“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
–Samuel Johnson.
I was assigned to blog about traveling for the publication I work for last Friday. “300 words or less by Monday,” said my editor. Immediately my mind started to reel in about seventy different directions. I could write about the 15 or so different week-long car trips my family and I went on during various summer vacations. Determined to hit every single United States capitol with a snapshot of me, my brother and sister beaming near the bottom of the dome-like structure, we sometimes drove for a full day in order to get the most obscure ones. Idaho really wasn’t even worth finding, to be quite honest.
I could write about the vacation to Hawaii my family and I took when I was in seventh grade. My dad was on a business trip, and so was occupied the whole time. My sister and I spent hours in the scorching Maui sun, with later proof in sunburns streaked across our skinny bellies.
I could write about the road trip I took with a former boyfriend to Michigan to visit his grandparents. The trip was a lot more fun than I anticipated, but still, I don’t REALLY want to rehash that experience.
So, I guess I’ll write about London. I think about my time spent in the United Kingdom, at 1 Vandon Street, London, SW1H OAH, as more like a brief other-life that I’ve since not returned to. I still dream about life there often, as if it’s so unattainable, as if I could never go back. I plan to, although I don’t know when, except that it’ll be post-graduation. So, here I go.
I step cautiously off the runway ramp in my coffee-stained white shirt and complimentary grey vest (do you know how hard it is to drink coffee on a plane?), black coat, jeans, and Ugg boots into a whirlwind of noise, sunlight, and faces and voices I couldn’t make out then and would never remember. What I do remember: yelling, somebody yelling in a mangled version of American English: “Step lively now! Mind the gap between the platform!” as a half-dozen other study abroad bleary-eyed students and I exited the plane for the first time in nine hours, carry-on luggage and baggage claim tickets in hand. Upon exiting off the aircraft and stepping into Heathrow International Airport, my entire world immediately changed, right before my eyes. (Litrallleeey, as they say in the UK.) My old friends back in Iowa’s capitol city vanished, only to be seen via Skype chats and the occasional Facebook picture. I made fast new friends, most of them boys from Central College in Iowa, whose only prior knowledge of a foreign country was the German beer they drank during nights out in their small college town. Not that I’d known much either; my only trip out of the States before this had been to the Bahamas, a far cry from the accents, food, and atmosphere of central London. But we were about to learn everything we ever needed to know.
I remember less about my courses, taken at Birkbeck College in London and London College of Fashion, (‘Ell Cee Effers’, as my British tutors called us), than I do about living in the city in general. I distinctly recall finishing work on Wednesdays and Thursdays at the fashion website I worked for, at precisely 6 p.m. I remember grabbing a cappuccino from Leon just down Carnaby Street, and waltzing through the tall glass doors of Topshop on Oxford Street (Toppers to the rest of Britain) like I owned the place. I immediately took the two escalators down to the shoe floor, filled with more styles and brands of shoes than I’ve ever seen before or since. Marc Jacobs, Sam Edelman, Topshop, Faith, Century, vintage brands, even an old Chanel boot prized at £3,000. Sometimes I bought a pair, sometimes I didn’t. Always, I would take the Underground back to St. James’ Park station, walk the few blocks through alleyways and side streets back to my four-floor brick building, more impressive on the outside than in. Vandon House Hotel housed all 30-something students from all different areas of the country, but it also took in random travelers throughout the semester. At £50 per night, you bought a bed (a lumpy mattress, really), a breakfast of soupy yoghurt and toast, and a piece of Central London, not a five-minute walk from Buckingham Palace and St. James’ Park, where President Obama came during his inauguration month of January 2009. Sometimes, Kate and I would cook a dinner consisting of cheesy pasta and bread, or sometimes we’d go out and have dinner with drinks. (More drinks than dinner, really.) Then, we’d travel back to St. James’, meet up with our “boys”, the boys from Central, and decide where to go out that night. We had a few favorites, but every now and again we’d venture out of our comfort zone. I remember one night, struggling to find a club that one of my Swedish LCF friends had mentioned in East London. I think it was called Half Moon, or something like that. We finally found it, and engaged in the normal revelry that only a handful of American college students could manage. We took the Tube back, came home, passed out, and did it all over again the next day. Unless the next day was our weekend, in which case we’d plan out where to go just a few days, or in some cases, hours in advance, hastily board a plane, and see all there was to see, wherever we went. More on that later.
In some ways, London became everything to me that I could have never been, or never acted on, back in the States. It’s hard to believe I took some of the risks I did, but I don’t regret them in the least. I do wish I could relive it all, but in some ways it’s better to leave a lot of it in the past. As with all memories, we’ve got to move on, right?
This is the first time I’ve ever really articulated anything about my time in London, and it was definitely a struggle. I don’t claim to have done it in the most brilliant way possible. It was my first time writing about the aftermath, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Oh, and by the way, not much of this will actually probably go back to my editor. I’ll send in a revised version.
M
