my life. Darling boutiques and immaculate residences with perfect, columned entrances lined the streets for blocks and gated groomed greens greeted us at every turn. Katherine made it her business to inspect the lovely door knockers. Street lamps with hanging geranium pots lit our merry way as we chattered excitedly from street to street. Little random alleyways piqued our interest and our default answer became, “Oh, we have time!”

Before we knew it, we had wandered into the Embassy District—the crowning jewel of Belgravia, perhaps. And here time froze. We scampered around Belgrave Square like children, giggling, letting things catch our fancy, succumbing to that funny thing called whim. We made a game of guessing the flag names, squinting at the plaque titles, waving maniacally into all the security cameras, and—when coppers or house guards weren’t to be seen—craned out heads into the windows. One had stunning light fixtures, another rich turquoise wallpaper, still another grand portraits of bearded fellows in stately uniforms.

And just like that adventure had found me. Pleasantly surprised, I smiled at the thought and sauntered on towards dinner.

 

Davis Vanderhorst: Paris

Paris, a city of lights, love and leisure is also a city in which etiquette is expected and required.

As the semester draws to a close, I have begun to reflect on the wide range of my travels and continually think of what it means to be a pilgrim, more specifically what have I learned in terms of respect for a culture that differs from my own.

Now I know that it is obvious to show respect to other cultures as pilgrim, but how often do we actually take time to see the benefits? I would have to say that amongst my thoughts on this subject, Paris would be back cover summary as to the guidance of cultural respect. Although I spent less than 48 hours in the magnificent city, I learned more in that time than I have over the course of the semester.

With such a wide range of cultural interactions thus far, I would be lying if I said that Paris does not live up to its stereotype of a city that judges dress, speech and etiquette even in a casual setting. As is probably most obvious, being a pilgrim it is generally expected that one must be respectful of any culture- but in Paris, being prim and proper is the culture. As I wove my way through the bustling streets with the Seine as my guide, I looked at those around me who were dressed to impress on a casual Saturday afternoon. My interactions in the bakeries across the city were warm and friendly as I tried my hand at feeble attempts of French. However, my effort was almost always recognized and thus rewarded with an experience unlike any I have had thus far.

Although Paris often brandishes a stigma of abrasiveness to travelers, when I put forth the effort to assimilate I was rewarded with a rich cultural experience that was warm and inviting. I would be told by locals as to what sights were really worth my time and was even given advice as to how to beat the crowds. Paris demand and its culture demands respect but it also one of the only cities in my travels that has given back so much more than I deserved. Paris has truly redefined my interpretation of what it means to be a respectful pilgrim abroad.

Donald Scherschligt: Fair England

I think there’s something a little bit insane about choosing to see theater, or art museums, or films when one has massive amounts of reading to do and two research papers (yes, two!) to write in only a couple of weeks.

    It’s that point in the semester everyone dreads, where the work starts piling up, the assignments put off for weeks start coming down to the wire, and everyone holes up in coffee shops and hogs the power outlets so that they can finish homework in time. And here I am, seeing four plays in three days, plus a couple films, plus going to art museums. I have just as much work, I remind myself. In the back of my head, the part of me that worries about deadlines is panicking and shouting at me.

    But yesterday, I went to the Tate Britain and got lost amidst the works of JMW Turner. He’s my favorite painter. I’m no art scholar, but I stared at his landscape, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Italy” for quite a while. Turner takes the title, and the lines of poetry that accompany it, from Byron’s epic poem:

… and now, fair Italy!
Thou are the garden of the world…
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.’

    In addition to not being a particularly good art scholar, I am not particularly skilled at analyzing poetry, either. However, Byron, having seen Italy’s fall in recent years, still found beauty in that mess. Where Byron puts words to that idea, Turner puts images.

    I emerged from the museum refreshed and relaxed and with my priorities in line once more. Though it’s easy to become overwhelmed at this point in our trip, it’s far more important, I think, to fight those feelings and remember why we came to England: the country has so much it can teach us, not by sitting in a classroom, but by going out and experiencing the place.

 

Every day, I have tried to go somewhere new, and somewhere familiar: I have tried becoming a regular at a coffee shop in town, while also exploring new bookstores, museum exhibits, and thrift shops. I know my favorite sights to go by down in central London, but I also seek out new neighborhoods and enjoy just walking along the streets or through the parks, discovering what new thing the city has to offer me each day.

    Reading this again, I make it sound much easier on paper. It is hard work to get out into the city. A growing part of me wants to stay in the familiar American comfort of Starbucks. I don’t always get to do what I want during the day while also balancing homework. I still try. Byron got it wrong, I think: fair England is the garden of the world, and I want to wander through it as much as possible before I leave.

Katie Swalm: Paris

On Saturday morning at 5:30am, our Paris adventure began with a two-hour train ride. A mere thirty-six hours passed when we visited the City of Light – not enough time to fully appreciate it, but enough time to dine on croissants, crepes, and cups of coffee. When we stepped off the train, the city spread out before us like bright wings. We picked up a map of the city and soon figured out the Metro. Paris seemed utterly familiar and utterly foreign, the language flowery and poetic but unintelligible by me. For some, it is a city of nostalgia; we traveled to visit a fountain that had appeared in one of our group’s childhood memories. The Stravinsky fountain is an abstract creation: a moving metal arm winds slowly back and forth, tossing water; a giant pair of lips slowly rotates in front of a backdrop of street art; a painted woman lounges in the deep. Nearby, a group of street performers had amassed a crowd and danced with a child who had wandered into the center. We were searching for a familiar face – my mother, who had flown to Paris to visit only the day before. We staked a lookout at one of the tables surrounding the fountain and ordered a cup of café chocolat. After wandering around through the crowd, I had given up when I heard someone cry out my name, and there she was in the crowd! Later, we walked along the river back to our hostel. The Seine meanders through Paris as a guide, showing off bridges and the famous architecture. As the sun went down the lights on the bridges illuminated the water, sending streams of light across the waves. Skateboarders and artists woke up as well, carving their way under the bridge. Light rain streamed down, not unpleasant, but cleansing. I pulled my scarf up over my head to keep out the drizzle.

We saw all the things we had to: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. Each one of these sights rose up like a beacon of familiarity and excitement, as it was my first time to visit them. To be in the proximity of such inspirations, such monuments to human achievement and culture, was breathtaking. Couples walked along the river, highlighting with clarity the state of my singleness. But I looked around at friends and family and realized that there was nothing I was really missing.

That weekend, we didn’t sleep much, we ate purely sugar and coffee, and walked what felt like the whole city, and so Paris felt like a dream. And like any good dream, I did not want it to end. For one weekend we put away homework and lived the city. In a time of a whirling schedule of classes, plays, papers, journals, and bus rides, time to walk and eat and live together is vital and refreshing. And what better place to do so than in Paris, France?

Emma Robbins: Remembrance

        I have great love for stone. I love the way it smells, the way shoes clack against its smooth surface, the way it freezes hands on touch, the way that it allows years of feet and knees to make their uneven marks.

 

This trip has only augmented my affection. It seems that every other day, there’s a new cathedral, church, or ruin to explore, each one tied to the next by the great grit of its walls. Just last week, we visited Bath, to visit the Roman baths (ha). Racing out of the bus, we tripped over the bumpy cobblestone roads, happy to feel our feet hit the ground after so many hours sitting. Once we entered the baths, the powerful smell of rock and running water kept me on cloud nine the entire way through. The hot spring is still running, after nearly 3,000 years, still spilling over the same stones. The image of steaming water over rusty-red rocks communicates ancient to me in a particularly powerful way. 

 

Just two days ago, we arrived in London, and this city has made exploring my stone obsession easy. With an endless supply of marble museums (Matisse at the Tate!), gorgeous churches around every corner, enough rain to keep that wet cement smell in the air...it’s just about perfect. Today, I had the pleasure of attending a Remembrance Day service at St Luke’s, just a couple miles from our home base. The congregation sang together and prayed together, and the voices reverberated and echoed throughout the space. The walls were listening. The vicar spoke on remembrance, how this day concerns past, present, and future, and how we can remember all three. We hold memories of those we have lost, so that we might learn how to act today, for the grace and peace we hope for in our future. As we prayed for those killed as a result of war, I was struck by how stone remembers. How it holds centuries of prayers, laments and songs in its ancient face. I believe that stone listens, and holds our stories gently and quietly as a silent wall, floor, or step, so that we become a part of the space around us.

 

As I get to know this beautiful city, I’m keeping close attention to the walls, roads, and stairs. I want to notice what they’ve felt, see the subtle indents and uneven ridges, feel with my own hands years of human presence. And maybe the stone will remember me, too. 

Rachel Phillips: London

As callous as it may seem to admit, there are only so many cathedrals and timeworn monuments a person can visit before the novelty begins to wane a bit. The awe inspired by such formidable and long-lasting creations is never lost, but I think guilty disillusionment is a feeling many travelers experience—myself included.

 

Perhaps that was why the British Museum surprised me.

 

We had just arrived in London. Unpacking bags could wait—I joined a small group of students to explore the city. After a quick lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant to satiate our grumbling bellies, we hopped onto the tube. Someone suggested we visit the British museum. I’d never been there, but it sounded like a valuable experience—I mean, I like museums and Britishness.

 

The building itself is a work of art, although I only began to properly appreciate it in retrospect. A huge ceiling of trigonal glass curved above us as we stumbled inside. Peering up through it felt like standing inside the eye of a massive insect. A living creature. To be honest, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I ducked into the Egyptian exhibit to view displays that were more comfortably unalive. And then I saw the Rosetta Stone.

 

The Rosetta Stone is famous enough to be almost universally recognized, even if only as the inspiration for the name of a popular language-learning software. And here it was, right at the entrance to the exhibit. In any other museum, the stone would have been staged in a more climactic location as the main attraction. And yet, here it was.

 

Just a few steps away were twin Assyrian stone lions, gazing out upon countless statues and sarcophaguses. The controversial Parthenon sculptures reclined mere meters away. We happened to stumble upon—metaphorically, of course—a discreetly labeled, mummified Cleopatra. It would be nearly impossible to overemphasize the sheer amount of history crowded into one beautiful building.

Standing there, in the midst of all this pressing history, I felt so small.

 

But I think, sometimes, it is good to allow ourselves to feel insignificant and overwhelmed and humbled. It is good to let God surprise us.

 

As this trip begins to wind down (if it is even capable of doing such a thing, what with research papers and theatre and exotic foods to eat), it seems even more important to remember what an extraordinary opportunity this semester brings. We are here to learn, and to experience, and to allow others grace to learn and experience in their own ways. We are here to be together in these marvelous places where we can savor the shared knowledge of generations, past and present.

 

Perhaps we can retain this experience of being humbled by history and togetherness—not always, as the novelty does wane. But perhaps if I find that I have grown too careless of my surroundings or the people I am with, I can remember standing under that bug-eyed dome. I can remember feeling small.

Tyler Merkel: Canterbury Pilgrimage

This Halloween was one for the books. 

Since 1173 ,pilgrims have flocked to Canterbury in search of miracles, Thomas Beckett's bones, and spiritual renewal. All semester long we have been reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It is an unfinished collection of stories about pilgrims who come from all layers of society. Chaucer used these tales and peculiar characters to paint a critical portrait of socially stratified England.
 On Friday, October 31st we would walk on the very same trail that pilgrims had been journeying on for hundreds of years.

To say the least, I was geeking out. 

Our pilgrimage started out at the Tickled Trout pub in the wee village of Wye. Kate Mena and I had volunteered to navigate the group for the next eleven miles with written directions and a few landmark photos to guide us. We walked through royal hunting forests, medieval pubs, and many backyards- all along one of the oldest natural trails in Britain, the North Downs. Somehow, the three hour walk turned into a eight hour trek that had us walking into places like the Fright Wood (no kidding, that was the actual name of the forest we went though) long after the sun had gone down.

With our complaining knees, sore feet, and niggling shins and hips, and bodies dehydrated and empty stomachs... in short, things were miserable. Yet throughout all that we distracted each other with scary stories, silly riddles, and rib-tickling reenactments of Chaucer’s tales. If anyone knows me, they know that these kinds of misadventures are my favorite moments-- they are the stories I end up sharing when I journey back home. When everything goes wrong it feels as though I shed my tough second skin, and with it shed my inhibitions, comforts and make room for something else to happen.

When we finally did make it into Canterbury late that night I shrieked at the sight of Canterbury Cathedral, bathed in a warm yellow light in the distance. The entire group broke into a sprint towards the towering steeple and threw ourselves down on the grassy ground and just laid there, all sprawled out below the bell tower. Student and professor alike, we let our weary bodies rest, laughed and cheered while we let our eyes soak up the ancient cathedral. In that moment, feeling so much closer to the pilgrims who came before, we all simultaneously agreed that it had all been worth it.