Webbready

Seven years ago, I had the fantastic opportunity to travel to London with several students and two Chatham College professors, Dr. Don Adam and Emma Masley. The two weeks I spent in London were a very interesting time for me. Nevertheless, as much as I enjoyed parts of the experience, I was simply too young (19) and inexperienced to make the proper observations and to provide any sort of insight. With each passing year my memory fades of a city so immersed in history that an entire lifetime of study could not do it justice. I confess that the words I have written seem strange to me, not from their unrefined nature, but because I was overwhelmed and at the same time unaware of the importance of this travel. What follows are excerpts from the journal, although words I have excised from the original material may be comparatively small when considering the initial passages.

The entry that follows is that of my departure from the United States and my arrival at London.

January 11, 2000

I must start with the arrival at the Mellon Center…Fortunately, I would only have to worry about my carry-on luggage when boarding the van to the airport, so this potion of my time was filled with anxiety. As the other students brought their luggage past I knew I was the only one with suitcases so large and bulky that it was impossible for one person to handle all of them. Coupled with the news that we would have to check our own luggage in, this caused me to be even more anxious.

Eventually, we got to the airport and one of the hardest parts of the journey began. While I had learned to maneuver the bags individually, it was quite a test to deal with all three at once. However, if a highlight (or a lowlight) of my travels is the misadventure of my bags and I, then nothing extraordinarily terrible occurred. After some parting words with my mother and father — both of whom were nice enough to meet me at the airport — I boarded the plane and began my journey from home to abroad.

The flight from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia turned out to be much more painless than I had anticipated. The dreaded takeoff “ear-curse” had no effect on me, and the time spent in the air was short and fun. The rest of the journey, at least up until we boarded the bus from Gatwick to the Crescent Hotel, was much less rosy. Arriving in Philadephia’s airport was not the problem; instead it was the difference in meters or kilometers between where we arrived and where we were headed. Philadelphia’s airport was extremely large, impossible to explore under the time constraints of being on connecting flights. This was no major problem, but it did prove to be a slight matter to worry about when trying to find a place to eat. Still, this time passed relatively quickly and in a few minutes, all of those in our group were going to Gatwick. Hooray.

The flight to Gatwick proved to be a stretched, drawn out version of the previous one, and there were few problems that came from any trouble with the plane. What doomed this flight to be a very unenjoyable experience was the sheer length. Eight hours is too long to sit down in one spot as all sorts of aches and pains of inactivity haunted us. Some, such as I, were not feeling very well during the flight merely because we were not able to move. As a result, most of us got little to no sleep and while I was not initially affected as severely as my colleagues, by the end of the day, I was (and still am) exhausted. Another misadventure with my luggage did not help improve matters, but at least everyone arrived at the destination safely.

On the way to the Crescent Hotel, some of the differences between London and Pittsburgh — or rather Britain and the United States — became quite apparent. Surprisingly, the obvious reversal of which side of the road the traffic flows did not seem unusual. Other, smaller details caught and held my attention. Boundary lines on the sides of the road and signs that would normally be yellow in America are red here. Also, at traffic lights, the yellow light flashes in the transition from red to green in addition to the change from green to red. In our country, this might lead to more accidents because so many people neglect to stop at red lights that have “just” turned red. If everyone, or at least a significant majority obeyed the rules, this system would prove quite beneficial, as it does here in London.

While on the way to the Crescent Hotel, I was also surprised by how certain features of London turned out to be quite different than expected. For instance, upon seeing the Thames River, I felt slightly disappointed. I had expected a wider river, one that would put either our Allegheny or Monongahela rivers to shame. By contrast, London accents, for the most part, are more pronounced than I expected, almost to the point where it is impossible to make out a sentence. Perhaps Bernard Shaw’s attempt to phonetically spell Eliza’s speech at the beginning of Pygmalion was no overstatement. Also, there are simply so many stores, and yes, there was so much traffic.

After arriving at the hotel and settling in for a few minutes, Dr. Adam led us to the Tube Station to get our passes, an interesting excursion to say the least. While it did not go as smoothly as I expected (partially due to my hesitation to step up to the window), we got our Tube passes. Of course, we had to learn about how the original station was destroyed in World War II and a new one (the present one) placed there. Still, if anything was gained from going to the Euston station (other than our weekly “allowance”), we were able to learn where Burger King was, and a few other stores.