The End

As I started to write my final reflection on my summer in London, I realized that I had not written about where I had been living at all. While I had made references, most of my posts involved locations that I spent a few hours or days in, I neglected to discuss the time spent between Bedford Place (where we live) and Great Russell St. (where our classes are). So, before I give the grand summary of my London experience, join me on a photo tour of the neighborhood in which I have spent the majority of my time.

My Bedroom

Starting from the inside and working our way out, this is the bedroom that I share with Ryan. I know it doesn’t look like much but it probably is the most comfortable bedroom in the house, as we have enough space for both of us to move around easily. Also, we both have two desks with chairs. You wouldn’t imagine this to be unique but I think we are one of the few rooms to get this simple feature, leading many to be forced to set up their laptops in the common room. Which leads us to…

The Common Room

As you can see, Rob and Chris live in rooms sans appropriate desk to person ratios and have moved their computing devices out here. The other thing you probably notice is the beer bottles, this is actually a misrepresentation as there are normally way more. What? The drinking age is 18 here and I’ll be damned if we didn’t enjoy that fact. We did indeed spend a lot of our time here, notice the kitchen in the background as well, and it more than served its purpose. While in the first few days people hung out in other flats, Flat C, our flat, quickly became the hang out for most of the group. Why? There are multiple reasons, but the simplest and most direct is we are that awesome.

Madison House

While a bit underwhelming when you look at it, Madison House really has become a home to me, and I think most of my other housemates. It doesn’t look all that big from the outside but it has five full floors of flats, all with kitchens and common rooms, and a laundry room in the basement. While lacking in modern amenities that we spoiled Americans are used to, such as air conditioning and dishwashers, it is situated in a fantastic location on a relatively quiet street. I had some great times in the house, and on the stoop too, and am very happy to have had 14 Bedford Place as my home this summer. Also, my room is the one right above the 14.

Russell Square Park

As I said before, we lived in an excellent location and one of the factors contributing to this was that our street was bookended with a park on each side. One side had the quaint Bloomsbury Square Park and the other had Russell Square Park, where I spent much more of my time. While I can’t say I spent much of my time here, although I did infrequently go running here, it was nice to have wide open spaces like this so near home when in a city as big as London.

Holborn Station

Holborn, along with Russell Square and Tottenham Court Road, was the underground station most frequented by myself and other members of the group. Only two blocks away and running on the Piccadilly and Central lines, this station could help us get to most places we wanted to go and was remarkably convenient. I am actually a big fan of the Underground system in general. Some people have grown to loathe it but I feel like this is more of a product of them having to take it to their internships than an actual judgment on the Tube itself. I found it to be incredible useful, as I was able to explore the entire city of London quickly without the use of a car.

Sainsbury’s

The closest major grocery store to Madison House, Sainsbury’s was the place where I purchased a majority of the food I used to sustain myself during this trip. I had heard all the hoopla about the food in England and immediately purchased provisions so as to avoid wasting money on poor quality food. While the food was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be, I saved a lot of money by buying cheap food, read: a lot of pasta, at Sainsbury’s. I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the best item sold at Sainsbury’s and why I return so frequently. They have a 2-liter bottle of cider for only £ 1.32, which means you can get 4 liters, equivalent to 8 pints and more than enough to get a solid buzz on ya, for only £ 2.64. In a city as expensive as London, this is a deal that all should take advantage of.

Great Russell Street

I do not like this street. This is the street we must take en route to class, which is part of the reason I dislike it because school stinks. It also is the street that the British Museum lies on which many would think would be great but when you are heading to class and you have to weave through a million bloody tourists all standing in front of it and neglecting to notice what nuisances they are for people who have to go somewhere, you begin to grow a distaste for it. Also the fish and chips shop you see in this picture is a little restaurant called Munchkins. They’re takeaway is ridiculously cheap, as in a burger and chips for less than £ 3.50. Another frugal find that I often used in lieu of spending three times as much for similar quality or making food for myself.

FSU Building

Located at 99 Great Russell Street, the FSU building houses academic classrooms for numerous institutions studying abroad in London, including JMU. Don’t let the simple façade fool you, the interior of this building is a labyrinth that I still haven’t entirely figured out. All of my classes are in either room 41 or 42. To get to these rooms you need to walk down a flight of stairs, take a right, another right, and walk up another flight of stairs and then hang a left. This gets you to… a class on the street level (just out of frame on the picture). The complexity of the building never ceased to amaze me but it was not a bad place to have class when all is said and done.

I know that the core purpose of writing about my experience in London is to put it into words but as I sit here at the end of the trip trying to do just that escapes me. It really was the best summer of my life but trying to specify exactly what made it that is difficult. To start out the group of people who joined me on this trip were great. Even after two months, when long held tensions are making their way to the surface, I really do enjoy the company of pretty much everyone on the trip and they have all, in some way, helped to make the trip a better and more unique experience for me. Also, some of the trips we have taken have been incredible. Going back home and telling people that this summer I’ve visited Edinburgh, Liverpool, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin, on top of living in London, seems absurd. The last place is of course the most important; London itself has been a wonderful revelation. It has easily taken place on the top of my favorite cities in the world list for all that is has to offer. The history, the industry, the people, the culture, everything about the city is on such a larger scale than any of the other cities we visited that they all seem to pale in comparison. It was so easy to acclimate to the city this summer because I could so easily see myself living in London in the future; it seemed like a two-month test run. Without being overbearing and cramped in its magnitude, like New York City, there is so much to do in the city no matter what your interests are that I find it hard to believe that anyone dislikes the place. In addition, a two-hour train ride takes you to Paris and short, cheap flights can take you to anywhere else in Europe you want to go, making London the perfect international hub.

Even as I wrote the above paragraph, it still doesn’t fully represent how much I enjoyed the city and my time here but it’s going to be the best I can do. I am thankful to all the people who made my time here as great as it was. My fellow students for helping me squeeze every bit of fun out of the days and, especially, nights here. Dietrich and Charlotte, and Rusty too, for helping guide around while we struggled to acclimatize but also for not being to overbearing and letting us do it on our own for the most part. Lastly to my parents for funding the trip and letting me come here. I still don’t know why because I definitely don’t deserve it but I am incredibly thankful and gracious for it.

It’s been a great summer and I’ve still got some time to make it even better so I’m not going to waste anymore time blogging about it. See ya.

British Design Museum

For our blog class outing last week, we went to the British Design Museum to check out the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition. Walking into the room where the exhibition was held was a bit startling as it seemed to lack any semblance of conscious arrangement but as I made my way through I began to understand the project a bit more. The designs were divided into seven different categories: Architecture, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Interactive, Product and Transport. The competition was already completed so the designs being shown were the winners and three or four other finalists.

As I said before, as first the whole thing is a bit disconcerting as some of the designs looked positively plain and ordinary while others were outrageous. As time passed and I read more about the individual designs, I was able to see their functionality in addition to their form and while some were designed to be unique, others were designed to be innovative and useful. An example of this contrast is not too far away from each other were two pieces that at their core were simply a bench and an oven. However, the bench, named Extrusions, was a unique, albeit slightly abstract, design that was created by an artist who wanted to make a bench with the seat, legs and back all from one piece. On the other hand, the oven, called the Kyoto Box, looked simply like a cardboard box with a metal plate inside of it but it used solar energy to power the oven so that people without electricity still can have the ability to cook meals and boil water.

One of the more interesting categories was the interactive category, for the obvious reason that you could see what the design actually entailed. One of the nominees, and probably the funniest/creepiest part of the exhibit, was a design by the World Wildlife Foundation called Panda Eyes. It was a case with 100 panda figurines that were activated with motion sensor technology so they followed any external human movement. The pandas had red eyes and gave off a very discomforting vibe as they followed me around the room, which is what the WWF wanted to happen so people would question their impact on the environment. The winner of the interactive category was a design called the Eyewriter.

It was designed for ALS patients who have lost their ability to create art with their hands by tracking the movement of their eyes and displaying it on a wall monitor. The design was a pretty clear choice for winner of the category as it combined a very unique design while also helping empower the creativity of those suffering from paralysis.

The exhibition helped to give me a look into the future and see where some of these designs are taking us in various fields. From folding plugs that allow three plugs to fit where previously one or a power strip was needed to a BMW with steel fabric instead of an alloy body, some these designs are only a hint at what the future can hold and it looks pretty damn cool.

Stratford-upon-AvYawn and Oxford

Excuse the pun in the title but our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon was quite the bore. A two-hour ride north of London, the town of about 20,000 has so little going on, it’s no wonder that Shakespeare hightailed it to London as soon as he could. The ride up wasn’t too bad, I got some reading done, and we stayed at a nice little hostel not too far from the center of town but that really isn’t saying much.

We only had about an hour before we had to head to the theatre to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of Romeo and Juliet so we headed towards the theatre and looked for a place to grab a quick bite. We thought a little fish and chips shop would provide a quick and tasty meal, we were wrong on both counts. Save Rob, who was enamored with his fried fish, most of us agreed that it was one of the poorer meals we had had while in England. Unsatisfied we made our way to the theatre for the play, taking our seats way up in the nosebleeds. I am not really all that big of a Shakespeare fan but I can appreciate his plays, especially when they are well performed. I did not appreciate this play. I found most of the acting to be unnecessarily over the top and the director’s decision to add some modern elements, such as Romeo and Juliet in modern clothing, was rather arbitrary and added nothing but pretention to the play. When we got back to the hostel, the actor who played Mercutio sat and talked to us, which could have been interesting except for the fact that he seemed to be coked out of his gourd.

The next day we were scheduled to take a tour of Stratford and hit up all the major Shakespeare hotspots but I quickly came to realize that a tour of London’s Shakespeare hotspots would have been much more interesting and informative. Since so little is known about Shakespeare’s early life, the places we went to were underwhelming and the tour guides had nothing to say apart from “… and this is a chair we think Shakespeare might have sat on at one point” or “… we think Shakespeare once used this plate.” While the trip to Shakespeare’s gravesite wasn’t so bad, the curse he put on his tomb was funny to me but taken very seriously by the Brits, I was quite disappointed with the whole ordeal and was happy to get on the bus and head to Oxford.

While our trip to Stratford was a disappointment, the time we spent in Oxford was quite enjoyable and I wish we could have spent more time there. Grown from the university, the town of Oxford is quite lively and seems to blend quite seamlessly with the prestigious institutions that inhabit it. Oxford University is actually a federation of 40 separate, self-governing colleges and being one of the world’s oldest universities, the tour we took was twice as interesting and informative as anything we did in Stratford. We made it to a few of the individual colleges and walked around the grounds of one of them, Exeter. Although not quite on the same academic level as JMU, it was nice to be on the familiar surrounds of a campus after spending months in various large cities.

After our tour, we had some time to kill so we went to get a pint at a local pub called The Eagle and Child. This pub is well known, as it was the main hangout of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis while they were students at Oxford. Legend has it that the two of them flipped a coin to decide what the theme of their next story would be, either space or time. Tolkien got time and created Lord of the Rings while Lewis got space and came up with the Chronicles of Narnia. Hanging out in the same pub that these two literary giants did was a great way to end our time in Oxford.

Amsterdam Part Two- Museums and Pub Crawls

After a very fun but hectic first day in Amsterdam, I awoke on Saturday morning well rested and ready to see the city for all its worth. The day was to be a bit more structured then Friday, with plans to hit up the major museums during the day and go on an organized pub crawl at night. We headed to Museumplein where the two museums we wanted to see the most, the national Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, were located. A few of us stopped to grab some coffee to make sure we enjoyed the museums to the fullest and then went to see the pretty pictures that crazy bastard Van Gogh painted.

I don’t pretend to have a very keen artistic eye, or interest for that matter, but I have always been a fan of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, with Van Gogh in particular being a favorite. While some people were disappointed that the museum did not have some his more famous works, which we will see in Paris I am sure, I still found the museum to be fascinating. Organized in a chronological manner, I was able to take my time and see how Van Gogh developed artistically as well as personally. From his early crude but intense portraits to his bright still lifes while happy in Arles to the dark, abstract work that revealed his troubled mind before his death, it was fascinating to be able to watch his personal progression through these priceless works.

I left the Van Gogh Museum feeling very cultured and was ready to take on the Rijksmuseum but I realized that we did not know exactly where the pub crawl was embarking from that night. So Chris and I set out for an Internet café, sure that if we wandered around for a few blocks for a little while we would find one. We were very wrong, apparently Internet cafes are a thing of the past in Amsterdam. Thankfully we remembered one of the coffee shops we had been to had computers and we were able to figure out the location of the pub crawl, sort of. This excursion took up more than an hour and the group had already left the Rijksmuseum at this point, luckily I will be back in a month with my parents and will get to see it then.

Although the weather had begun to turn a bit nasty we continued our exploration of the city. On our way to the National Monument, where the pub crawl meet up was located, we passed through Max Euweplein, a small but quirky garden populated with golden iguanas and across the street from a large colonnade bearing the inscription “Homo sapiens non urinat in ventum.” For those of you who do not speak Latin, that translates to “A wise man does not pee into the wind.” I don’t think there is an explanation for either of these things, the Dutch are just kind of weird.

At the National Monument, we met up with one of the organizers of the pub crawl and made our way to the first pub, which incidentally was right next door to the coffee shop where we looked up the location. Since we roll deep, we got pulled out of line by the manager and were let in without having to wait in line too long. At this point, the boozing commenced. We made our way to five bars and clubs in the area, having merry time throughout. I think the undisputed group favorite was the El Punto Latino. We arrived at this particular bar around 12:05 AM on July 4 and rounded up all the other Americans on the crawl and burst into a rousing chorus of the National Anthem followed with some USA! chants for good measure. By the end of the pub crawl we realized that pretty much every place played the same music, which was okay by us since these were some legit tunes, the highlights being We No Speak Americano and Alors On Danse.

Despite it being the 4^th of July, the next morning was not exactly a joyous occasion. We woke up 20 minutes before check out and had to rush to exit the hostel. Making matters worse I was confirmed in my suspicions that I had lost my wallet the night before. Still, the night before was awesome. I regret nothing.

All of us realized that this was the first 4^th of July we had spent outside of our glorious motherland so we decided to go see…windmills. Most of the group were well on the way to the windmills so a few stragglers and I were just going to meet them there. At this point everything we tried failed and it failed hard. The previous times we had taken the trains or trams, no one checked our tickets so we decided not to purchase any this time. They checked this time. We were able to avoid confrontation but did have to take the train all the way back to our original station to buy tickets, wasting well over an hour and pretty much nixing our chances of seeing the windmills.

With only a few hours before we had to take the train to the airport we needed something to do that was not too far away. Fatigue had set in at this point and no one really had any specific they wanted to do, so we wandered aimlessly for a while, getting lost once or twice in the process. We decided that it was probably best if we just head to the airport on the early side, just to be safe and because we didn’t really have much else to do. One of the lessons this trip taught me was the importance of return time on your last day. It either has to be early in the morning so you don’t waste time or late at night so you can still enjoy the entire day. Instead we left during late afternoon, leaving the day stuck as a middling ground of dull nothingness. Lesson learned. Another two-hour delay soured what was a fairly uneventful return trip to London and our Amsterdam experience was done. In spite of a few pitfalls and miscommunication, the trip was a resounding success in my eyes and I can’t wait to go back in a month.

Amsterdam Part One- Holland Wins, Dylan Fails

Whenever I talked to any of my friends who had studied in Europe, I would ask them what their favorite city was and the near unanimous answer was Amsterdam. So although many parts of the first month of this trip were great, I was waiting for the Amsterdam trip because I knew it was going to be a crazy and incredible experience and looking back I think I may have underestimated it just a bit.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 7 AM and we had to take the train to the airport at 3:30 AM. I knew it would be fruitless to even attempt to sleep and decided instead to just stay up drinking with Sean. Everyone seemed really excited for the trip and we did not really hit any hiccups until we got to out flight gate and discovered that the plane was going to be late because the pilot had not arrived yet. After a near two-hour delay we finally took off but the wind had definitely been taken out of our sails and the early morning arrival started to take its toll.

When we landed it started to hit me that we were in Amsterdam and I became quite excited, not only for how much fun the next 72 hours would be but also at the prospect of being in a completely foreign country for the first time. Although we had taken a few trips before, this was the first time that we were without a chaperone and in a country that speaks a foreign language. Some of this excitement may have been fear as I was a little wary of how easily we could find our hostel, which was a few miles from the Amsterdam Central Station but thankfully we arrived there and were settled in by 1 PM.

The Netherlands-Brazil World Cup Quarterfinal match was scheduled to start at 4:30, so most of us immediately set off into the heart of Amsterdam to explore. The first thing I noticed about the city is how much they love their bikes. They are everywhere. I had heard that the Dutch liked bikes but I was not expecting this. On more than a few occasions, a group member was nearly run down after inadvertently walking in a bike path instead of the sidewalk. The second, obvious, thing that I notice is just how much water there is and how intricate the canal system. I had been to Venice before but this was different because Amsterdam is a much larger city and was very well designed for its unique location, whereas Venice seemed haphazardly thrown together.

We got our bearings and were able to make it into the center of the city (Centrum), where we had some coffee and met up with other members of our group. We kept exploring the city while we looked for a good place to watch the game and I was enamored with the city’s unique architecture and jovial atmosphere. Orange shirts were everywhere and the excitement for the upcoming match was far greater than anything I had seen in England, and seemed to far less alcohol induced. Even as a Brazilian drum band threw down the gauntlet in the middle of a city square, spirits could not be dampened and there wasn’t a hit of a scowl on any of the Dutch faces. With about an hour before kickoff, we decided to have some more coffee while we waited. It was at this point that not sleeping for 36 hours and not eating in 24 began to catch up with me. Despite the mild temperature, I spiked a wicked fever and sweat began pouring from my body. Drenched in sweat, I looked around and most of the guys did not look a whole lot better than I did but knew we had to watch the game outside and we headed back into the city.

We found an bar with outdoor seating and televisions and sat down ready to watch the game and enjoy the, hopeful, victory to its fullest. It quickly became apparent to us, and the other bar patrons, that we were in no state to sit through a 90-minute match and the ensuing festivities and made our first wise call of the day and went home to take a nap at halftime. I was thankfully able to stay awake long enough to see the Dutch victory but immediately passed out afterwards, missing the wild celebration that followed the game.

I awoke a few hours later, angry with myself for not sleeping earlier in the day and thus missing the post-match celebration. I channeled that anger into a renewed vigor as we made our way out into Centrum to enjoy that family friendly Amsterdam nightlife you hear so much about. We made our way towards the rest of the group and walked through the Red Light District. I knew what to expect but still it really is a very bizarre scene. The major qualm I had with Amsterdam is that it seemed overly touristy and the Red Light District is just a perverted tourist attraction. Still seeing the people who were there just to walk through alongside people who there for a little something extra was a funny sight to behold. At a few different bars in the RLD, we had some beers and some more coffee. Stories from the day were told and laughs were had but we decided not to go to wild, lest we make the same mistake again, and called it a relatively early night. We went home and got some shut-eye, ready to exploit Amsterdam to its fullest cultural and social potential the following day.

Liverpool/McCartney Concert aka OMFG THE BEATLES!!!

I am a complete and unabashed Beatles nerd, I seriously fucking love them. So the trip I took this past weekend with Tessa and Amanda to Liverpool, coupled with Paul McCartney concert, was one of the best weekends of the summer and something I will remember forever.

The trip started off a little slow with a six-hour bus ride from London to Liverpool. It was more uncomfortable and slower than the train, but a lot cheaper and that’s really all it comes down to. When we finally made it into Liverpool I was slightly taken aback by the state of the city. While by no means is the city a shithole, I was surprised to see just how much of the city was rundown and how many shops were boarded up, even around the main city center. In spite of this, I really did enjoy the feel of the city because of its down-to-earth vibe (and because I knew the Beatles grew up there) and its affordability in comparison to London. A twenty or so minute walk got us to our cheap but comfortable hostel. At check-in the girls were a little concerned to find out that we did not have a private room but that the three of us would have one other roommate who would arrive later that night. After settling and getting ready to go out, we left the hostel and made our way to the infamous Cavern Club.

Our unfamiliarity with the city got the better of us and we ended up getting lost, forcing us to take a taxi to the club, which really was the much more convenient option because we weren’t even close. When we got into the club, after an accidental detour into the similarly named Cavern Pub, my excitement was at fever pitch and I was literally grinning ear-to-ear. We took some time to drink in the scene and it was great to be in the same place were the Beatles made their name, however all lamentably noted that it would be better if the performer on stage was playing Beatles songs instead of just other classic rock standards. Seemingly on cue he broke into a long set of Beatles tunes, so we rushed to the stage and joined the other Beatles geeks in embarrassing ourselves as we sang along in front of the stage. I really don’t care if that’s lame, I had the time of my life.

The next day we went on the Magical Mystery Tour, a guided bus tour around Liverpool that showed us a bunch of Beatles-related places ranging from their birthplaces to hangouts to places they mentioned in their songs. It was great to get a look at the Liverpool they grew up in, which didn’t seem to change all that much since the Sixties, and it really got me in the mood for what the true highlight of the weekend, the Paul McCartney concert in Hyde Park.

The entire day was fantastic with a few artists, including Elvis Costello and Crosby, Stills and Nash, opening up for Sir Paul who finally made it to the stage around 7:45 with the crowd of 40,000 ready to burst with anticipation. Despite being 68, and looking it, the old man has definitely still got it. Each song was played and song with the energy of a man more than half his age and the crowd, myself included, ate it all up. Playing a broad range of songs from his solo career to his Wings days to Beatles classics, the show lasted just under three hours, including a double encore, and I know I am not alone in saying that I would have stayed for another three hours. Although I was up into the wee hours of the morning working on a paper due the next day, the word regret never even came close to crossing my mind. The weekend was one that heightened my already fanatical liking of the Beatles and the concert will probably not be topped by any other I attend for the rest of my mortal existence. Goddamn, the Beatles rule.

Only at Harrods

As a former department store employee, the overwhelming scene at Harrods, the most famous and expensive department store in London, if not the world, was a little too disturbingly familiar. Flashbacks of overstressed housewives shopping viciously for sales aside, the experience was unique in that Harrods wide range of products are among the most exquisite one can hope to find anywhere, let alone in one store.

Our introduction to the store began at in the Food Halls, which vast assortments of typical food as well as cuts of incredibly rare, and surely delectable, meats, in addition to a candy store that even Willy Wonka would be proud of. There were some odd food products including lobster-sized shrimp but the most unusual thing I came across was a suspiciously disgusting looking piece of Veal Liver from Holland, priced at a reasonable £ 24.95 per kg. This price is reasonable in comparison to other meat products sold nearby, the most eccentrically priced piece I saw was a Wagyu Beef Fillet from Australia/New Zealand (not exactly sure how it is from two countries, but I digress), which would set back its consumer £ 198.00 per kg. How any fillet can be so tasty to warrant that price tag is beyond, but so is way of Harrods.

As Sean and I made our way around the store, I can’t say that I was astounded by how overpriced the clothing was, but this is mostly due to the fact that we were there during their Summer Sale, so most of the garment’s were priced at rates attainable even to us common folk. However as we made our way into different departments, the ridiculous and pretentious nature of the store became more apparent through both the products and their prices. Among the more interesting items we came across were a personal handheld Sea Doo, a mat made to simulate the feeling of lying on a bed of nails and a foosball set with the players ranging from Satan to the Queen of Hearts to David Beckham. These products pale in comparison to the two most absurd items I found in the store, both in the home decoration department. The first was a quite cheap looking six-foot tall robot priced, on sale, for £ 11,000 and a crystal waterfall chandelier, also on sale, for £ 89,000. I could never understand why anyone would pay such extravagant prices for such useless items, so I have given up even bothering to rationalize it to myself, but again so is the way of Harrods.

I’ll end my post with an interesting anecdote that I truly believe could only have occurred in Harrods. In the watch department, I was startled by the sight of a Muslim woman in a full, head-to-toe, face-covered burka perusing the selection of diamond encrusted watches, most of which were priced upwards of £ 10,000. The sight was so bizarre that I had to take a picture, after which I was immediately approached by a security guard who told me I had to delete the picture for security reasons. I told him I understood and fumbled with my camera to make it seem like I was, but there was no way I could delete such a brilliant juxtaposition of outdated tradition and modern opulence. I made my way out with the picture still on my memory card, security guard none the wiser, and I present it to you below. Only at Harrods.