The subject of this article is a personal impression of my first jaunt out of the country and over an Atlantic Ocean that I dreamed was endless when I was a child. I use the verb “dream” because I never actually believed it. I once “dreamed” a certain interstate out of Norfolk was the outer limit of the earth. I still feel that sometimes.
I’ll spare my audience the full details of a study abroad Archeology of England course. That can best be gained in the Longwood magazine. If I were to express it here, that would be the sort of column that I’m not writing. I think this story is best told with a few key details. Steady as she goes, it's new territory for me, too.
London, our primary site of interest, is a big city by any means, but there were marked differences from my experience with big cities in the United States. The most prominent was my feeling that it was a large city in a small country. The information age, with its popular magic trick of compression, has made a wide, wide world a smaller place. This is an all around acknowledged fact. The smallest island near Samoa can Skype to New York and Amsterdam in the same hour. However, I think the distances within have come closer at the same rate as the distances without. The smallness of England became a palpable thing, not only in the heart of a world capital where the whole earth is a pin’s head, but in moderate York and the stone strewn little village of Avebury. Growing up in a country with many times the population and landmass, I felt the amazing conglomeration of people in an expanse I found less expansive.
The age of an older country is a stereotyped detail, and I’ll largely dismiss it. However, bringing it up is essential, I feel, to rectifying the difference. The collection of architecture since the Great Fire on each block was overwhelming. And perhaps that leads to the larger point: the cultural version of a million coexisting and vibrant mutations. The small row houses that illustrate the sensible living standards, slightly worn down, of the last 30 years, the churches that reach back as far as history will allow, the pubs that exist, crammed in their spaces, for the longest times like turtles in shells. Variety is a thing any big city has and, frankly, York had nowhere near as much as London.
In other news, while the chewing gum per square inch of side walk rivaled New York, the number of homeless people was smaller. Blame it on better social security or higher overall standard of living, but it was a paint stroke on the hasty portrait of that city.
The similarity of culture was another detail that did not slip my notice. I felt at home, not as though I was in another place with strange turns of ritual. The food was just the same thick, organ-laden food as it would be at home. The times when people talked felt like home but with the obvious difference of sound. Talkativeness was spread out and, to my liking, not a habit.
However, the thing I will remember the most about England is that it was the place where I first rode a train. Oddly enough and I gave it little thought at time, but it was a train unavailable in the United States. At six a.m. in the dark blue morning, we zoomed past buildings, parking lots and hamlets from London to York, each feeling as though they spun on an axis slowly. To me, the beauty of that experience was real, emotional and difficult to categorize.
