London Review 2017 by KU English Department Abroad

London Review 2016

Section Title

TABLE OF CONTENTS About the Authors............................................................................................................................. 3

NORTH It’s Been 16 Years… And I Think I’m Ready Now............................................................................. 9 Harry Potter Experience.................................................................................................................. 10 Impromptu KoKo’s......................................................................................................................... 12 Guess Who?.................................................................................................................................... 13 Finding Karl Marx.......................................................................................................................... 14 Travel Buddies................................................................................................................................. 16 Parthenon Statues in the British Museum........................................................................................ 17 Mesmerized by Mummies............................................................................................................... 19 When I Bought Ancient Coins from the Black Market.................................................................... 20 Literary Echoes................................................................................................................................ 21 What You Need to Know About Camden Market........................................................................... 23 A Long and Sorry Tale of a Millennial’s Journey through London without Wi-Fi............................ 24 Exploring London Spontaneously................................................................................................... 26 Times I Almost Cried in London.................................................................................................... 27 Tribute to Gordon’s......................................................................................................................... 29

EAST Tower of London............................................................................................................................ 33 Toto…............................................................................................................................................ 35 Trips of the Travelling Black Coat.................................................................................................... 36 Alone on the Tube........................................................................................................................... 37 Eavesdropping................................................................................................................................. 38 An Analytical Survey of Dogs in London (and surrounding areas)................................................... 39 8 Days of London........................................................................................................................... 41 Lone Wolf Day................................................................................................................................ 44 Culture Catches You Unawares........................................................................................................ 46 Last Letter to the Thames................................................................................................................ 47 Nights Under a Light-Polluted Sky.................................................................................................. 48

SOUTH Very Important Peasant................................................................................................................... 53 Keep Calm, Unless You’re Considering Smoking............................................................................. 55 Letter to Pret a Manger................................................................................................................... 57 The Boy Who Licked...................................................................................................................... 58 Exists & Entrances/Mud & Mirrors................................................................................................ 59 Traversing the Thames..................................................................................................................... 60 Incomplete List of the “L’s” I took in London.................................................................................. 62 Wednesday March 22-Westminster................................................................................................. 63 Where Were You When You Heard About the Attack at Westminster?............................................ 64 London Review 2017 1

Communion in Westminster........................................................................................................... 66 Abbey in the Aftermath................................................................................................................... 67 Imperial War (and Maybe Peace) Museum...................................................................................... 68 We Met Harry Potter!...................................................................................................................... 70

WEST Candlelight Vigil............................................................................................................................. 75 Wolkenbügel................................................................................................................................... 77 Finding the Quiet Moments............................................................................................................ 79 White Walls and Shaded Pavements................................................................................................ 80 Embracing Disappointment............................................................................................................ 81 Brexit March................................................................................................................................... 82 Book Shopping in England............................................................................................................. 83 Midnight in Kensington.................................................................................................................. 85 Botanical Gardens........................................................................................................................... 86 A DOUGHlightful CroisSANT...................................................................................................... 88 Is This a Sloth or a Dog?.................................................................................................................. 89 Ooh-la-wee, There’s Nowhere to Pee................................................................................................ 90 High Time for High Tea (and CHEESE SANDWICHES)............................................................. 91 Why Did They Even Let Me into this Cigar Shop?.......................................................................... 92 The Last Supper.............................................................................................................................. 95

OFF THE MAP Advice: What Works and What Doesn’t.......................................................................................... 99 In the Presence of Greatness.......................................................................................................... 100 The Theatre, The Theatre............................................................................................................... 102 Adventuring in Cardiff: An Itinerary............................................................................................. 104 British Humor............................................................................................................................... 105 Cambridge: A Tale of Two Travelers............................................................................................... 106 Punting at Cambridge................................................................................................................... 107 Dear Giles..................................................................................................................................... 109 A Quick Jaunt to Germany........................................................................................................... 110 An Oxford Fairytale...................................................................................................................... 111 Writing Invisible Strategies............................................................................................................ 113 Don’t Judge Leeds Castle by its History......................................................................................... 117 More than Pretty........................................................................................................................... 118 Quest for Water............................................................................................................................. 119 A Rosy Remembrance................................................................................................................... 120

London Review 2016

About the Authors

Erin Brady

Rachel Atakpa

I am a second-year student from Derby, Kansas studying English and Spanish. I am a writer, researcher, and activist. During this trip, I most enjoyed breathing in all the colors of their green spaces, feeling the ethereal profundity that comes of being in the presence of art for extended periods of time, and all of the heavy books, loud laughter and quiet conversations I got to have. Taylor Avery

Bridgette Befort

Katie Bernard

‘Ello gov’na! I like speaking in a British accent! I am a junior from Sioux City, Iowa (Go Bandits!) and I am studying Biochemistry. My favorite pastime is talking to people (because humans are social animals) any my favorite thing in London was descending 262 feet in 40 seconds! (ArcelorMittal Orbit slide, people! Check it out!).

I am a junior from Topeka, Kansas. I’m studying Chemical Engineering and enjoy complaining about it. London is the light of my life. Someday I will be Queen.

I’m a double major in Journalism and Political Science. This adventure to London was my first trip out of the country but it certainly won’t be the last. I still don’t know what my favorite part of London was but I fell in love with the city. I loved the mixture of history, politics, business, and nature that existed in the city while being just a short train ride away from quieter towns like Canterbury. After my experience on the London Review, I have become determined to get a job with the BBC at some point in the future.

Centennial Clogston

I am from Overbrook, Kansas. My major is Chemical Engineering, which is often a source of my complaints. The thing I enjoyed most about London was not an experience or tourist site, but all the food we tried that is just not available in America, even the snacky-type items.

I am a senior in American Studies & English from St. Louis, Missouri. I loved exploring London solo and discovering literary connections all around the city. Also, I’m proud to say I only got lost on the Tube once.

Mariela Haug

I am an international student majoring in Elementary Education with a minor in Music. This was definitely the trip of a lifetime. I can’t really say what my favorite thing about the week was because everything was exciting in its own way; all I know is I will go back. From exploring historic castles and museums, to soccer stadiums, to towns like Bath and Canterbury, or taking a picture with Daniel Radcliffe after eating plates full of cheese, every moment was a new adventure! Thank you for the memories and the Pret a Manger, London! Danny Jalilpoor

I’m an English B.A. from Overland Park, Kansas. My favorite day was spent travelling to Highgate Cemetery with Feng, followed closely by touring the Tower of London and attending Evensong with Kelly. Owen told me the funniest joke I’ve ever heard: “What did the tomato tell the potato?” “Well I’m just a tomato!”

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Sean Jesse

I was born and raised right here in Lawrence, Kansas, so I’m used to the townie stigma. I’m pursuing a double major in English and Geography. My favorite parts of London were Gordon’s wine and cheese bar, Camden market and town, the National Gallery, and going to Evensong at Westminster Abbey.

Carly Newman I am a freshman studying Classical Archaeology and Mathematics. I came to KU from Holcomb, Kansas (yes, where In Cold Blood happened). Every day in London was my favorite, but my solo day trip to Cardiff was by far my most adventurous and successful day. London taught me so many things and opened my eyes to a brand new culture. I found where I belong (Wales) and where I want to go to grad school (Oxford). I can’t wait to return!

Maggie Kaemmerer

I’m a senior from St. Louis, MO majoring in Finance. I can’t even begin to choose a single favorite part of London. The friendly culture, the gorgeous grounds, and the historical landmarks only name a few umbrella categories of my favorite aspects of the city. The history, more than anything, is what really blew me away. Whether you were standing outside the map room in the Churchill War Rooms or in a random pub, you could bet that you were standing somewhere that has a history older than our country. Every single historical tidbit we learned from random locals helped me build worlds and imagine stories of those who had stood there before me. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will. Enjoy the stories of the histories we made on this unforgettable trip! Hunter Maude

London Review 2016

I am pursuing honors in the major for English, as well as a major in Philosophy. My goal is to attend law school after graduation. This was my second trip to London with Mary Klayder, as I attended the BSI in the summer of 2015. My favorite part of London was my second morning there, when I got lost walking around town listening to the Beatles.

Katie Phalen

Kate Poulose

Hi! I’m a junior from Pittsburg, Kansas studying Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Going on the London Review was definitely one of the best experiences I’ve had in college. Having the opportunity to explore a new city, try new things, and meet some really great people are all reasons why the London Review was a week that I’ll never forget!

Hi there! I am a junior hailing from Kansas City majoring in Biology and Psychology on the pre-medicine track. London was brilliant! It was the perfect week-long getaway to a new culture filled with unforgettable experiences. I loved being immersed in a city so rich in history and getting lost in its beautiful streets. While I have many favorite moments from this trip, I really loved walking around Hyde Park and pretending to be a native Londoner.

Kate Schroeder

I’m the proud owner of one of the five Kate-related names on this trip. I am a freshman from Larned, Kansas majoring in History. This trip was full of big firsts for me, as I had never flown, left the country, been in a large city, or traveled much at all. Once I got over the initial terror of being in an airplane lifting off the ground and hovering above an ocean through mechanical processes that I don’t understand, I had a wonderful time exploring London while geeking out over historical sites and childhood heroes. Mariah Severud

I am a sophomore double-majoring in English Literature and Classical Antiquity (Greek and Roman culture). My hometown is Hutchinson, Kansas, but my soul is from Middle Earth. I enjoy long runs through the Shire and quiet reading time in my Hobbit hole. My favorite parts of London were the magical theatre productions and experiencing my new favorite water sport (punting). My favorite food was the sausage rolls from the Borough Market; I ate four! Mary Kate Shellworth

I am majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in French at KU! I’m from Clovis, California. The whole time we spent in London was wonderful. I loved spending time with everyone, whether that was while eating our weight in croissants and cheese, biking through Hyde Park, sipping tea outside Kensington Palace, or meeting Daniel Radcliffe. The London Review was filled with moments I will never forget.

Aliana Souder

I am a junior at KU. I am majoring in Strategic Communications with a minor in Business. I don’t think I had an absolute favorite part of London, just being there made me happy. This is a picture of me at Gordon’s, which was my happy place in London and where I want to be buried now.

Sam Steuart

I am a freshman from Topeka, Kansas majoring in Biochemistry. My favorite parts about the London Review were the cathedrals I unexpectedly fell in love with, Stonehenge, Mary Klayder, Wimbledon, and the little interrogation I went through in Texas for trying to bring a cactus back home to my dorm room. Oh, and shout out to Mary Klayder, we love Mary Klayder.

Hannah Strader

I’m a junior studying both Journalism and Creative Writing. I have past experience as both a writer and editor for high school and collegiate level newspaper staff and am the current president of Her Campus KU. My passions include but are not limited to Harry Styles, Taco Bell, Teen Wolf, and books. I have a morkie named Gatsby and can recite all the U.S. Presidents in order. My hobbies include reading, writing, and photography. You'll have to pry the Oxford comma from my cold, dead hands. I plan to return to London summer of 2017 for an internship and look forward to trying out the Tinder dating pool.

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Owen Toepfer

I am a sophomore double-majoring in Classical Languages and English. My favorite part of the trip was experiencing the rich culture and history that England offers, whether by climbing a medieval tower for a breathtaking view of Oxford, by admiring the ancient art in the British Museum, or by looking at original manuscripts of some of the best English authors. It was an unforgettable trip, and I can’t wait to go back. Kelly Werther

Sheldon White

London Review 2016

I am a sophomore pursuing a B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and minor in Journalism. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, but I have many homes including Lawrence and, now, London. My favorite memory from the trip is seeing The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, but what I enjoyed most about the London Review was traveling with and getting to know a passionate and diverse group of people.

I’m a senior studying Finance and Accounting. I hail from Monterey, California. What I enjoyed most was chillin’ at the London cafés and vibin’ at local pubs.

Maggie Williams

Fengxhue Zhang

I am an English and Creative Writing major from Hutchinson, Kansas. I broke my 19year streak as a hermit specially to do the London Review. This turned out to be a pretty decent decision, as I became best friends with Daniel Radcliffe and the ghost of Oscar Wilde while abroad. I found my second home in the UK, and I will be back. I can’t be expected to live the rest of my life without English pubs and mild, rainy weather, after all.

I’m a freshman studying Political Science and Economics. London was just an incredible city to experience. The week involved so many quaint little coffee shops, incredible architecture, gorgeous parks, and phenomenal people. I loved how much history London contained, and the brightness of the city after dark.

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London Review 2017

It’s been 16 years... and I think I’m ready now Taylor Avery It has been sixteen years since my parents took my twin sister and me to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in theaters. We were five years old at the time, and one of the only things I remember about that movie is that my sister cried because she was scared. So after that, we did not think much of Harry Potter. In elementary school, I remember my classmates reading the books and thinking the books were too large for me to comprehend. In middle school, everyone was still into Harry Potter but our friends at the time were not. In high school, we made new friends and there my sister and I were, back at stage one, listening to our friends rave about Harry Potter. I would smile and fake laugh, pretending I knew what they were talking about but really I had no clue. “Woe is me,” I thought, “I’m just an abnormal kid who doesn’t like Harry Potter.” I thought it was too late to join the Harry Potter fan club, and I secretly hoped another popular series would pop up so I could be a part of it. And then it happened. “You are now arriving at King’s Cross Station,” said the kind automated British voice. “Please mind the gap between the train and the plat-

form.” We walked out of the tube station into King’s Cross Station. My friends instructed me that we had to find platforms 9 and 10 and in between them would be platform 9 and 3/4 so we could get to Hogwarts. We found the platform that’s for sure, right behind 362,899

color represented a different house. One by one they all revealed what house they were in through a chorus of “NO WAYS” and “I can TOTALLY see you in that house!” Then my friends asked each other, “What house do you think Taylor is in?” After about 10 seconds, one said, “I think she is a Hufflepuff,” they all agreed, “Yeah totally a Hufflepuff,” and “Yeah, I can see it!” “WHAT?! Me?” I thought, “I’m a

Hufflepuff?”

number one Harry Potter fans. I could see the people taking pictures with this “cart” that gets you into a magical place called Hogwarts, or so I was told. I could see that each person got to choose which scarf they wanted to wear. I asked my friends what each scarf color meant and they kindly explained to me that each

I erupted with excitement, “YAY!!!!” I said aloud! “I love that name! Yay, I’m a Hufflepuff!!” I felt that I was now a part of the Harry Potter family. I still didn’t know anything about Harry Potter but for the first time, I wanted to learn more. Everyone was so accepting of me as a Hufflepuff even though some of my friends were in rival houses! As I got to the front of the line, I put on that canary yellow and black scarf that represents Hufflepuff, hung onto the handle of the cart and jumped in the air with excitement, as any Hufflepuff would. It’s been sixteen years since I was first introduced to Harry Potter, and, finally, I think I am ready now to be a Harry Potter fan.

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The Harry Potter Experience Maggie Williams The first reference I ever had for the existence of England was the Harry Potter series. After I had been convinced that they weren’t “boy movies,” they quickly became a large part of my childhood. For me, this connection to childhood is even more tangible with the films than with the books, so I knew from the get-go that I wanted to see as many Harry Potter sites as I could while I trekked through London. My ultimate Harry Potter goal for this trip was to be in the same room as Daniel Radcliffe, which

was nice and attainable considering that we went to a play that he was in. I never really let myself believe that we would get to meet him be-

London Review 2017

cause I didn’t want to get my hopes up. When it actually happened, it felt like a dream. I met the embodiment of my childhood in a person, and I still don’t fully believe that it was reality and not a vivid hallucination. Speaking of meeting actors who were in Harry Potter – we also snuck to the stage door of a show we did not see in order to meet weirdtongue-guy, Barty Crouch Jr. himself. I had to half-lie to David Tennant when he thanked us for coming to the show. Sure. Sure, I saw it. I also actually did see the location in Christ Church where some Great Hall scenes from Harry Potter were filmed, and I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Kings Cross and Platform 9 ¾ where I pretended to push a cart through a brick wall and into a world of magic. Even better than that, dare I say, was the tour of Harry Potter Studios. Ah, what to say about the studio tour? I walked around for hours in complete wonder, gasping at everything I saw. They had fully-dressed sets from the movie, and costumes, wigs, and prosthetics that were used in the making

of the films. I drank brand-name Butterbeer as I stared at the Night Bus and the Weasleys’ flying car. I was thoroughly creeped out by the giant spiders and the animatronic Buckbeak in the Forbidden Forest. And finally, I was released into a huge gift shop after nearly crying at a giant model of Hogwarts in the final room of the tour. Even the gift shop, where I spent entirely too much money, felt like a part of the films as young kids packed the room, buying their first wands, Hogwarts house scarves, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. The studio tour was the most magical experience of my life, which fit in with my first-ever outof-country trip perfectly. I knew

that I had been changed by my first study abroad trip, and I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think of a better way to commemorate that than with a symbol of childhood happiness from Harry Potter, my first experience of England. I wandered to Camden by myself on the final day of the trip and got a small tattoo of the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Harry Potter, and the experience of the London Review, will forever be a part of me.

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Impromptu KoKo’s Sheldon White It is strange to think that a night out would start in a museum, but that is just how this story begins. An out of the blue conversation with an American girl from the University of Minnesota, studying abroad for a semester, led to a night out in North London. After speaking to her about the trials of establishing a home in London, two syllables were distinct among the rest, “Koko’s”. A quick google search revealed the headliner for that evening was a concert by an up and coming London hip-hop artist, Jay Prince. Jay is a twenty-three year old product of East London, popularized by songs such as “Father, Father” : “Homecoming/Love Is”. Anyone attune with the underground hip-hop movements has probably heard his British accent destroy a verse or two. In a frenzy, the tickets were purchased. (“Tickets” was actually an accident… I bought three extras; but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise) The show kicked off with a bang as local London artist TE dness kept it “saucy”. With a mixture of modern politics and street rap, TE kept the crowd bumping. At just past one in the morning, the main event took the stage to a ruckus ovation. Jay continued to energize the venue

London Review 2017

with his vibey style, which has him touring with artists like Chance the Rapper. The shoulder to shoulder crowd was rewarded with a truly magnificent set of live music, as the entirety of Jay’s production band played in the background. With guitar, bass, and drum solo’s this concert had a nostalgic hiphop feel like that of the original boom-bap days when songs were made on street corners, not strictly digitalized on computers. The band had a harmony that emanated throughout the crowd culminating with strangers partying the night away, rocking and swaying hands on shoulders. The music brought the people of KoKo’s

together, as banger after banger hit the speakers. (Our group had a front row spot, and got a few shoutouts, even yelling into the mic’s and touching the artists) As the main event came to a close, so too did our impromptu night at KoKo’s. Full of energy people exited a packed KoKo’s music house, ready to keep the good times flowin’, whether it be with Falafel, Hummus, Chicken Curry, or a quick walk through Camden. It just goes to show that any encounter, whether in a museum or in the tube can lead to a good time if you are open to the experience (never turn down an invitation to KoKo’s).

Guess Who? Mariela Haug Mora I am a huge fan of TV shows that are based off of the life of historical figures, specifically those that focus on members of Royal families. I have been a devoted follower of Reign since 2013, I binged watched both The Crown and Victoria as soon as they were available on line, and I am halfway through The Tudors. Although these four shows are all based on the lives of different royals, when I first stepped into the National Portrait Gallery in London it truly hit me: the majority of the actors are very different, physically, from the person they are portraying. Moreover, the clothes the actors wear are far from what these Royals actually wore, at least in their portraits. So hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a game: match the actor from one of these series with the portrait(s) of the person they are representing!

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Finding Karl Marx Fengxue Zhang The London skies always threatened rain and my map reading abilities were close to hopeless, but nothing was going to stop Daniel Jalilpoor and I from visiting Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery. We had two goals that day: get lost, and find Karl Marx. We accomplished our first goal within two minutes of leaving our hotel. Our second goal, however, became much more than we had originally bargained for. Fifteen miles, four hours, one dead phone, and numerous detours later, we reached Highgate Cemetery with rain drenched hair and the realization that Loninto grandiose commercial districts don was an incredible city to get and graffiti lined sky bridges. Tiny lost in. stores with faded signs transitioned into rectangular gardens with First, we decided to walk. impeccably trimmed bushes and We had tube passes to the Lonunrealistically green lawns. Spandon Underground. The railway/ ish, Chinese, Italian, French, and subway system connected every of course, English conversations, major part of the city together like weaved in and out of the steady yet a neatly color-coded spider web, a sporadic cacophony of traffic. Our station on almost every block, with voices contributed to the vibrations an unbelievably ease of accessibilof the city; stories and philosophical ity. Yet, despite it having our best ramblings scattered behind us onto interests in mind, we had a distaste the sidewalk and across crosswalks. for the simplicity of that notion. Even if we might forget, I’d like to The streets of London seemed end- pretend that the city will always less, and the idea of that kind of remember. endlessness enthralled me. It was a strange feeling, to be able to walk Then we got distracted. in one direction for so long and Gardens, bookstores, markets – not run out of places to go. For the there were too many opportunities first time in a long time, there was to stray from the path we were on. a whole open day in front of us and We found another Gandhi statue, getting lost became a luxury rather Daniel bought three books, and the than an inconvenience. Time only Camden Markets were alive with mattered in those few moments the smell of food and the bustle of when we paused to check on it, but people. The London skies delivered even then, it didn’t seem to matter on its promise of rain, as expected, much at all. but we forged on. My phone soon The sky was overcast, but the exhausted the last few percentages city never ceased to be vibrant. It of its battery power, but as lost as seemed to contract and expand we were, somehow we felt strangely

London Review 2017

sure of where we were going. Our footsteps maneuvered past cherry blossoms and pristine residential areas to a place called Highgate Park; a scene straight out of a British novel complete with endless stretches of muddy paths, lush forestry and small lakes. The rain descended like a sheet of mist, and Daniel’s decision to wear his UGGs that day will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Finally, we reached Highgate Cemetery. As if to reward us for our perseverance, the sun made a rare appearance. Light filtered through the tall branches of densely cluttered trees, accenting the brightly colored wildflowers scattered between the mismatching gravestones. There was an undeniable sense of chaos, the way nature took over the burial ground and connected everything with something more holy and deliberate than the human touch. Ironically, everything felt so alive. Karl Marx did not disappoint. The giant stone statue of his head was as imposing and grand as I had hoped, and his grave was freshly

decorated with many bouquets of flowers, including one arranged in the shape of a hammer and sickle. Karl, whose works have been used to justify the death of millions of people, who is constantly misunderstood and insulted even to this day, has ironically found his resting place in England, the birthplace of capitalism. Although, let’s be honest, he’s probably constantly turning in his grave, still bitterly waiting for the revolution to start. We also paid our respects to the great Douglas Adams and George Eliot before resigning to take the train back home. The tube map was suddenly even more simple than we remember, and we plopped down into the seats with aching joints and an immense feeling of satisfaction. The occasional flickering of lights accompanied the gentle rumblings of the train, and a four-hour trek through London turned into a twenty-minute ride back home. We met our goals that day – we got lost, we found Karl Marx, but those goals were not nearly as important as the journey it took to get there.

Oliver Cromwell Kate Schroeder London has an understandably complicated relationship with Oliver Cromwell. After all, he did lead a civil war that resulted in the execution of the king, dissolution of the monarchy, and descent into a dictatorship at his hands. His influence on English history is obvious, yet he had such contempt for the monarchy—an element of English heritage that the country wants to celebrate. How does one reconcile that piece of history and present this figure in a way that manages to remain both accurate and positive? Maybe the British Museum has a good start: these busts are positioned just right so that Cromwell is eternally glaring at Charles I. Personally, I think he would have wanted it this way.

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Travel Buddies Daniel Jalilpoor Whenever we were in the tube or a bus or a taxi, England seemed farther away. Sitting in a vehicle flying through space at speeds impossible to match on foot gave the country an otherworldly atmosphere. Staring through the window at the blurring objects and sights passing by was like experiencing an elaborate exhibit.

On Monday, Fen and I decided to walk to Highgate Cemetery. We had two goals: get lost, and find Karl Marx. Rather than spending a handful of moments navigating the tube system, we set off on foot. A simple trip to a cemetery became a modern day quest centered in the exhibit we had been aching to enter. Walking through the streets

London Review 2017

of London was magnificent. We strolled through the streets, crosswalks, parks, markets, alleys, stores, toilets, bakeries, and The Future at our own pace. For the latter portion of the quest, we relied primarily on memories of the general direction we needed to go and secondarily on random maps we would accidentally find. Fen has an inconvenient tendency to keep her phone at 1%. During our quest, we became familiar with the personality of the

It was beautiful and mesmerizing and peaceful. The vibrant green plant life was glistening with drying rain drops reflecting the sunlight poking through the light grey clouds hanging above the gravestones and monuments and flowers that created the mystical little world we had entered. During the soundtrack of bird chirps and greenery swaying with the breeze, we smiled with accomplishment. We saw Karl Marx – who matters

country and each other. We became Travel Buddies. Fen appropriately quoted Robert Frost – the road less traveled and whatnot – and that became our creed. Whenever we approached a fork in the road, we chose the one less traveled. Through mud and rain and wind, we made our way to the cemetery.

to Fen deeply – and we saw George Eliot – who matters to me. Nowadays, everyone is buzzing about and prioritizing efficiency. What could have been a relatively underwhelming hour trip turned into an unforgettable day. We traded a convenient tube ride for sore feet, wet hair, and happy hearts.

The Parthenon Statues in the British Museum Owen Toepfer One of the most contentious issues in the museum world recently has been the British Museum’s “ownership” of the Parthenon Statues, sometimes called the Elgin Marbles. 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of the marbles’ debut of exhibition at the British Museum, where they have since remained in a large, purpose-built gallery. At the time, it was universally acknowledged as a good decision to move the marbles, since Greece (still under Ottoman rule) could not properly protect them from the elements and England could. They have thus been successfully preserved and researched in London for 2 centuries. Greece, however, has recently built their Acropolis Museum, whose purpose, as its name implies, is solely to house

and display artifacts from the Acropolis. Naturally, a feud has arisen between the two governments. The British Museum argues that the marbles should remain in London by citing such things as the number of people who see them annually, how they “fit” with the rest of the museum’s collection, and how they are viewable free of charge. According to their website, “Here [the marbles] are seen by a world audience and are actively studied and researched by an international community of scholars, to promote understanding both of ancient Greek culture and its role in the cultures of the world.” The Acroplis Museum’s website is far less political – at least openly, as it contains many passive remarks, such as, “From the entire frieze that survives today, 50 meters are in the Acropolis Museum, 80 meters in the British Museum.” The museum also fosters a project for the statues’ Caryatid

Parthenon Frieze

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Block from the Frieze

return, started by Greek actress and politician Melina Mercouri 35 years ago. As a student of Classics, it was an educational, enriching, and quite enjoyable experience to view the Parthenon Statues at the British Museum, yet I felt a wave of guilt hit me right as I walked into the gallery. I personally believe that the reasons for returning the statues to

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Horse Head from the Pediment

Greece far outweigh the reasons for keeping them in London. This discomfort roused by this experience has driven me to critically examine this issue and to get involved in the "diplomatic and political" approach to retrieving the sculptures (as much as I can) suggested by Greeceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Minister of Culture. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time for the statues to go home.

For more information: http://theacropolismuseum.gr/en/ content/melinas-campaign-returnparthenon-sculptures http://www.britishmuseum.org/ about_us/news_and_press/statements/parthenon_sculptures.aspx

Mesmerized by Mummies Carly Newman I cried over mummies. Yes, you read that right. I cried. Over mummies. I love mummies. I love anything related to Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian deity of mummification, embalming, cemeteries, and the afterlife. It’s my passion. So when I reserved an entire day for the British Museum, I knew that I wasn’t going to spend much time outside of the Ancient Egypt exhibits. However, I did not expect the tears that began streaming down my face when I entered Room 61. Upon my first glance of the collection of mummies, sarcophagi, shabtis (small funerary figurines), and other death-related relics, my heart jumped into my throat. I slowly approached the first glass-encased mummy, one of a commoner from about 30 BCE, and felt the tears well up. I received a few awkward glances from the tour guides leading groups of children around me, but I couldn’t help myself. As I moved through the exhibit, the tears flowed strong, streaming down

the first mummy, a commoner from c. 30 BCE

my face. Every relic, mummy, and sarcophagus was just so beautiful. After an hour of slow but deliberate exploration of Rooms 61, 62, and 63, I gave my emotions a break and explored the Ancient Greece and Rome exhibits. Eventually, I returned to Ancient Egypt. Of course, I visited the Rosetta Stone (you can’t go to the British Museum and not at least look at the Rosetta Stone, especially if you love Ancient Egypt as much as I do). I then went through Room 4 and admired the beauty of Egyptian

sculpture. It was also beautiful, but didn’t cause me as much emotional damage as the mummies.

a collection of small shabtis

I’m never going to be able to visit another Ancient Egypt exhibit without thinking back to that time I cried over mummies. And what a glorious time that was.

another mummy, this one of what looks to be a pharaoh or someone in high Egyptian society

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When I Bought Ancient Coins from the Black Market Owen Toepfer Well, they weren’t really from the black market, but the antiquities dealer joked (?) that they were. The trade of illicit antiquities is one of the largest enterprises of the black market, circulating billions of dollars of antiquities every year. These artifacts are often those that have been discovered and unearthed at archeological digs and then transported internationally through a middleman to often unsuspecting collectors, museums, antique dealers, and auction houses. The antiquities trade has been much more careful in recent years about establishing the provenance of cultural artifacts, since many collectors have faced jail time for their inability to do so. The antiquities shop I went to was across from the British Museum and seemed legitimate. The vendor specialized in coins, but had other artifacts like ancient and

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medieval pots, tools, and jewelry. It was odd seeing such things not safe in a museum, but it reminded me of the vast market, both legal and illegal, for antiquities around the world. Most of the objects cost thousands of pounds, but I did find some affordable coins. A bought a handful of tarnished and damaged coins from a bin that advertised “12 coins for 20 pounds.” I also bought a coin in better condition, minted by the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164 BC). “Epiphanes” in Greek means “genius,” but he was so crazy that his subjects called him “Epimanes” which means “out of his mind.” He also has biblical significance. The opportunity to buy antiquities is not one often presented in America, so it was interesting to feel involved in the antiquities trade. Hopefully I won’t be arrested.

Literary Echoes Maggie Williams I imagined the Globe as Shakespeare would have seen it – the completely different London that he lived in, with the theatre a few meters down the bank from its current location. I could clearly see him scribbling away plays and sonnets, inventing phrases and storylines that would shape the modern-day English language. And, unbeknownst to him, plays that would be famous for centuries to come and dissected in droves by bored high school students. Oxford was the most moving of all of the literary locations. My tour of Christ Church happened upon a collection of locations that influenced Lewis Carroll when he wrote

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Carroll’s office window at Oxford looked out onto a yard where Alice Liddell and her sisters used to play, and an old oak tree where a ginger cat loved to perch. From his van-

tage point, he could also see a door that, to Alice’s dismay, was locked when she tried to follow the priest who was always late through it. After our tour down the rabbit hole, we had fish and chips at the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to drink. It struck me how this was the perfect moment in my life to see this location as I attempt to delve into writing fantasy. It couldn’t hurt to brush shoulders with the ghosts of some of the most successful fantasy writers in history. The final part of my writing ghost-hunt took place half in Oxford and half in London. We had

drinks at the Turf to close out our day in Oxford, a tavern that my favorite classic writer used to frequent when he was a student. Having my first and only English pint as I imagined a flamboyant and boisterous young Oscar Wilde charming his way into the hearts of everyone around him was enough to help me actually get the pint down. Back in London, and on the final day of the trip, I took an adventure on my own to see the illustrious blue plaque on the side of the brick apartment where Oscar Wilde had lived. I stared creepily at the house that is currently still a residence for a good five minutes to get my fill of literary history before embarking on a fifteen-minute walk to my final location. I imagined that I was walking the same path that Wilde walked many times, or perhaps stumbled home drunk and singing on, as I made my way to the Cado-

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gan Gardens Hotel. Once I arrived, it was time for more staring as I saw the ghosts of officers dragging Oscar Wilde, too drunk on wine to flee before their arrival, down the steps of the hotel and to his ultimate demise.

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All of these literary experiences still leave me in awe when I think about them. The most accurate representation of my feelings toward them is repeating the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;wowâ&#x20AC;? in the most wonder-struck tone imaginable. Seeing the places where

so many talented authors lived was a more impactful experience than I could have expected. All I can hope is that some of that residual talent rubbed off on me while I was touring the locations of literary echoes in England.

What you need to know about Camden Market Hunter Maude This summer, I will be returning to London with my family for a week long vacation (interesting timing considering I just went to London, but honestly I’m not complaining). Our family includes my step mother and three sisters, all of whom are absolute shopaholics. While the likes of Harrod’s and Picadilly Circus might come immediately to mind when one thinks of shopping destinations, I believe that Camden Market is without a doubt the best place to shop in London. The atmosphere is wild and sometimes chaotic, as are the goods for sale, but you will not find a wider, more creative selection of clothes, accessories, and food. The market as we know it today was started in 1972 when “childhood friends and business partners Dr. Bill Fulford and Peter Wheeler… bought what was then a rundown timber yard belonging to T.E. Dingwalls, and transformed the site that’s now known as Camden Lock Market”[1]. From there, artisan shops began to move into small stalls around the yard. Now, over 28 million people from around the world visit the market each year to examine its unique assortment of eclectic goods, such as music merchandise,

A view from the outside as we approached the market

homemade jewelry, and antiques and (haloumi is a kind of Mediterthrift clothing. ranean cheese), German kielbasa, The market’s success is largely Mexican churros, an Indian wrap, attributed to the vast number of and of course fish and chips. Right artists who contributed to its décor on the water of the lock is an area and architecture. with over 20 food As pictured below, stands. There are the shops on the also various food street adjacent to stands throughout the main site of the the market, such as market are adorned authentic thai street with large decorafood and a craft beer tions such as a pair stand. The diverof tennis shoes sity in origin of the on a shoe shop. food I ate there was Even more creative incredible, and the than the buildings food itself was some themselves are the of the best I had in goods sold within. London. Pictured is the shop “Cyberdo” Also pictured below which sells light up clothing and So what do you is a photo of a small merchandise for raves. The brick need to know about walls of this store are a reminder of Camden Market? stand I found that the market’s early days as a timber sold vintage camFirst, that it exyard. eras. According to ists, and second, the sign, each of the that you must go cameras was comthere. I would highly recommend pletely functional and that tourists visit the market, as it one was as cheap as 20 is truly pleasing to all the senses. pounds. While the goods are relatively But my personal eclectic, their selection does not favorite part of lack in quality. However, I caution Camden market was the average visitor to keep track of the vast assortment of time and know the location of all food from all corners the exits, as it is very easy to spend of the globe. I rean afternoon, or even an entire day turned to the market wandering the bazaar. a few different times for lunch or dinner. 1 From the article 12 Facts about CamI had Colombian den Lock Market, published on camdenThe irony of my taking a picture of a bunch of arepas, Haloumi fries market.co. cameras is not lost on me. North

A long and sorry tale of an American millennial’s solo journey through London without Wi-Fi Kelly Werther From day one of this trip I had trouble keeping my phone alive. I somehow managed to forget to pack both of the portable chargers I own, and I certainly ended up paying the price for that unfortunate lapse of memory. On day three, I went out and about on my own for the first time. Initially, I was just wandering about Kensington, not far from our hotel, so I wasn’t in any desperate need of Wi-Fi to figure out where I was going. Eventually, though, I decided I wanted to try to find Camden Market. Having wandered around taking pictures at Hyde Park and the Natural History Museum all morning, my phone battery was pretty low. It didn’t help that my phone had recently picked up the habit of sometimes dying with up to 40% battery remaining. Fortunately for me, London is kind to its tourists; there are black Wi-Fi boxes on nearly every street corner resembling the iconic red telephone booths. I made my way to the nearest Wi-Fi box, and frantically searched for directions to Camden

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Town. I quickly found the fastest route via the Tube, and was taking screenshots of the directions when alas, with 26% battery, my phone died. Because I had so inconveniently left my portable chargers in the U.S., I had taken to carrying around my wall charger with me every day. Immediately, I knew my next step: find an outlet. I stepped out of the comfort of my beloved Wi-Fi box and began wandering around looking for a coffee shop, or bar, or anywhere that I could inconspicuously steal electricity for a few minutes. Within two blocks, I stumbled upon a Starbucks, conveniently located directly across the street from the Tube station from which I was to begin my journey to Camden. Inside the Starbucks, I found an outlet and waited (im)patiently for about 20 minutes for my phone to get a little charge. I studied the directions to get to Camden Market, in case my phone gave out on me again. At about 42% battery, I unplugged and took off. Amazingly, I navigated a 30-minute Tube trip, a train change, and a 7-minute walk from the Camden station on my own while only checking my screenshot of directions once. I may not have actually found Camden

Market, but I ended up at the Stables Market, which, according to a shop vendor, is better than Camden Market. Regardless, the perilous journey was worth it. Stables Market had everything from vintage clothing to canvases to ceramics to jewelry and so much more. I spent nearly two hours wandering around the tight alleys, in and out of the little shops, people watching and gift buying. As my time at the market came to an end, I realized two scary things: first, that I had to figure out how to get to the Old Vic theatre for our group play by myself, and second, that my phone was about to die again. I quickly made my way to the Wi-Fi box across from the Camden Tube station, and as fast as possible, I took a screenshot of the directions. I was lucky the Tube ride was simple

because as soon as I stepped out of my Wi-Fi box, my phone died again. I made my way from Camden to Waterloo station, which happened to be a large station, and I happened to be there during rush hour. I, a lost and confused American millennial, stumbled my way through the fast-moving current of Brits into another Starbucks (I may owe them my life by this point). I looked all about for an open outlet, but I could not find one that was unoccupied. So I attempted to ask the barista for directions to the Old Vic. She told me I was in the wrong station, but that she didn’t know how to get to the right station. Lovely. I hesitantly wandered out of the Starbucks, back into the madness, and I was able to find the information desks. I received directions from a kind man whom I did not understand at all (the thick English accent takes time to learn), but out of politeness and slight stupidity I didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Instead, I wandered out of the station in the direction I (thought) I was told, and I hoped for the best. The immediate outside of Waterloo station was sketchy and fright-

The driver told me which way to walk to find the theatre, and, incredibly, I found it. Standing in front of the theatre, I felt relieved and proud, but only for a moment before I realized I was there two hours early and I hadn’t eaten dinner. I knew that a group had been planning to eat dinner at Gordon’s Wine Bar, which Mary had said was very close to the theatre. So I took off down the street in search of Gordon’s. I walked for nearly 10 minutes to the next major intersection before crossing and heading back toward the theatre. Like an oasis in the Sahara, I came ening. A narrow sidewalk enclosed by railing herded me along the side across a Café Nero. I hurried inside, plugged in my phone, and just sat of the tall brick building through there for about half an hour restheavy foot traffic until I was spit ing. Once my phone turned back out in front of a dark tunnel and a on, and I could use the Wi-Fi, I line of cabs. I began following the figured out that Gordon’s was actucrowd toward the dark tunnel, but ally almost 20 minutes away. By then I had second thoughts about this time I was exhausted, starving, walking into an unknown tunnel and lonely, so I decided to just hail at dusk by myself in a strange and a cab and pay for a fast and direct unfamiliar place. Instead, I turned ride to Gordon’s. That was the best around and gave in. I asked a cabbie for a ride to the Old Vic theatre. decision I made the entire day, and when I arrived at Gordon’s, I had The driver proceeded to tell me, “That’s just two minutes walk that- never been happier to see a group of familiar faces. a-way.” Well, wouldn’t you know?

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Exploring London Spontaneously Katie Phalen Since coming back from the London Review, so many people have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was. My first thought is that there isn’t really a moment of the trip that stands out as being the best. Over the course of the eight days we were there, I think I was in a constant state of pure happiness. But as I begin to think on it further, I realize that what I really enjoyed most about the London Review was the spontaneity of the entire trip. Waking up in a strange city every morning and not having any idea where the day would take me was such an exciting and refreshing feeling, and it’s what made the London Review stand out from any other trip I had taken before.

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As a person who typically plans out every minute of my day when I’m at school, making spur of the moment decisions in London was both an unfamiliar and exciting experience. Whether it was buying last-minute tickets to go see Phantom of the Opera, or making the decision to go see a random concert in Camden, it seems like the aspects of the trip that weren’t even on my radar when we took off from KCI Friday morning were the things that I enjoyed the most. The late-night walk across the Tower Bridge and seeing the lights of the city reflect on the Thames, and the impromptu trip to Piccadilly Circus to visit the M&M store are parts of the trip I’ll never forget. If I’ve learned one thing from the London Review, it would be that making spontaneous decisions and not necessarily having your entire

life planned out is more than ok. I was lucky to meet so many spontaneous and fun people on this trip who helped push me out of the comfort zone that I typically operate in. Of course I knew at some point during the week I was going to end up at the classic London locations like Big Ben, or Buckingham Palace. But those unexpected parts of the trip that unfolded without any previous planning are the things I think I’ll remember the most.

Times I Almost Cried in London Maggie Williams Day One: Landing in London Just me, sweaty and smelly, running on 3 hours of sleep after ten consecutive hours on a plane. The sky was cloudy and gray – completely on-brand for London. I was looking out the window when the clouds cleared a bit and I was able to see land. That glimpse of the ground, absent any distinguishing landmarks, was enough to fill my heart with wonder and my eyes with tears. Day Two: Big Ben Coming up from the dark depths of the tube station to immediately see the most recognizable landmark – Parliament and the clock

dows stood a white stone tower that was centuries old. It held more wealth than I had ever seen in my life in the form of the crown jewels, and a solid gold spoon that was more than 800 years old. At least five people who scratched their names into the Tower were imprisoned for trying to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, who had been kept there herself when she was a child. The weight of all of that history flooded my eyes with tears. I also met Daniel Radcliffe that night. Day Four: Oxford Oxford is the most beautiful university town I’ve ever seen, and that view was perfect from the top of St. Mary’s Tower. Climbing that horrifying staircase was more than worth it for the tear-jerking view around the top.

tower that houses Big Ben. This was when I knew for certain that I was in London, and it made me very emotional. Day Three: The Tower of London Across the Thames from modern business buildings made of win-

historical figures – Mary Queen of Scots. Day Six: Harry Potter Studios Tour It was time for a bit of modern history on Thursday, as I took an expensive bus ride out to the middle of nowhere to see where the Harry Potter movies had been filmed. The day was filled to the brim with incredibly magical experiences, but the moment that made me tear up was at the very end of the tour. Soft music played in the last room, which held a giant model of Hogwarts that looked so real I

Day Five: Westminster Abbey I felt the weight of history at the Tower of London, but even that was nothing compared to the history of Westminster Abbey. I stood before the alter where most kings and queens of England had been crowned, married, and eulogized. I felt like I could see every monarch walking up the steps in front of me before the crown was placed on their heads. As if that wasn’t enough to make me cry, I also saw the final resting place of one of my favorite North

could have attended a few classes while I was there. I had to pause for a moment before I could take any pictures because I was nearly moved to tears at the sight.

the West End. I was extremely curious about how horror would be achieved in a live setting, and I definitely got my answer. I screamed at least three times.

Day Seven: The Woman in Black On this day, a different type of tear almost fell. I went, alone, to see a production of The Woman in Black in a creepy old theatre on

Day Eight: Saying Goodbye The final day was bittersweet, as can only be expected. After a few hours at Portobello Road, I wandered around by myself, saying

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farewell to everything I saw. We laughed through our final dinner, and drank a cheap bottle of wine from Waitrose in the hotel lobby afterward. I knew that this trip had left its permanent mark on me. And upon reflection, I realize that those near-tears werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t because I was saying goodbye, but because I knew that it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be long before I returned.

Tribute to Gordon’s Kate Poulose Sitting in a barstool in Mary Klayder’s cozy living room, I asked a London Review alum, one who had lived in London for a few years, what was a restaurant, non-touristy, that I could not miss. I got a simple, enthusiastic response in one word: Gordon’s. Now, what is Gordon’s? Allow me set the stage. Down by the River Thames, on a narrow cobblestone street with twinkling lights set above the path, is a shiny black gate. It’s on the north side and tucked away, if you’re not looking closely, you might miss it! Behind this gate is a quaint terrace with a stone building on one side and the Victoria Embankment Gardens on the other. But when you can hear excited chatter coming from a door set half-way underground, you’ve found it – the entrance to Gordon’s. When you walk in (or down really because you go descend half a flight of stairs to get in this sacred cove), the room has subtle warm lighting. You feel like you have walked into a cave with its low ceilings and stone accents. Gordon’s is a wine bar, but it is so much more than

that. You can enjoy a glass of wine with crispy bread and freshly sliced cheese or you can order a plate of food. But be prepared, you may have to be aggressive to get a table. Hovering and pouncing is key. The thing that I loved most about Gordon’s was that it wasn’t touristy at all. Surrounding us were Londoner’s who had just gotten off work and were catching up with their friends. I felt like I was in the real London, a place where the natives go. The room was alive with conversations flowing from every corner. I was able to go to Gordon’s

twice on this trip, the first trip was before we met Daniel Radcliffe in

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Mary Kate Shellworth, Katie

Phalen, and I relaxed in a tiny little table tucked into a corner. I think I need to emphasize that Gordon’s truly feels like a cave, and Katie spend our two hours there intermittently being dripped on with water from whereabouts unknown, but nevertheless, we all had a great time albeit a little damp. We enjoyed good wine, cheese and conversation before we made our across the bridge to the theater on the other side of the Thames. The second time we went was on Friday and there was a crowd of us, too big to ever entertain the hope of snagging a table inside, so we settled on sitting out on the terrace and combining chairs and tables to make one massive space of our own. Are you surprised? American’s supersize everything. The group recounted the tales of the day and sat in denial that our trip was near its end. We laughed at the funny moments of the week and reminisced over our adventures. But Gordon’s was the perfect place to be, because even though our trip was short and sweet, we became locals.

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The Tower of London Aliana Souder When I started to come up with the long list of activities I wanted to cram into the eight precious days I had in London, my mom told me I needed to go to the Tower of London. Now I am no historical genius, but it sounded to me like some old, historical site that I should probably go check out in an attempt to culturally enrich myself. After trying to figure out (in my head, of course) what the Tower of London even was, my mom told me that real reason I should go there. Not only is it one of the 11th century fortress palaces that are still remaining in Europe, but also my ancestor was held captive there for a period of time. She and my father visited London about 20 years ago and went to the Tower where they found our ancestor’s name carved into the stonewall, along with other prisoners’ names. The cause and duration of my ancestor’s imprisonment is still unknown, but I still

thought that was one of the coolest things to happen in my family’s ancestry and I made it a personal mission to go there and find the name. When I thought of what the Tower of London might be like, I thought it to be a massive stone

tower with maybe a guarding wall and a gate. When I arrived at the now extremely tourist-populated site, I was blown away by the beauty and size of the fortress. I have never seen a fortress or a palace before, let alone a fortress palace, so I didn’t really know what to expect but it sure wasn’t what I saw. The first thing you see when you approach the area is the massive surrounding wall and some of the towers the peep over it. When you walk inside, it resembles a giant courtyard with one of the main towers, the White Tower, in the middle and there are some smaller towers that are built into parts of the wall. Each tower had a purpose and showed historical objects or pictures of events to help envision what life was like back then. One tower had all of the armor and weaponry that was used in battle and another was dedicated to the types of torcher that was inflicted on the prisoners, which I found to be extremely disturbing, but oddly fascinating. Being around such history was empowering and a little overwhelming, but nothing comEast

pared to the royal jewels exhibition. The display was unlike anything I have ever seen and was almost hard to believe that they were real. It was amazing to see the crowns and accessories that have been worn for generations of royals. After probably a couple hours of exploring the towers and grounds, I still had not found my ancestor’s name. There was one tower I had not been in yet, so I thought that it must be in there. It was starting to get late and the Tower would close soon, but when I tried to go in there apparently had been an “incident” and it was closed. Luck-

ily, it reopened about half an hour later and I walked into this large open room with dozens names carved into the wall. I went to the first cluster I saw and there it was! My ancestor! I felt an odd sense of being connected with this person, even though I never knew them. It was humbling to be able to freely stand in a place that they were once imprisoned and it made me feel as though London was part of my home and where I come from.

DID YOU KNOW? • The Tower is designated as a World Heritage site by UNESCO • At least 6 Ravens are kept at The Tower at all times for superstitious reasons • There are over 23,500 Crown Jewels housed in the Martin Tower • 22 executions took place within the Tower of London • During the 1200s, a royal zoo was founded at The Tower and remained there for 600 years

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• The building and grounds were damaged in World War II • Several ghosts are said to be residents at the tower of London including Henry VI, Catherine (the fifth wife of King Henry VIII), Dame Sybil who was the nurse of Prince Edward and even a grizzly bear that once lived in the tower

universal to urban areas. From what I’ve gathered, the constant honking and lack of pedestrian right of way are also found in American cities. I I have to start with a somewhat begrudging “thank you” to The Wiz- can’t even begin to count the number of times I watched my life flash ard of Oz. For better or for worse, before my eyes in a crosswalk. This it has put our state on the map. On doesn’t bode well for my future, as I more than a few occasions, when I had always pictured myself living in mentioned where I was from, I was a large urban area. In my defense, met with something to the effect though, the cars were coming from of, “You’re not in Kansas anymore!” the opposite way, which made my I appreciate the kind small talk, job much more difficult. Thankbut believe me, Londoners – I was fully for me (and everyone else already plenty aware. Every second from a country that drives on the in London, I was left in awe of just right side of the road), “look right,” how different and unfamiliar it was “look left,” or “look both ways” is to me. I come from a small town in most often painted on the street. In the western part of Kansas, and I general, though, as our Kensington have spent almost no time outside of that area. Even living in Lawrence tour guide Angie told us, “You can for several months has failed to break cross anywhere, just look right, left, right, left, say your prayers, and me of some of my more rural tendencies – I think a town is big if it run.” Another part of London that has a Walmart, I give a little wave to required some adjusting on my part the cars I pass while driving, and I were the people – both the sheer consider myself a Sonic connoisseur. number and the more reserved attiWhile I’ve grown to appreciate some tudes. It makes sense that standard parts of my background, I feel that of politeness are different. After all, it’s also left me with a bit of a limif a city of millions upon millions ited worldview. There were so many of people had everyone exhibiting things that surprised me about Lon- the loud, open, expressive brand don which, as others informed me, of rural midwestern friendliness, it were just part of being in a big city. would likely be chaos for everyone. I’m still trying to sort out which Make no mistake, Londoners are parts of my experience came from very nice people who are often very being in England and which were willing to talk! However, the expec-

Toto ... Kate Schroeder

tation in public is that people mind their own business. To someone not expecting it, the vibe may seem cold or lonely. However, I think it might actually make the experience of going out in public better – there are times when it’s best to just sit back and enjoy things from your own little bubble and “emerge” when the time is right. I still don’t quite have a definitive answer as to what parts of my experience were rooted in London’s English identity and which came from its role as a large, bustling city. I do know that as a rural American, I never quite lost the feeling that I was a bit of a fish out of water. I don’t think that was necessarily bad, though. Perhaps I need to explore my own country a little bit more to find the answers I want. If nothing else, spending time in such an unfamiliar place gave me more confidence in returning home. Sure, I’m just some kid from Kansas, but I’m now a kid from Kansas who can navigate an enormous city like London with some degree of success. Thinking back to when I moved to Lawrence, I spent a good month marveling at the fact that one place could have so many people, hills, and trees. I never thought this place would feel quiet, but in the end, I’m almost glad it does.

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Trips of the Travelling Black Coat Mariela Haug Mora Aside from Google Maps, my Tube card and my wallet, my new black peacoat was my most trustworthy, handy, useful, and practical companion during my trip to London. It was the Tuesday before leaving and I decided I needed a coat that was somewhat more “dressy” than the ones I already had. I believe Londoners are very elegant, so I didn’t want to stand out. So the next morning I logged into Amazon and purchased what would soon become my partner for the entire trip, for only $20. Every morning I would get ready to take on the day’s adventure while wearing my black peacoat. Regardless of what pants, shirt, or shoes I was wearing, it was always there with me. It reminded me of the popular teen novel The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, in which four very different girls fit into the same pair of pants. In my case a single black peacoat was able to fit into eight days full of extremely different and unique activities.

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Although this black peacoat has been with me for less than a month, I think there is no other clothing item in my closet that has been photographed as many times or that has visited as many places in such a short period of time. With my trusty black peacoat, we visited museums, palaces, castles, cliffs, ancient Roman ruins, cathedrals, monuments, sport arenas, parks, gardens, you name it, we saw it. Not only did we see all these different places, we took pictures in every single one, including a picture with THE Daniel Radcliffe. It all sounds like a week straight out a fairy tale, but there was a

small issue. The problem was, I think my coat and I were a little too close. I was cold for pretty much the entire trip, therefore I never took it off, but who cares? My coat and I fit right in with the elegant citizens of London. Consequence? Every single one of the pictures I took, regardless of what day or time it was, where I was or what I was doing, it looks like I am wearing the same outfit. All I can say is “Mom, I promise I showered every day and I promise the clothes beneath the coat are all different!”

Alone on the Tube Katie Bernard It was a dark stormy night … not really it was quite lovely out. We had just returned from a day at Oxford and, after initially getting on the wrong Tube back to the hotel, we head towards the correct tube stop to take the Piccadilly Line to Gloucester. The tube is there… waiting at the stop but the doors are closed. Despite the closed door there is a button on the side that says open. Sam points at the button. “Can I press that?” he asks. “No,” Mary says. Just moments later a woman walks up to the platform and hits the button. The doors open. In excitement that we would no longer have to wait, I step onto the train. Behind me I hear the doors close on Sam as he tries to follow me onto the train. I don’t think much of it and assume the doors must have opened back up to let the rest of the group on with me.

I was wrong. I turn around and find to my own horror that there is a menacing sliding door separating myself from the rest of the group. I frantically glance around hoping there is a way out. I make eye contact with Centi as I realize I am trapped. She along with the rest of the group seem to be amused by my terror, as do my fellow passengers on the tube. I remain standing the entire trip holding tightly to the railing as I jump at the slightest noise. Surrounded by strangers I count down the tube stops, wondering if my courage will hold until I arrive safely at Gloucester – seven tube stops later. As we near Gloucester I begin to breathe again, excited to arrive at the wonderfully familiar tube stop. When the trains stops I get off and look around only to realize my journey is not yet over. I must still make it back to the hotel. Terrified of becoming lost in the dangers of Kensington, I choose to wait. I sit in the underground prison

– some call it the tube station – and wait for the next train to arrive. As I sit, eagerly waiting, I hear the beautiful sound of an approaching train. It comes quick, then grinds to a halt. I stand and search the crowds of people exiting the train. As I scan the wave of faces my eyes land on Mary Klayder, followed by the students who chose to wait.

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Eavesdropping Mary Kate Shellworth As I walked past various groups of people, I couldn’t help but catch snippets of their conversation. It wasn’t that I was being a nosey tourist but rather the British accents have a way of grabbing your attention. Some of the clips I heard just were funny granted they were out of context – or even in context I assume. Throughout the week, I typed down what I heard periodically on my phone, tracking the worthy quotes I overheard as I traveled across roads and bridges, and through cathedrals and parks. From collecting these quotes, I learned that the British accent is mesmerizing to listen to and that anything people anywhere say sounds a little weird to a third party. Here is my eavesdrop collection of quotes:

“Don’t leave your rubbish out” “That’s some hideous cabbage” “At Oxford you use your brain” “That’s my lung being operated” “I’m sorry but you’re just going to have to deal with your brother”

If there is anything I learned from my experience in London it is that the British humor is the best. Biting sarcasm, witty repartee, and subtle irony make up the British humor that made me chuckle in London. Eavesdropping was just one way I exposed myself to the iconic humor of England.

“Mind your back” “He’s the brilliant type” “This academic experience has been academic” “I don’t remember if I was awake for that”

Portrait of a Lady, Voice Rachel Atakpa Portrait of a Lady, Sebastiano del Piombo, mid 1520s, on loan from Longford Castle, at The National Gallery “The sitter’s assured stance and proud gaze suggest that she was a prominent figure of her time, yet she remains unidentified. She holds pieces of cloth with a Latin inscription warning of the risks of love: ‘These are the snares of venus: beware.’” I do not wish to be a painting in a museum. Loved by many, understood by none, looked upon by all. With neither my namesake nor the burden of my histories to call upon, they wrap themselves in my silence – as if my painted gaze could be consent to speculation. There is no more meaning in the splay of my limbs or the sorrow of my gaze than in the turn of your foot or the ache in your back as you turn to look at me. Only that we are humans, who have lived with as much intention as we have vanity. I do not wish to be a painting in a museum, but soon I will become the fire sitting underneath, threatening to curl around, threatening to seep into the dreams of all who see me.

London Review 2017

An Analytical Survey of Dogs in London (and Surrounding Areas) Maggie Kaemmerer Ft. a descriptive graphical representation, some pictures, and a poem I’d like to explore the rhyme and reason of the volatility in sightings of doggos in England. Why did I only see four dogs on Wednesday and 55 on our last day? Was it because of the neighborhood we were in? Was it because I spent literally all day Thursday in the Churchill War Museum? (yes, probably). For a deeper understanding, read on. Saturday #1, 19 Sightings. I remember thinking how blessed I could be for seeing so many good dogs in one day. I believe the reason for this initial spike in sightings was because we visited a lovely park for about an hour. This is also the day I realized that dogs weren’t required to be on leashes in London unless it was specifically noted to do so. Day 1 conclusion: London dogs are really good dogs. Sunday, 24 Sightings. We walked a lot today. From South Kensington to Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square and back, I was bound to see a lot of dogs. That in addition to walking through a nice neighborhood on a quiet Sunday morning is my main theory for, again, many dogs. Monday, 8 Sightings. Unsurprising. This day comprised of a lot of inside-time in stores and museums due to the slightly heavier rain than usual. The gloomy day matched my gloomy reaction to not seeing many dogs. We did meet Daniel Radcliffe this day, though, and he’s basically a puppy. Tuesday, 22 Sightings. Oxford day. I expected to see about as many in Oxford, but was a little

thrown off. Most of these dogs were seen as we passed Hyde Park on our way out of London. The day was beautiful and sunny and full of people, but not many-a-dog was seen actually IN Oxford. Wednesday, 4 Sightings. Alternate sighting: 1 lamb. Today I took a train to Canterbury. This town seemed very quaint, beautiful, and dog-friendly. However, due to the once again rainy day, and the fact that we mainly stayed on town streets, this number wasn’t too surprising.

Thursday, 14 Sightings. Today I decided to travel alone, which meant I got to go wherever I wanted to. This resulted in me covering probably the most distance I had in a single day yet. However, I spent a lot of time in the City of London, and about four hours in the Churchill War Rooms. But, this meant that I passed St. James Park on the way home. I also cheated a little and counted the six figures belonging to the genus canus in the Natural History Museum. I never said they had to be real dogs. Friday, 15 Sightings. I did spend a good amount of time outside today. I went to the Tower of London where I gleefully got to watch two police dogs take their 5 by playing in a patch of grass right outside the walls of the castle. I also cheated again and counted each of the nine dogs that played the role of Fang in the Harry Potter movies.

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Saturday #2, 55 Sightings. The greatest day. Today I finally made the ultimate dog pilgrimage to Hyde Park. I saw a few here or there on the way to and from the park, but a majority were romping and rolling in the bright sun and green grass. I even saw some strange white feather-dogs. Conclusion: A large majority of dog sightings happened in one of two situations: walking places, and parks. Though I honestly expected to see more dogs walking the streets with their owners, I ultimately wasn’t that surprised considering the density of people the sidewalks can take on in any given day. I will say that park days were magical experiences and I’ve never seen happier dogs in my life (besides my boss’ fat dog Wags when we walk into the kitchen). Now, I leave you with a poem about one of my favorite London dogs, Chicago. Chicago and his talented artist owner greeted us almost every night as we stepped out of the Gloucester tube station. The man chalked drawings of horses onto cardboard as Chicago, a beautiful black and white Staffordshire Bull Terrier, laid next to him quietly, snuggled under a warm sheepskin blanket.

Dogs on sidewalks Dogs in parks Dogs that let me pet them Dogs that barked Dogs without leashes Dogs without fright A doggo named Chicago Stay warm tonight

London Review 2017

8 Days of London Aliana Souder As March 17th drew closer, both my anxiety and excitement grew. I started packing only a couple days before and was still in utter disbelief I would be on the other side of the world in just a few days. London had been somewhere I have always wanted to experience and I couldn’t believe that the time had finally come. During our last class before we left, we made a list of everything that everyone wanted to do. I think that was the most extensive list of activities I have ever seen and all I could think about was that I only had eight days to do all of it. I had made a mental list of specific things I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to make a schedule and decided that it would be more fun to be spontaneous and go with the flow once we got there. Although it may seem contradictory, I believe that this was the best way possible to experience the most out of London within an eight day time period. After I got back, I made a list of everything that I did and it was astonishing. Therefore, I thought this to be a perfect opportunity for an article and share with you all how to make the most out of London in only eight short days: Day 1: Our plane landed at about 6am, so we had the whole day ahead of us to dive into London and start checking things off our to-do lists. Once we got settled into our hotel, The Grange Strathmore, a group of us set out to walk around the Kensington neighborhood and get a lay of the land. We wandered around until we reached Hyde Park, which is home to some of the greenest grass I have ever seen. I was fighting to beat the jet lag, but was defeated. I decided to rest up for the long week ahead of

me and headed back to the hotel until dinner, which was at Pizza Express. This is also the same time in which I fell in love with the pizza chain restaurant and its dough balls. Day 2: I woke up excited for our walking tour and my first experience of a real English breakfast. I heard that the breakfast was one of the best parts of the trip and oh boy did it live up to my expectations. I still think about the bacon I had every day. The tour took us around the beautiful neighborhood of Kensington and then to major sites such as Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye and we ended at Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. Following the tour, I went to the St. Patrick’s

Day parade down Piccadilly Circus and ended at Trafalgar Square. There, I ran into a friend who was studying abroad in London! What’re the odds?! From there, we went to Camden Market and I had the best grilled cheese ever at the Cheese Bar. To end the day, I made my childhood dreams come true and visited Harry Potter Studios. The KU game was on that night, so of course we had to meet up at a sports bar in Victoria afterwards to cheer on our Jayhawks. Day 3: Today I visited with my family! My mom and grandma were jealous of my trip so they decided to make their own! We met for breakfast and then explored London for the day. We went to Leicester Square, the National Gallery, China Town,

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which is a famous pub that famous people, such as Bill Clinton and Emma Watson, have been to. Once we returned to the city, Maggie and I went to a pizza place that we found out to be the restaurant that inspired Pizza Express. It was just as delicious.

Fortnum and Mason’s (where the Queen grocery shops), the Burlington and Jubilee arcades and Harrods. I met up with friends at Gordon’s for dinner, where we went straight to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at The Old Vic Theater. The play starred Daniel Radcliffe and after we waited for a meet and greet with D Rad himself. BEST NIGHT EVER.

Day 5: A group of us took another day trip out to Canterbury and spent most of our day here exploring. This was also the same day of the terrorist attack at Westminster. As scary as the attack was, I was glad to be out of the city for the day. We had our next group dinner at Wagamama’s and then I met up with my family to go see Kinky Boots at the theater, which was one of the best musical productions I have ever seen. We ended the night with wine and dessert at Muriel’s Kitchen and then attempted to have late night curry, but got rejected from the restaurant. Apparently nothing fun can happen after 11pm in Kensington.

Day 4: We took our first day trip outside the city and went to Oxford! We spent the entire day here, where we got a tour of the University of Oxford and then roamed around the town. We ended the day at The Turf,

Day 6: Today was the last day spent with the family. We ventured out to the Burberry Factory Outlet (which was not as discounted as it was said to be), so I still couldn’t afford anything. We had a quick lunch at Pret a Manger

and then went to the Tower of London. Following, we checked out a popular Italian restaurant, Luca, for dinner, which had extremely small portions. It was delicious, but no wonder people are thin over here. I ended the night with some shopping at the flagship stores for Topshop and H&M in Oxford Circus. Day 7: We started out the day at Borough Market, which was one of my favorite places because it’s

all about food. After, we went to Harrods and had coffee on the terrace of the conservatory and it was the most beautiful setting. Once I was fueled up, Sean and I set out to High Gate Cemetery to visit Karl Marx’s grave. In addition to finding the grave, we found a gorgeous view of the city in this less-populat-

London Review 2017

ed town. We went back to Gordon’s for dinner (because you can’t just go there once) and Patisserie Lingerie for dessert. Day 8: Today was the hardest. I knew I had to make the last day count. I started out the day at Portobello Road, which was by far my favorite market because it was like a combination of Borough and Camden. Then, I had Afternoon Tea at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens. It was a beautiful day, so we biked through Hyde Park and then went to a rooftop garden where an entire Spanish village used to live. We had our last group dinner at The Hereford Arms and soaked up our last hours in the city by taking a night walk along the Thames. The city is beautifully lit at night, my favorite being the London Eye.

Cheeky “Nando’s” Sean Jesse

Upon arriving in England, there were a few culinary options that I was set on trying. Of course I was going to go for the typical British fare, like a full english breakfast, shepherd’s pie, and fish and chips. With the huge Indian influence in London, I had to try a late night curry. But, the one restaurant I was destined to try was Nando’s Peri Peri chicken. Nando’s is a chain restaurant hailing from South Africa, and has many locations in Great Britain. The restaurant describes their chicken as being influenced by Mozambican and Portuguese flavors. Much like Buffalo Wild Wings in the United States (yet way better), at Nando’s you can choose what level of spice you want on your chicken, along with if you want bone in or out. Nando’s also has a variety of delicious sides to choose from, including but not limited to, garlic bread, chips, or even a smart grains salad. The restaurant is exotic, yet suited to the English palate (I ordered hot and extra hot Peri Peri sauce both times I went, and it barely made me sweat). Despite the mildness of the sauce at Nando’s, they have many others at the table to add to your chicken. My favorites were the Lemon-Garlic sauce and Wild Herb sauce. The major selling point of Nando’s is that you order at the counter, and your food is ready in less than five minutes. Not to mention that they have cheap and delicious Mozambican beer. If you are ever in London, take a turn from the ordinary and head to the chain that changes things up.

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Lone Wolf Day Maggie Kaemmerer I am not one to do things alone. It’s not because I’m dependent on people or that I can’t do anything individually, I just think everything is more fun with company. One of my favorite parts about going on this trip was the spontaneity of each day. Every morning I would wake up, see who was going where, and go with whoever’s plan sounded like the most fun. However, as we neared the end of the week, going in groups got harder and harder. One group of people would plan on going to a number of places for a day, but if you already went to one or two of those places, you kind of get stuck at a crossroads. You want to explore as much as you can in London, but on the other hand, experiencing these things with friends is half the fun. Near the end of the week, I didn’t think I could be more relieved to have a day to myself. Most of the group went to Cambridge for the day on Thursday. I was finally going to get to see everything I had been wanting to see all week, but wasn’t ever in the daily itineraries. First off, I started the day off with sleeping in. I then hopped on the tube and went all the way across town to 44

London Review 2017

romp around the City of London. While there, I finally got to go in the Museum of London, which was just my style of history museum. It was full of interesting, quirky artifacts and exhibits that were dumbed down to a 3rd grade history class level. Like I said, just my style.

I then walked around for a good amount of time trying to make my way to Shakespeare’s Globe Theater (which had closed tours down for the rest of the day by the time I got there). I walked past St. Paul’s Cathedral (because it was £17 and I was on my way to what I thought would be a much cheaper Globe tour). I also walked past the London Stock Exchange (because they stopped doing tours of the trading floor since the internet exists now)! I walked past a lot of things in the City of London. After strike 3 at

the Globe, I decided to head back towards Westminster. I was going to my #1 destination of the day: Churchill’s War Rooms. Because of the attack the day before, the Westminster Station was not allowing any entrances or exits. I got off a stop earlier and because London likes to make travelling around town 5,000 times harder than it should be, walked past many more buildings to arrive at my destination. If you guessed that the one place Maggie would be obsessed with in London was the Churchill War Rooms, you were right. I spent four hours there. I lived for that place. I felt like I had been transported in time by 70 years, as the restoration staff had worked so meticulously to arrange things as they would have appeared during the war. I could go on forever about these rooms, so I’ll save you the time. When I finished up at the War Rooms, I decided to go back to Kensington and hit up a couple museums that were right by our hotel. Because of the hectic, spontaneous planning of each day, I had yet to be to the Victoria and Albert and Natural History Museums. Seeing as how most people on the trip had already spent time at these museums, I thought “What better time than now would I be

able to go to these?”. Centennial had told me about a statue of the Visitation (our high school) in the V&A, and I had been dying to go see it since then. I’m not much of an art person, but the V&A was absolutely beautiful. The building itself is something to see entirely. After walking around the V&A and probably not even seeing half of the museum, I decided to spend the last hour of museum time at the Natural History Museums. Natural History Museums are my lifeblood. If you know me, you’d know I’ve been an animal freak since the day I laid eyes on a dog. And let me tell you, the Natural History Museum of London? All. Animals. I was in heaven. I felt

like I was a curious eight-year-old child again, going on a field trip for the first time. I also saw dinos. The dinos were pretty cool. I was so amazed at how much I could accomplish in one day. I saw as many landmarks and attractions as I wanted to see, and I got to take my sweet time where I wanted to spend time. I was in no rush to go to one place or the other, and I didn’t feel pressured to speed along in a museum if I didn’t want to. It was one of the most relaxing breaths of fresh air I had experienced on the trip. Travelling alone through the streets of London was, in a word, euphoric. Overall, 10/10. Would explore London alone again. Highly recommend.

A Haiku on the English Sheldon White Cars drive on the left The English call trash “rubbish” They call french fries “chips”

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Culture Catches You Unawares Sam Steuart When thousands of tourists from hundreds of cities assemble to see Big Ben, who has the better view? The eyes of the wanderers or the hands of the clock? The hands get to see a constant rotation of faces as they wind and all of the changes in culture that have lasted throughout time. We all travel to see the world with its various landscapes and monuments but, more importantly, we travel and see each other. No matter the culture, heritage, ethnicity, or background, as a human race we are connected. We share many of the same emotions and we all have families and friends we love but some we prefer to hang out with over others. We have smiles and dishes we each hold dear and traditions unique to us all. Walking down the streets of London is like a time capsule that preserves individuality. Colors are rich, accents are thick, and smiles are never too far between. I went to London with lists of sites and attractions to see, yet once I arrived I

London Review 2017

discovered where the real beauty might actually be. Tourists are attractions within themselves, each possessing their own cultures and delicacies. The world is a puzzle in search of its piece. Each culture is one, and while they may be jigsaw, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re better together no matter where they came from. If London were The Great Gatsby, Big Ben would be God. Big Ben sees all, both the happy and sad. From kisses and Westminster services, to attacks and lost lads. The world is one, large, and connected life, with sprinkles of giggles and oftentimes strife. There is so much to smile about so be not afraid. Let love in and join Big Ben in watching the parade. What I saw in London spoke volumes to me. Not only did it show

me how much diversity there is to appreciate in the world, it taught me just how diverse this city can be. While we may not hear seven languages for every seven steps we take down a sidewalk, people are more unique than just in the way they talk. Our city is diverse; the list never ends. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m so, incredibly thankful for this journey because I see many new trends. The world is beautiful, vast and unmatched. And we are its people, each as unique as the last. And what I learned from that city, which I will always remember, is to never overlook the beauty of the kind of attractions that assemble. Because, when thousands of tourists from hundreds of cities assemble to see Big Ben, which is truly more beautiful?

memory how the spirit of art and motion of existence here made my Rachel Atakpa skin feel like it was real and like it was glowing. Watching the light swirl on top I remember when I first fell in love with you. I couldn’t have been of your skin while I wandered beside you made me feel motionless, older than eleven or twelve, and I but I knew I was moving, everlasthad just read Lisel Mueller’s poem, “Monet Refuses the Operation.” In ingly, as I watched my reflection in the form of a boat gliding through her poem she had asked a doctor your fingers. what she could say “to convince I mostly don’t remember what you / the Houses of Parliament diswe talked about as we walked solve / night after night to become along your bank. But I remember / the fluid dream of the Thames?” laughter The poem made my eyes fill with and blurry tears as I exhaled through the last longing of her distance, “if only you photos and Sean singing could see / how heaven pulls earth “Fly Me to into its arms / and how infinitely the Moon.” the heart expands / to claim this We walked world, blue vapor without end.” past walls Then, and in all the years since, you have wrapped around the frag- of flowers ments of myself to remind me that woven between iron we too can exist fluidly, as a grand rails and and hazy dream that “softens and blurs and banishes edges,” even in a the wind was sweet smelling and cool. As if world that unrelentingly demands to keep a memory, this memory. the rigidity of institutional tradiMemories caught and carried by tion, that demands “a universe / of objects that don’t know each other.” the wind that threatened the flame of candles and the petals of mournThe first time I saw you it was rushed and crowded and I was trying ing, just as quickly. When we walked back over the too hard to listen to a history withbridge to leave you, there was a guiout the poetics of subjectivity. The second time I saw you, my eyes were tarist who felt like he was playing in clouded with mist and my legs were rhythm with the blinking lights in your eyes, and he was, I could feel being carried too fast by wind that it too. I saw trains rushing above only wanted to press itself against buildings and not rest in the space of and knew that there were trains rushing below, that the stars were itself. But the last time I saw you, I remembered how I had fallen in love threatening to fall in jealousy with my enamorment with you, that with you all those years ago. tomorrow I would wake up in the It was the last night of our trip midst of clouds and wonder how this spring. I had just come from I made it up so far, since my feet a dinner with birds, and soft curls were the roots of trees that could of kindness, and pints named after only reach to touch the horizons of artists and sweet-smelling plants. You were the end to a day I thought the earth and sky. We peered over the edge of the bridge and spoke I was going to have spent running, of how easy it would be to slide but was instead spent wanderdown the sides of the lights, to fold ing down crystalline roads. Lying ourselves under your current, we in leaves of grass, committing to

Last Letter to the Thames

remembered where we wanted our ashes scattered in space and how long you might have existed without us had we not seen you as you were at that moment. And I will remember you as that last look before I went back under to stand swaying in laughter on a train that took me home. Before I curled around myself in a bed that would too soon be called stranger. Before I could begin folding myself into what I have to be without the fluid dream of you to call, just

down the line, to carry me home. The first time I fell in love with you a second time was the last time I saw you as I was leaving. You rushed up to remind me that I had been here before, that I, too, dissolved night after night to become the fluid dream of myself. That I was born in a raindrop that found its way back home after what seemed like a millennia but was really only a few turns around the earth. To tell me that you had seen fire and laughter and longing and held rotting flowers laid holy like a shrine upon your skin, but you have always been carving yourself deeper still, to make room for me and all of the sparkling eyes who believed they were in love with you. Who are in love with you, night after night, swaying on their ways home to the sound of your whispers who are remembering you as the last look of an aberration before opening their eyes. Who are dreaming of a new way to return to you, always.

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Nights Under a Light Polluted Sky Fengxue Zhang The city of London at night is a bright, pulsing thing. And I too, have always been a restless being, too obsessed with city lights to ever stay in the comfort of nicely lit hotel rooms. The pavement had an incandescent sheen with remnants of afternoon rain and the warm glow of streetlights graced even the smallest of alleyways. It was as if actual London somehow shut off, and a different city had emerged in its place when the skies go dark. It was a less structured sort of symphony, complete with the quiet hum of passing vehicles, a light show, and the relaxed and encouraging audience of those who have no specific place to be. The air of late March was still a bit frosty, but some of us were always determined to wander. Early in the week one night, a few of us found ourselves headed to Hyde Park close to midnight. Everything was hushed; as we found out â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Europe has an earlier bedtime than the rest of the world. There was only one small gate open, and we slipped into the darkness with the sound of our young American accents and raw laughter disrupting the stillness like marbles being spilled

London Review 2017

onto tile. I expected more lights, to be honest. I had imagined warm streetlights lining the paths and fairy lights in the trees, but instead, everything was quiet, dark, and absent of visitors. However, light pollution lit up the heavens above us and this incredible expanse of a softly burning sky was almost more fitting for London than a sky full of stars. The pond we stumbled upon was a breathtaking sheet of silver, and

between this strange clash of burnt orange and muted silver were hundreds of birds sleeping by the shore or skimming across the water. That was the moment I fell in love, you see. Right then and there, I felt like I had been waiting my whole life to stand there in Hyde Park after dark, basked in light pollution and the gentle fluttering sound of feathers. After that night, I tried going back several times, but the gates were always locked. Yes, some moments pass easier than others, but

this memory of three shadows glowing closer and slightly orange in an empty park will probably stay with me for quite some time. Another night, a group of us slid into a corner booth at a local bar before stumbling back into the city with beer in our bellies and a slight clumsiness in our steps. We took the tube to the London Bridge, drawn towards the promise of adventure or the sight of something spectacular. Despite finding the wrong bridge at first, we followed a small path lit by warm string lights next to the River Thames. The London Bridge shone incredibly bright in the distance, reflected softy in the water below. The streets of London were once again strangely desolate due to the lateness of the hour, but we were too young, too loud, too content to care. The tube stations were closed once we started to feel the cold again, so we were presented with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hail a London cab and dish out our money to get home. We were further away than I thought, and as we watched the city pass by us through the windows, we caught sight of some of the most iconic places in London ebbing against the dark of the night and bright shop windows. I also often went on walks late at night, sometimes with company,

sometimes alone. The neighborhoods of Kensington felt more than safe enough with all their perfectly spherical, miniature bushes and neatly arranged streetlights. The shopping district was always well lit, and the houses flanked the

street like protective walls of an unconventional fortress. I loved the inconsistency of light and shadow apparent as I wandered. I loved how it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter if turned left, or turned right, or walked straight, I would still be gloriously lost.

I feel like people are more brave in the dark; I know I certainly am. And the city of London at night, this glowing, pulsing, remarkable thing, has given me more than just beautiful moments under a light polluted sky.

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If you were a bird, you would be . . . by Maggie Kaemmerer and Fengxue Zhang

London Review 2017

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London Review 2017

Very Important Peasant Carly Newman I hate being scared. I HATE it. I will do just about anything to avoid it, so when I read online about the London Dungeon, my initial reaction was “absolutely no way in heaven or hell.” Yet two days later, I bought a ticket. As much as I hate being scared, I also have a passion for Jack the Ripper. I could have done a walking tour, but I’m not a fan of those. I wanted to experience the haunted history. I wanted to take the VIP journey and be up close with what the people of London were experiencing in the terrifying times of Jack the Ripper, the Black Death, the Great Fire of London, and so many other terrible things, so I decided to face my fear of fear and purchased my ticket. When I first arrive, I am greeted by a dour-looking (or maybe deadlooking?) woman dressed in medieval peasant style garb. “Welcome

to the London Dungeon,” she says in a creepy, monotone voice. I walk inside and pause for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. My ticket is scanned, then I queue for the green-screen photos that come with my Very Important Peasant ticket. I then descend into the London Dungeon. The journey through London’s horrifying past begins with the Descent. We (the 30 or so other people in the group with me) meet the Jester, who takes us deeper into the Dungeon. Note: There was work being done on King Henry VIII’s “Tyrant Boat Ride”, so we didn’t get to enjoy risking our necks there. We continue on to join Guy Fawkes (or at least his head on a pike) and the King’s Guard under Parliament. We learn firsthand (not actually firsthand…maybe firsthead?) from Guy Fawkes what happened to him during his ten days of torture, as well as what happened on the November night in 1605 when Fawkes attempted (and failed)

to blow up Parliament. The King’s Guard and the head of Fawkes tell us the tale and then the blowhard guard tries to prove that Fawkes wouldn’t have succeeded in his plot anyway, as the fuse to the gunpowder stockpile was too wet to be lit by attempting to light said fuse…we barely escape being blown to bits. Next, we meet the Torturer. He tells us all the gory the details of what he did to Guy Fawkes in those ten days and shows us how a few tools of his trade work, such as the Pear of Anguish, the Tongue Tearer, the Thumbscrew, and the Iron Spider. Note: if you don’t already know what these are, I do not recommend looking them up. I still shudder when thinking about them. This is probably the most disturbing part of the Dungeon. After escaping the Torturer and his methods, we travel on to the year 1665 and into the streets of plagueridden London. The Black Death is rife. We meet the Plague Doctor… well, he died of the plague, so we

failing to escape the Great Fire of London

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meet his assistant. This assistant tells us all about the latest advice and invogue cures from 1665, and we learn just what leeches were used for, as well as witness the Plague Doctor’s autopsy. Note: I think the assistant was a bit sick, at least in the head, if not with the plague itself. The group breaks out from the outbreak and meets up with Mrs. Lovett in her pie shop on Fleet Street. She tells us all about her love for meat pies, but we don’t get to learn what her secret ingredient is until we visit Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett’s sister (Sweeney Todd’s assistant) Flora in Sweeney Todd’s barbershop. Mr. Todd is busy with customers, so Flora keeps us busy until Mr. Todd can come to visit. However, Flora spills his little secret before he is finished with his customers, and we make a mass exodus from the shop at 186 Fleet Street. Note: my internal musical geek was so happy; Sweeney Todd is one of my favorite musicals, and Tim Burton’s 2007

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is one of my favorite

movies. The actresses portraying Flora and Mrs. Lovett were spot-on, and though this is the only purely fictional part of the Dungeon, for me it was one of the most realistic. In September 1666, London was burned pretty much to the ground by the Great Fire of London. After our fearful flight from Fleet Street, we end up in the parlor of Lord Mayor Thomas Bludworth on 2 September 1666. The Great Fire has just begun and we have come

London Review 2017

are bound for Drop Dead: Drop Ride to Doom, the vertical free-fall drop ride that is meant to simulate the Long Drop outside of Newgate Prison first used in 1783. First, though, we are imprisoned in Newgate Prison with Jack Sheppard, London’s original escapologist. When Sheppard escapes, he traps us. As we are hanged, I scream, of course. Note: who wouldn’t scream when they’re dropped freely with the assumption that they are dropping to their death? Exhilarating is definitely an understatement when describing Drop Dead. The afterlife, apparently, is set in 1896 in the London Dungeon Tavern. I have a gin cocktail and chat up a barmaid about to be beheaded about the Great Ripper killed Mary Jane Kelly. We Beer Flood of 1814, when 323,000 find ourselves in the Ten Bells Pub, imperial gallons of beer flooded the where all five of Jack the Ripper’s streets of London. At least eight victims procured their customers. people drowned, but the flood was Suddenly, the lights go out and, ruled to be an Act of God and no through the flashes of lightning, we one was punished for their deaths, could see Jack the Ripper! I scream she tells me. Note: I was thoroughly for the first time through the entire entertained by the conversations Dungeon and feel my heart skip a around me and was very impressed few beats. The lights come back on with the actors and actresses. and the barmaid rushes us out of the I was terrified, enthralled, amused, door and into the night. Note: as a and all-around impressed by the huge fan of all that is Jack the RipLondon Dungeon. As someone who per, I was both happy and terrified at is afraid of being afraid, I thoroughly the same time. enjoyed myself and conquered my We are then brought into a court- fear at the same time. Next time I go room, where a few of the people in to London, I want to try the London Bridge Experience, a fully-immersed the group are accused of different horror experience very similar to the crimes (stealing a sheep, pinchLondon Dungeon, but supposedly ing bottoms) and, as conspirators, even scarier. Conquering my fear of the entire group is sentenced to be fear has never been so fun! hanged at Newgate Gallows. We

to the esteemed Lord Mayor to ask him to help us flee. He refuses, at least until the fire begins to consume his own home, at which point we all flee. We find ourselves in 1888 Whitechapel and meet with one Mary Jane Kelly, next. She tells us about Jack the Ripper and his victims. We are sent through the Whitechapel Labyrinth, and we emerge on 9 November 1889, one year since the

patio of a pub in Oxford found the packaging, like me, hilarious. “This one says that, ‘smoking is dangerous to those around you’. Sorry packages. This practice is an atabout that mate, but I’m extremely tempt to make the process of buying a pack of smokes as unpleasant selfish so good thing it doesn’t say anything about tobacco’s effect on as possible so people are psychome!” The bar maid at the Oxford logically less inclined to consume Arms near Camden also found the tobacco. In the UK, health warnings cover 60% of the package and packages to be obnoxious. I asked to buy a pack of smokes (PURELY are usually as scary/disgusting as FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES possible. Below are some examples of typical packages of cigarettes that FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT, MOM), and since I wasn’t familiar would be available for purchase in with English cigarette brands, the the UK (warning, these images are bar maid asked me, “would you like completely nasty): The first time I saw tobacco pack- this one of the baby with tubes in aged in this fashion was on the tube its nose or this one of the dead man in the hospital bed?” in London, when a woman pulled While plain tobacco packaging out a large package of loose tobacco did not seem to deter the smokers I to roll a cigarette. At first I thought met in England (and in fact encourthe black bag depicting a woman coughing blood into a napkin was a aged me, a non-smoker, to buy a creative piece of merch from a local pack to take back as a fun souvenir from my time abroad), studies have emo/punk band. However, I realized my mistake when I stopped in found that switching to this form of tobacco packaging has reduced the a local Tesco to buy a can of beer overall number of smokers in other (big fan of London’s lax open concountries. According to an article tainer laws) and I saw more of this published by the Guardian, “alstrange packaging staring down at though the prevalence of smoking me from behind the cashier. has been in decline in Australia for I decided to start asking the locals what they thought of the UK’s some time, an Australian government report shows that this decline mandate on plain tobacco packaging. One man sitting near me in the has accelerated since the introduc-

Keep Calm, Unless you’re Considering Smoking Hunter Maude Growing up, I was afraid of almost everything. The words “stranger danger” immediately came to mind whenever an adult I didn’t know approached me, I obsessively applied sunscreen to avoid skin cancer (although I was even more afraid of sunburns), and for some reason, I developed an irrational fear of the character Mini-Me from Austin Powers. I was an easy target for anti-smoking organizations like truth.com, who constantly ran programming at my elementary school to educate students on the dangers of tobacco use. I never considered taking even one puff of a cigarette because every time I saw someone smoking one, an image of a burned and diseased lung flashed before my eyes. Fear is a powerful motivator, and fear of the health risks associated with tobacco use helped me stay smoke free for (pretty much) my entire childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. In my experience, organizations with an interest in mitigating the general public’s consumption of tobacco usually try to promote fear in order to dissuade people from smoking. The European government uses this same tactic to prevent the general public from smoking, however the instillation of fear has been taken further in Europe than in the United States though the EU’s passing of a continentwide law that mandates “plain tobacco packaging” for all tobacco products. Plain tobacco packaging is the practice of controlling the way tobacco is packaged by mandating a certain font size, removing all branding (i.e. corporate logos), forcing companies to print large health warnings, and standardizing the color of all tobacco product

Notice the package that says, “smoking causes blindness”. If I smoke cigarettes for a year and go blind, then the impact of these horrible images is completely lost on me. Does that mean that at that point I’m a lost cause? I will be submitting a petition to the English government to mandate braille descriptions of diseased smokers on all tobacco products.

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revert back to brand tobacco packaging? Will plain tobacco packaging spread to other countries such as the United States? How will this affect the overall paradigm of smoking cigarettes for future generations? Personally, I hope to see plain tobacco packaging continue, partially because it is an effective deterrent to prospective smokers, and partially because I find these packages’ over-the-top health warnings to be so damn entertaining. 1 From the article Plain cigarette packaging has arrived, but will it reduce smoking? By Olivia Maynard, published by the Guardian on May 20, 2016.

Water? Mariah Severud An example of another health warning found on plain tobacco packages, or perhaps an example of extreme authoritarian parenting.

tion of standardized packaging. It is a diseased lung as opposed to a reestimated that standardized packag- laxed camel (the camel, by the way, ing is directly responsible (after tak- doesn’t make much sense to me as ing into account other factors such cigarette mascot because I would think smoking cigarettes would be as tax increases) for 25% of the especially rough on one’s throat in 2.2% drop in smoking prevalence observed in the 36 months after the such an arid climate as is the natural habitat of the camel). introduction of standardized packAs this legaging as comislation has pared with the 36 months been in place for over a year before”1. So in now, it will be fact, this form interesting to of tobacco use prevention see whether is working, or not this relatively new particularly with young form of tobacco packaging people looking What I assume kids are like in countries that to pick up the will continue don’t mandate plain tobacco packaging. Oh wait, to be used. habit for the that’s our country. first time. I Now that Engknow elementary school me would land has left the European Union, have been even more terrified of the legal body that originally implecigarettes if, when I encountered a mented the law that mandates plain tobacco packaging, will the English pack of smokes, I saw a picture of

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I am a tourist that comes from a country that loves water. We have water sports, water games, water surrounding us and most importantly, drinking water. Water fountains are everywhere in the States and if you can’t find one a store owner will gladly give you some water without charge. London is not the same way. It was difficult to stay hydrated in London because there were no water fountains anywhere and in some of the restaurants you had to pay for “tap water”. This dehydrated Jayhawk had to seek out water like a hawk seeks out lunch. I do not know how the Londoners stay hydrated. Actually, I am not even sure they need water at all. Maybe they can sustain themselves on tea and bread alone. It would explain why “tap water” is so hard to come by but to all the American tourists, You have been warned!!!

Letter to Pret a Manger Mariela Haug Mora Dear Pret a Manger, Before coming to London my mom warned me, “the food there is very expensive, you won’t be eating very big meals so eat a lot during breakfast!” Well, thank you Pret a Manger, you saved me! On the first day I saw your store on every corner, but I didn’t go in. I first tried your amazing sandwiches and rich fresh squeezed orange juice on our second day, Sunday, in one of your three! shops in Trafalgar Square. From that moment, I knew you were going to be my best friend for the week. Your prosciutto sandwich was healthy, filling, and delicious! You definitely hold true to your word, “freshly prepared in our kitchens every day!” I had my first taste of your food during lunch on Sunday, and after that, there was never a day when I did not stop by your store, one time, two times even up to three times! “I even went there twice in one day! Although your Italian prosciutto sandwich was my all-time favorite, I tried several other sandwiches and they all lived up to my expectations. I have always loved cucumber and mayo sandwiches, but you added Tuna to them and opened my eyes to a whole new lunch option that I can make back home. Not only did I love your baguettes, I also tried your wraps, specifically your duck wrap! It was the first time I had ever tried duck, but I assumed your store would be a great place to try, considering everything I had eaten there tasted awesome. Once again, I wasn’t disappointed! The sauce was great, the cucumbers were juicy, and I now want to eat duck more consistently but have no idea where or

how to cook it. And your fruit, your fresh packets of fruit were a taste from Costa Rica across the Atlantic Ocean, especially your mangos with a lime! I guess my mom didn’t find you when she was in London. My daily lunch, and sometimes dinner, consisted of your fresh-squeezed orange juice a pack of fruit, a hot drink and a baguette or wrap, all for less than 10 pounds. Cheap, convenient and delicious, what more could I ask for? Oh yeah, your restaurant also helps charity. Everything you have in your stores is fresh for us to eat, but you don’t throw leftovers in the trash. Thank you Pret, for taking them to charity and providing food for those who need it. I will definitely miss my daily runs into your stores, your delicious sandwiches and fresh orange juice, your duck wraps with their tasty sauce and your mango slices ready

for me to eat then and there. Thank you Pret for helping me stay on budget while eating delicious food! Waiting for my next trip to London to eat some more, Mariela Haug

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The Boy Who Licked Daniel Jalilpoor Check it out. One time we’re all at the Old Vic theatre watching

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, starring Daniel Radcliffe –

and other actors and actresses of note, probably – and yada yada yada we end up in line outside the theatre waiting to meet Rosencrantz himself! So the staff finally let the first wave crash against the meek separating line between fanatic and actor in the lobby, and they start laying down the ground rules: no video recordings, stay behind the divider, have a pen ready for autographs, etc. As we’re waiting for the man of the hour to grace us with his presence, my eyes start to wander. Turns out there was a stack of copies of the play unattended in the nearby podium. I innocently pick one up to satisfy my curiosity and to pass the time. I asked the staff what was the deal with this stack, but they were too preoccupied with their small talk so they ignored me. So I decided I’d ask Dan to sign the book for me. I mean, why not? Clearly the staff didn’t care about it. Plus I’m sure they have loads of them simply collecting dust without any distinguishing markings or scribblings on the inside. To solidify my ownership of my newly acquired property, I did what any-

one would do: I licked the inside of the cover. Nothing gross or sloppy or sexual. I was following daycare playground rules. Just marking my territory like a puppy was all I did. Well, while this magical side quest was ending, I looked up to see Dan in front of me as he grabbed the open book. Exactly on the spot my tongue stamped my mark. In

Rozencrantz & Gildenthorn Reaction Sheldon White Oh how it made me feel, As though I am meant to create an impact Before I die, for death soon approaches, I don’t want to meander through others deeds, Until eventually I reach my demise Oh how it made me wish Wish upon all wishes That I could contribute, participate, enlighten Oh how I wish to live

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a sense, then, I licked Daniel Radcliffe. If only the girl bouncing and crying next to me knew. The poor girl damn nearly had a heart attack when Dan put the letter she wrote him in his pocket and told her he’d read it later. She couldn’t even keep my phone still when taking my picture with Dan! Some people act like such weirdos around celebrities.

Exits & Entrances / Mud & Mirrors Centennial Clogston I have never really cared for Shakespeare. A statement like that is sacrilegious for an English major, but it’s true nonetheless. I understand his importance for English literature, but I haven’t ever been able to make myself interested. I’ve always found other things more engaging, and it seems that enough people worship the man that I don’t need to do so as well. Despite all that, I found myself going to two different Shakespeare-related plays while I was in London: a modern interpretation A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an existentialist take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet by Tom Stoppard.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is perhaps the most well known Shakespeare play, or at least it is the most accessible for a range of audiences. It is the play most often performed at schools, as a simple comedy. Ask any student and they most likely can recite a line or two. However, Joe HillGibbins questions the traditional simplicity of the play and turns the light-hearted dream into something much more dark and complex. At its heart, this is a twisted play about anxiety, manipulation, and distrust-not a romantic comedy with fairies and a happy ending. Hill-Gibbins sets the tone for the play before the actors even walk on stage at the Young Vic. The stage is covered in mud. There is no curtain, or elaborate set design. Instead, at the back of the stage there is only a floor to ceiling mirror. While the audience waits for the play to start, they see their own faces staring back. When the actors come out, the lovers are

all wearing brightly colored, modern linens. By the end of the play, they are covered head to toe in dirt--their brightly colored clothing barely visible under the mud. Our humorous, smiling lovers have turned to solemnity, covered in earth. The mirror, which reflected our own faces and the characters’ actions, is slowly covered with black paint at the end of the play. Titania searches for the last pieces of uncovered mirror as it is slowly painted over, standing on her toes and crouching down to her knees to get that last glimpse of reflection before the black overcomes it. This production grounds a play that is so often taken lightly, and reflects our own anxieties through a fantastic world of fairies and nightmares.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, originally written in 1966 by

Tom Stoppard, remains as original and captivating as it was fifty years ago. The play follows the minor characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet as they try to grapple with the irrationality of their situation. This play is a staple

of absurdism and existentialism, and the absurdity of the 2017 production directed by David Leveaux

is perhaps stretched even further for people of my generation. Daniel Radcliffe, star of the Harry Potter movie franchise, plays one of the lead characters, Rosencrantz (or is it Guildenstern?). Seeing my magical, childhood hero playing the role of a hapless, existential character adds another layer of interest to an already complex play. After reading the play last semester for an English class, seeing it onstage in London starring a nostalgic childhood favorite felt like coming full circle. The characters try, and fail, to remember which one of them is Rosencrantz and which one is Guildenstern. They flip a coin that defies probability. They are caught up in a chaotic drama that is always one step ahead of them. They meet a group of players (or possibly prostitutes, or pirates, or all of the above) that seem to be simultaneously deranged and omniscient. While explaining the purpose of the players, the leader states, “We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” The preoccupation of exits and entrances throughout the play forces the audience to think about issues of performance, identity, death, and our place in the world, if we have one. This play asks many questions and offers few answers in return, but perhaps it’s the questions that matter more in the end anyway. I still don’t care much for Shakespeare, it’s become a principle at this point. But seeing these productions, the imagination and inspiration that came from working with Shakespeare’s original texts, made me appreciate the impact that Shakespeare had on the creative world more than any class has.

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Traversing the Thames Bridgette Befort During my first trip to London on the British Summer Institute (BSI), I developed a special affinity for bridges. One of my BSI colleagues found it amusing that the word “bridge” is in my name (Bridgette) and began documenting my experiences with the numerous English and Scottish bridges throughout the trip. She flooded Facebook with pictures of me on the latest bridge I had crossed, captioned with such terms as “London Bridgette” or “Jubilee Bridgette.” This “passion” for bridges I developed on the BSI necessitated that one of my first activities when revisiting London was to cross all of my favorite London bridges. This is why, upon arrival in London, I found myself traversing eight of London’s major bridges in the span of ninety minutes, dragging along a slightly unenthusiastic Erin Brady. Erin and I had just finished up our Lion King experience Sunday afternoon and were still humming the “Circle of Life” when I had a brilliant idea. Instead of returning to the Grange-Strathmore for an early Sunday night in, we would take a ride on the London Eye. Acting upon this idea found us at our first bridge of the night, Westminster Bridge, which we had cross to reach the Eye on the south side of the Thames. This short jaunt across the Westminster Bridge was an experience in and of itself as the bridge in the evening provides a stunning view of Parliament, the Eye, and other surrounding buildings glowing against the river. We found out the Eye had already closed by the time we got there, but, inspired by the enjoyable Westminster Bridge experience, we walked east past the Eye on the south side of the Thames to cross the Jubilee Bridge, think-

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ing we would head back to our Kensington hotel after crossing. It was after trying and failing to take good pictures of Parliament around the suspension lines of the Jubilee Bridge that I had the grand idea of seeing the Tower Bridge in all its evening glory and getting there by zigzagging across all of the walkable bridges between the Jubilee and Tower Bridges. This seemed an excellent tour of London. From the north side of the Jubilee Bridge we scurried east until we hit the Waterloo Bridge and walked across, glimpsing the National Theater, and then kept scurrying east towards the Blackfriars Bridge. Unfortunately, being on both bridges does not allow views of their prettily painted supporting arches, so these crossings were not very interesting experiences. It was at the south side of the Blackfriars Bridge

I realized it was a much greater distance between the Jubilee and Tower bridges than I remembered, but we had started the trek and saw no point in stopping without reaching the end goal. To buoy us on our journey, though, we stopped for a quick pint at the Blackfriars Pub, located on the site of a former Dominican monastery, a fact which is reflected in the décor. Emerging with a slightly mellowed attitude from the pub, we continued the march east on a pedestrian unfriendly road towards the Millennium Bridge. However, the danger of London highways was worth the vision of the looming moonlit St. Paul’s Cathedral from the unusually empty Millennium Bridge. After noting the smokestack of the Tate Modern on the south side of the Thames, we ended up at Southwark Bridge. I honestly can’t remember

Not Yet Fallen Rachel Atakpa Cildo Meireles, Babel, 2001, Tate Modern

much about Southwark Bridge as right then my feet started aching, and I began to regret my earlier enthusiasm for walking across every bridge. This regret morphed to disappointment upon encountering the infamous London Bridge which will forever remain a major letdown. For all of the legend surrounding the London Bridge, it is certainly nothing special. Due to discouraging circumstances, at this point our feet really hurt, we needed to find a bathroom, and we were looking around for the nearest Tube station. But then came the bridge which made up for all of the zigs and zags of the evening: the iconic and picturesque Tower Bridge, as much a symbol of London as the Thames. Tower Bridge’s majestic spires are beautiful and colorful and seem like they come out of a fairytale, which makes it easy to forget that it is also a functioning drawbridge, allowing ships to proceed further into London for the sake of city’s business interests. Not only was the Tower Bridge

a sight to see, but the approach from the south side of the Thames provided a vision of the spooky Tower of London as we crossed the river for the final time that evening. Bridges have been a part of London since the city’s establishment in 50 AD by Roman invaders. Although the original Roman bridges have long since disappeared, they have been replaced by around 33 bridges spanning the Thames in the London area alone (there are around 200 bridges spanning the entire river). Although we traversed only a few of the bridges in London, my passion for bridges was satisfied for the week we were in London. However, my enjoyment and appreciation of British bridges will never stay suppressed; and even though crossing eight bridges seemed like crossing all of the bridges in London at the time, there were many London bridges I have yet to cross, meaning it is already time for another trip back.

I peer up at the Tower of Babel as it eats my radio waves and returns them to me in a cacophonic susurrus, telling of time I claim in mourning and reject in life. I wonder why there are no yellow skyscrapers, as a hello and thank you to the sun for filing endless panels of windows with panels that look like fire when the light sits low in the east and the west. If this statue of radios were to topple upon me, what would my body look like in the rubble, no matter? I do not want garish art, the world is shocking enough without it bring reproduced in vanity.

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An Incomplete List of the “L’s” I took in London Katie Phalen The London Review was an amazing experience that I’ll never forget. But not all of it was rainbows and butterflies. Here is a list of all the bad things that happened to me during the week. Despite these unfortunate incidents, the London Review was still without a doubt one of the greatest weeks of my life and I would go back and do it all over again in a heartbeat! 1. Somehow forgetting to eat for several hours on the first day and nearly passing out from low blood sugar while waiting for my food at a restaurant. I resulted to eating a couple sugar cubes and felt much better. 2. Sitting at Gordan’s for almost two hours while drops of water consistently fell from the ceiling and onto my forehead once every few minutes. Kate and Mary-Kate laughed at me about this for literally the entire week. 3. Spilling wine all over my purse/in my purse at Phantom of the Opera and having to use all of Bridget’s tissues to clean it up because the bathroom had no paper towels. 4. Being super awkward when we met Daniel Radcliffe and accidentally handing him a pen when he reached out to shake my hand. 5. Almost getting hit by a double-decker bus in Oxford because I didn’t know which direction the cars were coming from. 6. Almost getting hit by cars throughout most of the week because I still somehow never learned which direction they were coming from.

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Wednesday March 22 Westminster Hanna Strader The morning was spent deep in the chambers of Westminster Abbey. Until I heard about Poet’s Corner, I hadn’t planned on going. Cathedrals are beautiful, but if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. I was wrong. I threaded between tourists and priests, an audio tour guide pressed to my ear as I stared dumbly at English royalty. To hype myself up for the trip, I binge watched The Crown the week before our flight. I held no interest in the kings and queens of Britain until then, and I felt truly awestruck to stand in the place where coronations and weddings were historically recorded. I remember being at the foot of the altar with trembling hands, one foot on the bottommost stair and thinking that every great ruler of England had taken those steps before, had glided down the long hall I’d just walked and taken a seat before that altar. Poet’s corner was astounding. I stood on Dickens’ grave and stared up at Handel’s. My feet parted to reveal Tennyson’s marker as I stared at the tomb where Chaucer lay. Memorials to Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll and the Bronte sisters adorned the walls around me. Eventually, it was time to go. We left with the British Library in mind, though we would actually end up at King’s Cross, looking around like a couple of tourists for Platform 9 ¾. As Maggie looked up which tube stop would be ours, my eyes scanned Parliament, enraptured yet again by its intimidating structure and the grandeur of its presence. When we had taken the tour with Angie a few days earlier, the gates had been closed. It was a weekend. But that morning, a Wednesday at 12:30, the gates stood wide with

four police officers stationed near the barricades. It was raining. This is important because it’s what drew me to slow my pace and look at each of these officers in turn. They wore rain jackets, but held no umbrellas. I remember feeling bad, wondering how many days a year they stood beneath incessant pitter-patter of raindrops, rubbing their hands together and wishing for nothing more than a hot cup of tea in the comfort of their own homes. They didn’t seem to mind, though. They stood talking to their partners, laughing and joking and indulging in photographs with tourists. The rain would bounce again the waterproof fabric of their hats and slide down in cartoonishly large droplets, like those big water orbs in Bug’s Life. Each of them seemed happy. One of them would die two hours later. I was waiting in line for a photo at King’s Cross when Maggie’s mom texted her with the news. I knew immediately I had to contact my own mom: this was her biggest fear. As an only child, my mom has understandable reservations about me being abroad without her. As attacks happened in Berlin and Paris, my mom clenched her fists and shot me looks out of the corner of her eye as if to say, “You really have to do it? You have to go over there?” London hadn’t had a terrorist attack in years, but that didn’t matter. My proximity and the fact that she’d been building this up in her mind ever since I turned in my paperwork to go to London would send her over the edge. I assured her that I was okay, but I didn’t know what was happening. The service on my phone was taking too long and all the reports seemed to vary. There had been a ferry accident. No, it was a car. There were guns. No, one gun, fired by police at a man wielding a knife. Theresa May was getting into a Jaguar at the time. No, she was in the building. Parliament was sus-

pended. A policeman had died. Everything suddenly became very personal. Just two hours before, I had stood in that exact spot where tragedy suddenly struck. I looked each of those policemen in the face, wondering what was going through their minds in those moments they stood huddled in the cold, wet English weather. That man was not a number to me. He wasn’t a casualty or a photograph in the paper. He had been standing three feet away, laughing at a joke his companion made and shifting his weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to stay comfortable. He was a living, breathing, animated person I took notice of, and in the matter of a few hours that was changed forever. He was dead. In the long run, this attack was minor. Dozens of people injured, a few deaths, but no bombs or structural damage. No mass carnage. Just a man in a car with a knife, not even on the radar as a current terror threat. The event will fade. It wasn’t significant enough to make a longlasting impact in the minds of anyone. It wasn’t two identical towers tumbling to the ground and killing thousands. It wasn’t an explosion on the tube or a mass shooting at a community center. The British held their memorials, spoke of the tragedy, held their heads high and moved on. Though I never felt fear during my trip, I did feel the dark tendrils of melancholy as I tried to understand the significance of what had just happened. In the days that followed, The Evening Standard printed countless photos of the officer who died. I recognized him. As those papers lay littered on tube seats, forgotten in haste as the voice overhead begged of passengers to mind the gap, I saw that man in my mind’s eye. Those papers will be recycled and his image will slowly disappear, but I’ll remember it with clarity for the rest of my life.

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Where were you when you heard about the attack at Westminster? Kelly Werther Kelly Werther Daniel, Sam, and I had been at Stonehenge all morning, and I didn’t hear about the attack until we were back in Kensington around 2:30pm. We finally got wifi, and I remember receiving an influx of notifications from our Groupme and from CNN about the attack. It was hard to believe at first that something like this actually happened while we were in London. You hear about things like this, and they usually happen so far away from you. It definitely puts everything into perspective, and made me realize that being a fortunate American college student doesn’t protect me from the terror in the world. I was lucky to have been in Salisbury, so far from the scene of the madness. Caroline Newman I was on the train heading back from Cardiff with no cell service and limited WiFi. When I suddenly had connection, I had frantic missed texts and Facebook and GroupMe messages asking where I was and if I was okay. I had no idea what had happened until I found a breaking news article online. It was terrifying to know that something so horrible had happened in the place where I had been not even twenty-four hours prior. I'm thankful that not only was I away from the area, but most of our group was as well and none of us were involved. Katherine Schroeder I was in the Imperial War Museum when I heard a group of students, probably only ten or twelve years old, shouting about an attack on Westminster Bridge. I didn't even know the details at that point, but I immediately ducked into a corner 64

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to call my family and tell them I was safe from whatever was happening. I actually managed to reach my mom and grandma before the news of the attack itself did, so they didn't even get the chance to worry whether I was involved. The museum felt very different after that point. All the images and relics of violence took on a new light with the knowledge that such a horrific act was happening only a mile from where I was and that, had our plans been just a little different, any of us could have been in harm's way. In the end, all I can do is be grateful that we weren't. Sheldon White I was in Germany, kickin' it. Margaret Williams Hannah and I had just been at Westminster Abbey about two hours before the attack. When I heard about the attack, we were waiting in line at Kings Cross to get our pictures taken at Platform 9 3/4. I actually heard about it from my mom, who was back in the states. She had texted and called me to make sure that I was okay. She later told me that the seven minutes spent waiting for me to respond were the longest of her life. I have no sense of my own mortality, so I can't recall a moment that I felt unsafe after hearing about the attack. All I could think about was how much worse something like that could have been in the U.S. where anyone can own a gun. Owen Toepfer Surprisingly, my friends and family in the States knew about it before I did. A group of us were in Canterbury that day, and when we stopped at a pub for lunch and gained WiFi access, my phone ex-

ploded with messages from family, friends, and acquaintances asking me if I was okay. I was equally confused as alarmed, and someone at the table immediately mentioned the attack, but at that time very little was known about it. I remember feeling shocked, but also safe. It was eye-opening to compare the differences in reporting from American and British news outlets. The American agencies made quite the spectacle about it; those in England waited for correct information before reporting the facts. Daniel Jalilpoor Well. Sam, Kelly, and I had just sat down in a pizza joint for a late lunch after returning from Stonehenge. My phone connected to the wi-fi while we were looking over the menu, and I received a surge of BBC News notifications covering the whole ordeal. Very rude of an attack to occur during my sourdough pizza chow time, frankly. Katie Bernard I was with a group of other students in Canterbury, far from the drama. While Owen mentioned finding out while sitting at a local pub for lunch I somehow missed the news until we were standing on the train platform to head back to London. Thinking back I'm shocked at my own reaction. I didn't think much of it besides "huh, it's interesting that we're in London for this." It wasn't until messages began pouring into the groupme from Mary telling us to contact our parents that I fully realized what had happened. Thinking back my reaction is a pretty sad commentary on current events. Horrifying violence has become enough of a norm in our world that I'm no longer shocked by it. This forced me to think about the differences between common and normal. Violence and destruction may become common but I

need to be vigilant in not perceiving them as normal.

meandering from Korean ceramics something like this happens, it is a to the Rosetta Stone, I connected stunning testament of what humans to WiFi and got the deluge of noti- are capable of when united. Maggie Kaemmerer fications from the GroupMe, news I, too, was in Canterbury at the alerts, and family. Shortly after, Erin Brady time. Like Katie, I missed the initial there were some muted, vague anBridgette and I were at the British wave of news in the pub. Partly be- nouncements over the loudspeaker Museum frantically looking for a cause I was enjoying my steak and shortly after--even the employees bathroom after we had lunch at the ale pie way too much, and partly seemed confused about it. Other Museum Tavern. After we finally because I was trying to...how do than that, things were just as they found one we sat for a bit to conI put it lightly..."explain" to my were before. I felt just as safe in nect to the museum's WiFi, and we dad how Apple Pay verification London as I would have in the both had numerous notifications worked. I was too wrapped up in States. asking if we were okay. At the time, the fun and feasts of Canterbury to I was confused as to why my entire pay any mind to CNN or Twitter Sean Jesse family was asking if I was okay, so until we had to kill some time wait- I was luckily on the train leaving I looked at the news and saw so ing for our train back to London. London for Canterbury. I kept get- many stories on the recent attack I was one of the lucky few in the ting texts from people asking if I on Westminster. My heart started group who had data, so I and my was okay. Then I checked my twitracing because we had been in that nonexistent filter thought a train ter feed and saw the news. area not even an hour before it station was a good time to not-sohappened. Then began the process quietly inform the group: "Hey did Taylor Avery of messaging everyone and letting you guys see there was an attack When I heard about the attack at our group know that we were okay, on Westminster Bridge?". Oops. I Westminster I was in a pub called which took probably half an hour. texted my parents, updated Mary to "The Dolphin" in Canterburry. I Most of that was spent calming tell her we were all safe, got on the believe we had just ordered and Bridgette's mother and my grandtrain, and all was well. because there was WiFi someone mother down. After the whole orlooked at their phone and stated deal was finished, we continued on Katherine Phalen that there had been a shooting near our way through the museum with Mariah, Fengxue and I were stand- Parliament. I did not realize the heavy thoughts of what could have ing on the Millennium Bridge gravity of the situation until we happened to us had we stayed in and walking towards St. Paul's were on our way back to London that area longer, and how long we Cathedral when we saw a police would have been kept there, too, and the news sources were giving with possibly no service to contact boat speed down the Thames in more information. They were callanyone. I was very glad to be safely the direction of Parliament. We all ing it a terrorist attack. How fast away from the chaos I'm sure was commented on how strange it was the police resolved the situation going on of that day. to see a police boat in such a hurry and how resilient everyone seemed and wondered where it could be go- to be amazed me, and whenever ing. Once we crossed the bridge, we started getting messages from the Pigeons and Pelicans Groupme that we needed to stay Carly Newman away from the Westminster area, which was a little unsettling conBirds are abundant in the parks of Lonsidering we had just been there no don; everything from pigeons to pelicans. more than 2 hours earlier. It wasn't Near Duck Island in St. James’s Park, until later that evening at dinner a troupe of pelicans live. These famous when I found out the details of the Feng and I with the pelicans of residents were introduced to the park in St. James’s Park attack. 1664. They were a gift from the Russian ambassador. And now they preside over the park perched on their faCentennial Clogston vorite rocks in the center of St. James’s Park Lake. These majestic fowl When the attack on Westminster rule over the city from their park and dare all to compete, but none happened, I was at the British ever will. Museum. Somewhere in between

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Communion in Westminster Katie Phalen I was heading towards the exit of Westminster Abbey after spending the morning touring it. As I was leaving, a scene near the front of the nave caught my eye. It looked as though a service was about to start. A pastor dressed in extravagant white and red robes was making his way to the front of the nave where an alter was set up. People were filing into the Abbey when a man caught me staring at what was going on. Based on the way he was dressed, I could tell that he was another pastor at the Abbey. He asked if I would like to join the service. There was much more on my list of things I had in mind to do that day, and I was a little worried about time. But what other opportunity in my life would I get to take communion in one of the most beautiful, historic, and famous churches in the world? I accepted his offer, and he lead me up towards the front of the nave, sat me next to a young family of four, and handed me a program. The pastor lead us in a few prayers, blessed the wine and wafers, and then we started filing towards the very front of the nave to take communion. As I was waiting for my turn, I noticed that I stood just 10 or 15 feet away from where both Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin were buried and I was suddenly hit with an awareness of the significance of the place I was in. The situation was so surreal. I looked around and took in the history, beautiful architecture, and sacred atmosphere that surrounded me. I’d studied Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in almost every biology class I had taken at KU, and learned Newton’s laws of motion countless times. Queen

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Elizabeth I was buried just across the Abbey from where I was standing. Charles Dickens was buried in another corner of the Abbey, surrounded by several other literary icons. These moments of silent mediation while I participated in the communion service were just what I needed to fully appreciate Westminster Abbey for all that it was. Looking back on the week, it was one of my favorite moments of the

trip. It really put everything into perspective for me. In America, we lack in a lot of ways the history and tradition that Europe has built over the course of several centuries. Leaving the Abbey that day, it put everything into a new perspective for me as I continued to see countless historical sites throughout the week. In the middle of communion at Westminster, I realized just how amazing it was to be standing in the spot I was in.

The Abbey in the Aftermath Sean Jesse On the Wednesday of March 22nd, many of our group members received phone calls and texts from our loved ones, distressed and eager to inquire of our safety. That was the day of the Westminster terror attack, in which five civilians were killed and nearly 50 injured. I was fortunate enough to be in Canterbury that day, and our group was very lucky to not have had anyone near the scene of the attack when it happened. However, there was still heavy concern from our friends and family back home. I received calls and texts from people who had not talked to me for a long time. Being in a city where an attack of global impact occurred was definitely powerful. The next day, after the chaos around Westminster had settled, I decided to visit the site of the attack. When I walked out of the

St. James Park tube station towards parliament, I saw from a distance that I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be able to get very close. Almost all of the area from Westminster Abbey to the Thames was partitioned by police tape. Each opening had multiple city police in their neon yellow jackets, checking the credentials of the members of parliament that passed by. Walking around the border, there was a sense of uneasiness, yet it was masked by an air of resilience that London is famous for. A testament to this is the Churchill war rooms, which I visited during my walk around the area. The museum preserves the underground bunker rooms where Winston Churchill and other intelligence officials operated during World War II. For some of that time, the rooms served as shelter during The Blitz, a period during 1940 and 1941 where London was bombed severely by the Nazis. Despite losing over 40,000 civilians during the shelling, London stood strong, and Great Britain went on

the win the war. After leaving the war rooms, I made my way over to Westminster Abbey for Evensong, a choral worship service. Being a fractured Christian, I had distanced myself from religion, and had not â&#x20AC;&#x153;gone to churchâ&#x20AC;? for a number of years. Yet as soon as I stepped under the canopy fit for the gods that is The Abbey, I knew that it was a special place. The voices of the choir echoed from every crevice of stone and shot back into my ears with an abandon that knew no creed. Regardless of our spiritual tendencies, everyone in the cathedral during the service was bound by a love for humanity. As I looked around, I saw tears flowing as a prayer was said for the fallen, and goosebumps rose with the hairs on the back of my neck. London is a city of complexity. Londoners take time to grieve, but then get right back up and keep on moving.

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The Imperial War (and Maybe Peace) Museum Kate Schroeder For anyone who knows the type of history nerd that I am, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that I made two visits to the Imperial War Museum. After all, I didn’t spend an entire semester and a half taking history classes about this era for nothing. However, my two trips could not have been more different. As I quickly learned on my first visit, this museum does not fit the traditional mold of cases upon cases of artifacts accompanied by neat, informative plaques. Rather, I found its exhibits more focused on storytelling and experience. The space itself reflected

in particular, a temporary exhibit entitled “War of Terror,” was set up as something of an art installation, where empty photographs and censored documents created a cold, impersonal mood that reflected the creator’s argument concerning the treatment of prisoners suspected of terror. The experience of the museum could even become overwhelming at times, as the violence and suffering became very alive and frightening. But maybe that’s what we all need – a reminder that horrific events such as war and genocide are not theoretical; they do not exist merely in

its subject matter in various ways. The Holocaust exhibit gradually dimmed lights and removed color from the surroundings as we walked deeper into the exhibit. In World War I, we walked alongside projected moving shadows of soldiers in a trench, accompanied by sounds of artillery fire. One gallery

objects and artifacts, but in the lives of their victims. By Saturday, I had decided that I needed to go back. My first visit, though extensive, ended up getting cut short, and I felt that there was too much that I had missed. So, under a sunny sky on our last day in London, I made my way

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across the city to the Imperial War Museum – again. In the few days since I had last visited, the museum had added a new temporary exhibit entitled “People Power: Fighting for Peace.” It covered the history of movements against war, starting with the conscientious objectors of World Wars I and II, nuclear disarmament protests, and demonstrations against the war in Iraq. After deciding I had made satisfactory progress toward the impossible goal of seeing everything there was to see, I left the museum to explore the park surrounding the building. There, I noticed a sign pointing me toward something called the Tibetan Peace Garden. Part of me scoffed at the irony of a peace garden at a war museum, but the larger part

of me was curious. I made my way into the garden and found a pillar with a striking message from the Dalai Lama, who opened and consecrated the site in 1999. It read, “We human beings are passing through a crucial period in our development. Conflicts and mistrust have plagued the past century, which has brought immeasurable human suffering and environmental destruction. It is in the interests of all of us on this planet that we make a joint effort to turn the next century into an era of peace

and harmony. May this peace garden become a monument to the courage of the Tibetan people and their commitment to peace. May it remain as a symbol to remind us that human survival depends on living in harmony and always choosing the path of non-violence in resolving our differences.”

Sitting in the garden was a muchneeded quiet moment. It gave me time to reflect and think about the questions that both of my visits had left in my mind. I’m not sure I got any answers, but that small, simple experience was by far worth both trips.

Winston Churchill Quotes: Bridgette Befort My favorite part and biggest takeaway from the “Imperial War Museum: Churchill’s War Rooms”, were the inspiring, and often amusing, remarks of Sir Winston Churchill. My personal favorite quote is: “We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” But here are some others to enjoy: “I am a man of simple tastes – I am quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.” “Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.” “It is pretty tough to reshape human society in an afterdinner speech.” “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” “Whatever else they may say of me as a soldier, at least nobody can say that I failed to display a…proper appreciation of the virtues of alcohol.” “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.” “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

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perseverance erupted across the city. There Kate Poulose were even stickers reading “hope not hate” plasI have always been, and will altered all around. When ways be, a planner. I find comfort I watched the news the in knowing exactly what is going to following morning, the happen. Before going on the London mayor implored that naReview, I was told to let London tives and visitors alike find me – to happen upon the inter- must not succumb to esting places and interesting people fear, but instead, we must that London has to offer rather than live in hope. He urged meticulously planning it out. I was the public that the best happily spontaneous on this trip way to honor the victims and it was unbelievably cathartic. is to not be terrorized, Far away were the responsibilities but to rise up, march on, of schoolwork and studying for the and live life as usual. AfMCAT. I got to live in the moment, ter a moment of silence and in a word, it felt great. in remembrance of those Throughout my week in London, who lost their lives, it I became a part of this great city. was announced that there London was flowing through my would be a candlelight veins and I was flowing through its, vigil for them to be held so when the terror attack occurred that evening in Trafalgar Square. a special bond was formed between Immediately, I knew what I was this great city and myself. Upon doing that evening. learning of the attacks, a panic set When I arrived at Trafalgar in wondering if everyone in the Square I was overcome with a sense group was okay, it could have been of peace. Scores of people had come any one of us on that bridge, yet by together to honor those affected by some sort of grace, it wasn’t and we the attack. Even though I had only were all happy and safe. called London home for a few short What I noticed most about this days, I felt like I belonged there, event was not the attack itself, but forever tied to this city because the response. Messages of hope and of this fateful event. I saw many

Candlelight Vigil

remarkable things at this vigil, the first of which was a family with two young children whose foreheads shone bright with face-paint that read “peace,” and their parents’ foreheads read “freedom.” What an amazing lesson these parents were instilling in their children – in the face of violence; bring peace, speak up. As I inched my way to the front of the crowd, I came across a group of men in bright blue shirts, the

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backs of which read â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am a Muslim, ask me anythingâ&#x20AC;? engaging in deep conversation with those surrounding them. Islamophobia has plagued so many places in our world, it was inspiring to see the courage of these men to show the world that Islam is a religion of peace and that the perpetrators of attacks are far from the majority. I had noticed that the sea of people was dotted with neon yellow coats and some bright blue vests and baseball caps. I knew the neon yellow marked the police officers and figured that the blue was some sort of police but with a closer look I realized that the people in the blue vests and hats were actually response pastors. What an incredible thing, healing in the wake of terrible sadness. It was evident that this vigil was not about race nor creed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it was about simple humanity and the hope we can find within each other. I believe that the terror attack only brought Londoners together in recognition that fear and hatred will not prevail. It was an exceptionally moving event to be a part of and I will always be grateful to have experienced it.

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Wolkenbügel Rachel Atakpa The Design Museum stands rather nondescriptly at the forefront of a green, winding park in the south of Kensington. Once you emerge from the sliding glass doors of the entrance and into the sweeping foyer, you are greeted by light wood, natural light, and vaulted ceilings. Modern and minimalist with an appropriately clean design. There were two exhibitions when I went to visit this spring – “Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World,” and “Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution.” Both of the exhibitions were architecture and design centered, but I decided to visit “Imagine Moscow” because learning to understand architecture as revolutionary propaganda seemed like a necessary layer to add to my conscious building. On display in “Imagine Moscow” were six major unfinished projects of the Soviet Union. Each of the projects introduced “a theme relevant to life and ideology in the Soviet Union: collectivization, urban planning, aviation, communication, industrialization, communal living and recreation.”1 The first project of the exhibition was the Cloud Iron: or, Wolkenbügel – a German word that literally translates to “hanger for the clouds.” The five unfinished projects that followed were the Lenin Institute, Health Factory, Communal House, Commissariat of Heavy Industry, Palace of the Soviets, and the Lenin Mausoleum. Each of the projects had their own designers, histories, and nuances that spoke to various aspects of early Soviet ideology, but, in many ways, the hanger for the clouds spoke most plainly to the glory, wonder, and imagination of early Soviet people trying to architect a utopian society. Furthermore, its

subtitle in the exhibition, “Colonizing the Sky,” spoke to the problematics of their grandiose vision. “Hey, you! Heaven! Off with your hat! I am Coming!” —Vladimir Mayakovsky Of his creation, the Cloud Iron, El Lissitzky wrote that “the ecstatic period of the Revolution is over. Now it’s the working day – but art is holiday. And we want art back, the new art of architecture.”2 After the October Revolution ended in 1918, rapid expansion in Moscow took place, and so early Soviet architecture emerged out of necessity. Primarily, a necessity for architectural designs that more effectively utilized space for a greater volume of commuting industrial workers. Lissitzky’s Cloud Iron itself was to function as a horizontal skyscraper that mediated the space between workspace and transportation. However, in these designs of utility, it became clear that imaginative and abstract art and architectural designs were to become the formal language of their revolutionary era. Suprematism, which asserts a fourth dimension in architecture so as to “imply a sensation of levitation that allowed the viewer to attain a higher level of consciousness”3 was quickly adopted as one of the central schools of architectural thought. In other words, the industry of the new worker would build the people up to the sky. And in the industrious colonization of the sky, industry would become “the new nature.” There is much to say about the Marxism, socialism, and communism. About what led Soviet revolutionaries to believe that collective industry, as opposed to collective pastoralism, was the answer to the

subjugation of the worker. Much to say about why they believed that the Palace of the Soviets, with Lenin’s likeness caught in the clouds towering above Moscow, could herald collectivism, with his forwardpointing finger caught adrift in what would have been the newly colonized sky. And in all of this that ran up against me as I stood in the museum and sketched the grandiose bones of unfinished Soviet architecture projects, I found that I kept returning to the Cloud Iron. The industrialization of nature, the industrialization of collectivism and of humanity. A place for clouds to hang, as if the sky wasn’t enough. This is not solely a critique of Lissitzky, he and his design act as a representative part of the whole. But in his design and the designs of the five other respective architects that followed, I saw that in their imagination – the imagination of the revolutionary Soviet – they forgot the strain of history. That collectivism cannot be predicated on conquest. That the clouds will rise and fall of their own, in rain

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and fog and dew and frost and sepulchres of sunlight. That the clouds will not allow us to reach them uncorrupted if we rise while on the back of an industry of conquest, with seized but unchecked means of production. That our ribs are made of dust or, at the very least, our bare feet have been covered in it as we have traversed for good or evil across all time beneath the rotation of the sky as marked by the sun behind the clouds. That if we are to build our bodies so that they can balance on the imposing finger of fate, balance in a direction pointed toward revolutionary change, we cannot forget how soundly our dust covered feet are fitted to the earth. In all of this, I was reminded of the comfort of the revolutionary genre of afrofuturism. The magic and mysticism of an art space that dares to imagine us as we had been, as we could have been, as we are, and as we could be. The comfort of the magic and mysticism of revolutionary imagination outside of the west. The kind that exists in songs of low swinging chariots with clouds on the wheels and that

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tells stories of praise to the stars to remind us that the Blackness of their backdrop is not a void, but the returning presence of souls whose homes were left neglected or pillaged by the sweep of industry toward a sky imagined, but not seen, as it stood. The sweep of industry that never understood that it couldn’t be nature, and that soon enough we would return to the clouds on our own. And perhaps, because the imagination of Moscow was predicated upon this industry, rooted in this shiny sweep toward a sky they thought belonged to them – perhaps, because it was a premature homage to a victory not yet won instead of a reverent reaching between, Imagine Moscow remains unfinished. Seeing the abstractions of revolutionary architecture collected served its function, I learned and layered my consciousness. I saw their designs for temples of literacy in homage to the sun, and saw how the people carried out their visions through textiles and children’s books. I learned how inherently revolutionary architecture can be.

I witnessed the wonder of the pen as it exists as the conductor of the unspoken power we hold within before we behold ourselves in language – sketched, written, or sung. But most importantly, I was reminded of how revolutionary progress, so long as it is separated from nature, so long as it claims to be something that it was never borne as, will be put back. Back into the museums as a mausoleum overflowing with the hope of a people that couldn’t find its way between the earth and the clouds. So, perhaps, if we are to move forward, we must not build wolkenbügel, but sing “long live the sun! May the darkness be hidden”4 so that the feet which carry us forward never become hazy and our transient imagination of ourselves through all space and time, as we march into the future, is never opaque. 1 Steierhoffer, Eszter. Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution. London: Design Museum, 2017. pp 13. 2 Ibid., 9. 3 Ibid. 4 Ivan Simakov, after Aleksandr Pushkin.

Finding the Quiet Moments Mariah Severud On the Friday night of the trip I decided I would go out on my own and wander around the neighborhood. It was getting dark but it was a beautiful night and the air was only mildly cold. The hustle and bustle of London was still in full swing and there were people rushing this way and that. I made it around the block a few times and then decided to walk passed the Science Museum since I had not been down that direction. I ended up stumbling upon the Albert and Victoria Museum. It was bright and there was music and voices coming from within. I decided to check it out because that is one of the museums I had not had a chance to explore yet. I walked in and immediately felt underdressed.

There were men and women in long dresses and suits congregating around a wine bar near the entrance. There was music playing and I felt like I had just walked into a ball. It was fun to wander around the museum alone for a while. There were people like me, just there for the museum, and then there were the dressedfor-a-classic-ball people, all milling about the museum. After walking through the entire museum, I found a café in the back of the museum. It was away from the chaos of the party that seemed to be happening in the main part of the museum and I welcomed the

quiet. I was not ready to return to the hotel so I bought a coffee and sat at a table in a large and embellished room. I was in a museum after all. It was a circular room and there were columns and paintings around the room with a beautiful black grand piano in the center. A man sat at the piano and was stroking the ivory keys when I sat down. I enjoyed sipping my coffee in the low light, listening to the conversations around me. It struck me then that I felt at home there in that museum café with my coffee in hand. I felt like I belonged there and that I had all my life. It’s amazing how new and familiar a place can feel at the same time. I opened my journal and began to document the day’s events. I had been keeping up with the trip and wanted to document everything I did as well as my thoughts and feelings in London. In that café, I felt at peace and it was probably the most relaxing moment of the trip. In the middle of London, in the middle of a museum even, I found a little corner of calm.

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White Walls and Shaded Pavements Sam Steuart London is the collision between glass walls and marble arches. Where buildings constructed in the 20th century are bordered on each side by those built in the 13th. Decorations are intricate but modern is chic. Walking through London is like threading the needle in a quilt sewn for centuries. With each knot and tie comes the history of an entire civilization and the tales of societies once great. The city of London is art. The deeper you look, the more you find. As you turn the pages in the book of London’s past, the roots get deeper and the images get brighter. How were cathedrals made to be so beautiful? How on Earth was the construction of St.

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Paul’s possible before the discovery of electricity? The city of London stands on its history. To be in its presence is to feel the connection between now and then, modern and dated. The irony of that city directs a symphony in your head. You see ancient cathedrals and tall, Medieval towers that soothingly whisper heavenly hymns into your ear, matched with the crashing crescendo of the modernday hustle and bustle with bright advertisements and quintessential marketing tactics. Cars are the

same. Old, beaten, and black taxis sputter along while modernized and classy Mercedes putter by. The contrast is inspiring. Like the old cab barely scraping by, the irony ignites a spark that fosters the understanding of progression. London is progress. London illustrates the past, present, and what the future will become. It stirs the question, where have you been? And where are you going? Like its bright houses and dark pavement, its shaded history looks onward to its illuminating future. But, perhaps there is beauty in the contrast. Perhaps what makes the city so artistic is the extreme polarity of its colors and its rich understanding of past and present. The city is wise but filled with energetic spirit. Like a wise elephant that cannot be moved, London is sturdy and, no matter the time of disparity or cards it is dealt, it handles the blow with steady backings and solid framework. It assures the world that it cannot be scared. London has it all. It uses its history to guide its progress. It respects the arts and the importance of holding them close. Because, after all, what makes London so special has everything to do with its scholarly dedication. Its history is in your face. As Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” London has written history and it will continue to do so for as long as it exists.

Embracing disappointment Katie Bernard I didn’t plan much for my trip to London, but I knew without a doubt that I had to visit the BBC. Any city I go to I make a point to stop and stare outside major newsrooms and imagine myself working there. With the BBC, I was particularly excited because, according to their website, I would be allowed to wander in the building and look at the newsroom. So, after a morning spent in the British Museum, I talked Maggie and Hannah into taking what ended up being a 40 minute trek to the broadcasting house with me. Google Maps picked an obscure route for us along back streets in Soho but I honestly didn’t notice much. I had a destination in mind and I was ready. As we approached the building, my excitement built and seeing the big block letters at the entrance was incredibly unreal. I was on cloud nine. Unfortunately, my cloud dissipated and I quickly came crashing down to earth upon walking into the building. BBC had recently made the decision not to allow the public past the lobby. I was incredibly disappointed as I realized I had dragged two people across London to see a lobby. As I apologized profusely Maggie looked at me and laughed. Though I don’t remember the exact quote she said something along the lines of ‘don’t apologize, we found the building and saw some cool parts of London along the way’. As I contemplated this, I realized she was right, and just maybe I had been looking at the afternoon all wrong. I was so intent on accomplishing everything I could that trip that I assumed everyone else had a laundry list of things to do and that, somehow, wandering through an

unknown neighborhood of London would be seen as a loss. Maggie was right. During our trip to BBC we had found an antique bookshop and massive candy store, countless ridiculous tourist shops, and more beautiful old buildings than I could count. As we walked back we found some British shopping destinations, and stumbled upon Covent Gardens in the search for macaroons. My biggest disappointment turned into a lesson for the remainder of the trip – accept what comes. I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to do in London but I loved every minute of

what I did, I did my best to soak in the city, and appreciate whatever I came across. As for BBC, I decided one other thing that day; I will get past the lobby someday. Just not as a tourist.

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At the end of my walk through Hyde Park, I saw a large gathering of flags poking up above the street. The drums banged and chants echoed off the buildings, for a moment silencing the roar of the Maseratiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. As I walked closer to the convocation, I realized that the group hoisted flags of the EU. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until I reached a small hill that I realized the scope of the gathering. The streets of London had been shut down for the occasion, the anti-Brexit movement planned to march to parliament.

the rally, the major issues and participants, and their involvement. As it turns out, the march had significant symbolic value. The date happened to be the sixtieth anniversary of the United Kingdomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiation in to the European Union, and there were only four days until the UK formally sent a divorce letter to the EU. The action set in place a domino series of events resulting in their official removal from the EU in 2022. This march would be the last vocalization from the antiBrexit movement before all papers were formalized. The weight of the movement drew the attention from the far reaches of the UK. As I looked closer at the expanse

The sheer number of people was impressive to me. Coming from Lawrence, Kansas, the most people I had ever seen was a few thousand at graduation, or maybe a concert. However, as I sat next to an elderly couple to get the scoop, I could not believe the number of people gathered in the street. The couple informed me that there were likely to be more than one hundred thousand people participating in the march. This easily surpassed any crowd I had ever seen. I quizzed the couple, talking about the point of

of the crowd, I saw Scottish flags, flags from Wales, and club soccer flags. (The entire country had come to show support, or anti-support?) Either way, the couple and the masses proved to me that the Brexit decision effects young and old, north and south. As an uninformed pedestrian, the raw numbers and emotions of the crowd made quite a convincing argument. Ultimately, I bought my own EU flag as both a memento and souvenir, but also in recognition that soon the EU flag could be forever changed.

Brexit March Sheldon White

London Review 2017

selling “antiquarian” books – early and/or rare publications. These Owen Toepfer privately-owned bookstores were located in the off-shooting cobbleOne of the most exciting things stone alleys of Charing Cross, and about England is the incredible amount of bookstores. In a country most of them specialized in selling a “type” of book, as a local informed where it seems there is a bookstore me and as I soon figured out. One on every corner, a visitor easily of the more interesting of these becomes enchanted by the sheer specialized bookstores I found presence of books and the people’s was one entirely devoted to selling collectively positive attitude topublications of Alice’s Adventures in ward them – something we don’t Wonderland and Through the Lookreally have in the United States. I ing Glass. They sold nothing else, had many fruitful book shopping and the bookseller proudly and deexperiences, but two of the most fiantly made sure I knew it. Most of successful were on Charing Cross Road in London and at Blackwell’s the others specialized in early modern publications with small collecin Oxford. tions of classical texts in Latin and Upon exiting Leicester Square Station onto Charing Cross Road, I Greek. As one can imagine, most of was immediately greeted by the rich the antiquarian books are insanely expensive (I found an old, leathersmells of food, the busy sounds, bound, gilded Byron anthology and the sight of people going in worth over 3,000 pounds), but I and out of the shops that line the streets, as is usual in London; how- did chance upon some exciting, affordable finds, including an 1820 ever, I took one look around and publication of Horace’s Odes which realized to my delight that I was only cost about 20 pounds (perhaps in Bibliophile Heaven. It seemed almost every other shop sold books. because there might be a toxic mold Most interesting of these bookshops growing in the binding? Oh, well – the things we do for literature). were those which specialized in

Book Shopping in England

While book shopping on Charing Cross was the best book shopping experience, I had the most fruitful haul at Blackwell’s in Oxford. Blackwell’s is one of the most famous bookstores in the world and sells books covering any topic you can think of. But what was most appealing to me, a Classics major, was its vast selection of classical texts. In addition to the variety and volume of works they sell, Blackwell’s sells the books themselves at bargain rates, compared to the prices the same books would be going for in the United States. So, as any impulsive classicist would, I bought about 10 titles, ranging from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to Virgil’s Eclogues. While I may have spent all my food money on books in England, the experiencing of a culture that valued knowledge of and access to the humanities fed me well enough, so to speak. It helped me to realize why we read at all – to direct the hunger of that worldly appetite to one greater, which is the appetite for knowledge of truth and of humanity.

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The Follies of London Centennial Clogston As I was walking through the Kew Gardens, I came across a beautiful archway. It was crumbling at the top and covered in vines. I had no idea how old it was, but it seemed like it could have been ancient. I was convinced that it was ancient, until I read the placard calling it “Kew’s genuine fake”. The ruinous archway was actually built in 1759, but it was actually a folly designed to harken back to classical Roman architecture. The architect, William Chambers, wanted visitors of the garden to think on “the disappointments of humanity [which] fill the mind with melancholy and incline it to serious reflections”. It seemed to me that many parts of London were like that: attempts at recreating an earlier age of grandeur, drawing in the eye with antiquity only to be fooled with modernity undercover. The entire city is a strange mix of the past and the future, with confusing interludes of folly buildings in between. But I do think that Chambers achieved his goal. As I looked at his standalone archway, even knowing that it was a fake, I found myself considering something bigger than just this singular structure.

London Review 2017

Twas the night after our first full day in London, and I still had not fully adjusted to the time change. In order to cope with the fact that I was going to be an insomniac for a few nights while my body’s clock was remodeled, I took to exploring our neighborhood by night. One of the films I watched on the flight across the pond was Midnight In Paris, in which Owen Wilson’s character ventures out on midnight walks through the French capital

about a block away from our hotel in Kensington. As I passed by the facade of the church, I came upon to young men out in the courtyard, smoking cigarettes. I asked if I could join them, and they obliged. Much against the English trait of reservedness, the first guy I talked to introduced himself to me before I did, saying his name was Liyang. Two other men stood in the corner, holding an idol of the Virgin Mary and bantering about something. After some time leaning against the chapel wall, discussing the nature of my visit to London, Liyang and his friends invited me into the church.

terror as Liyang ripped his shirt off. From that moment on, I decided to just go with the flow of things. We talked American and British politics and what our favorite movies and music were, as they all drank scotch and engaged in quintessential British banter. Eventually (due to multiple attempts at probing), Liyang told me the true nature of this meeting. All of the people there were members of the St. Stephen’s church orchestra, and all of them were students at the University of London. Liyang told me he was studying to become a medic. In reality, they were the same as me.

in search of literary inspiration. Each night at midnight, he is transported back to Paris of the 1920s where he meets the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. In the spirit of the film, I too went out for a stroll as the clocks reached quadruple zero. What I was looking for, I had no idea. But I left the hotel with an open mind. After a few minutes of walking, I decided to take a detour and pass by St. Stephens, an Anglican chapel

Upon entering, we were greeted with the sounds of raucous yet friendly argument. Sitting around a table in the priest’s study were more young Brits, with beer cans and bottles of whiskey and wine strewn across the surface. I was immediately taken aback. What secret get-together in the back room of a church had I stumbled upon? I asked what all of this was, but to no avail, as my voice was drowned out by shouts of excitement and

We shared the same hopes and fears for our respective countries. We had similar tastes in pop culture, and we were all seeking release from the stress of our studies. As we departed the church that night, I still wasn’t sure if we were even allowed to be there in the first place. I said goodbye and walked down the damp streets of Kensington. It felt like a movie script ending, yet I knew it was only the beginning of our adventure.

Midnight In Kensington Sean Jesse

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Botanical Gardens Centennial Clogston There are two things in this world that I think are more worthwhile than anything else: gardens & libraries. As someone who plans on going to graduate school for library science, it comes as no surprise to people that I value libraries. But gardens? I am not a gardener, I do not have a green thumb by any standard. Every sad, potted houseplant Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever owned has withered away, and as a college student in a small apartment, I have no backyard garden of my own. But I cannot think of anything more noble than gardening, planting trees that give oxygen back to the air and growing flowers that brighten up the darkest days. Maybe the respect for gardens comes from watching my dad gardening as a child. Our old backyard was a wild jungle, the tall trees and diverse flowers were the perfect playground of imagination for our pretend games. But that is a story for another time. If you take the tube as far west as you can, you end up in Kew: home of the National Archives, and the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. There a lots of smaller gardens in the city of London, even larger ones like Kensington Gardens or St. Jamesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Park, but the Kew Garden stands out from them all. Comprised of over 300 acres of land, Kew has almost everything you can imagine. When I got to the gardens when they opened, and the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. After a week of traveling around the city, crowded and chaotic as it often was, I was astounded by the calm of the garden. The second thing I noticed was the age demographic of the few people who were there: either older citizens, often elderly couples walking hand in hand, or small school children in their uniforms on field trips. There is something about gardens that

London Review 2017

most often connects to us in our youth and old age. There a sense of discovery in our dawn and then at our twilight, a deeper appreciation. I was one of the only people in my age group walking in the gardens that day. The gardens themselves were beyond beautiful. Birds cooing in the background. Cedar trees so tall I have to take a step back to see it all, with branches reaching for the sky and bowing to kiss the earth, the bed of its own roots and the daisies and weeds below. Petals of every shape

and size scattered throughout the grass. Everything in bloom already or just on the edge of it, ready to burst at the seams. At the beginning, I found myself wanting to learn the name of each new, beautiful thing I saw. I take time to look at their tags, whispering it to myself to try and commit it to memory. It took me an hour to walk the equivalent of a city block at first. Eventually itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too much, even a horticulturist needs years of study for that kind of rote memorization. But I still touch the leaves and the petals gently, attempt-

ing to leave a tactile notecard in my mind. Being in the Kew Gardens, walking with trees older than my own country and more valuable than priceless works of art, I felt something sacred. By myself, an ocean away from my home, there is a sense of peace that feels foreign. It feels intense, like discovering a well inside myself I never knew existed. A combination of gratitude, curiosity, contentment and a thousand other things all at once. It was the kind of

feeling writers describe in books, the kind that often seemed inhuman and unattainable. But the gardens gave that feeling to me, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I took the tube back to the center of London after spending all morning and afternoon in the gardens. The hustle and bustle was just the same as before, but I carried the feeling of the garden with me for the rest of the trip and all the way back home.

Meditations on the Overheard: the V&A Rachel Atakpa “If you’re wealthy your money’s never clean.” I have just arrived in London, taken a walk down Cromwell Road, had a bite at Patisserie Valerie and decided to bide my time before dinner at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Overwhelmed by jetlag, strep throat, and the magnificence of the city, I only have the energy to look through the medieval and renaissance portion of the European section and go through the exhibition that was on – Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London. And so after winding through statues from the renaissance and altarpieces from medieval churches, I started in on the maze of Kipling, a colonizer, as told through his arts and crafts. Toward the beginning, there was a panel that read, in part, “[Kipling’s] contribution to the impact of the British Empire on India’s artistic heritage is still recognized today.” Is that how we name colonization? As a sunny impact on artistic heritage. Suddenly I hate the orange wall on which the panel is plastered. A person behind me makes incredulous comments to the person they’re with. When they comment on how unclean wealth is, I remember what they say about cleanliness being next to godliness. I wonder how much more the textiles of India, of any non-western country, would have gleamed if wealth was selfish enough to have any concern for its own soul.

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A DOUGHlightful CroisSANT

As if merely just walking into Harrods was not enough for my little heart to handle, biting into my first dough-sant nearly put me into cardiac arrest. Harrods food

When my dusty white Converse crossed the threshold of the food hall, I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. I was like a kid in a candy shop, only this time I was semi-adult in food wonderland. The aromas from the fresh cut charcuterie, fromagerie, and boulangerie stations fogged my mind and ap-

hall might just be the Eighth Wonder of the World. Every possible food related item you could imagine lies within the walls of Harrods. Basically if we, humans, were trapped in a zombie apocalypse, Harrods food hall is the best place to hide out – protected by sugar confections, various cheeses, meats, and pantry items.

parently my sense of direction. Not too my dismay, I aimlessly wandered into the pastry section. The sights of these sugary treats alone made my jetlagged mind do happy somersaults and my stomach growl out of envy. Of all the cakes, pies, muffins, cookies, and some hybrid treats, only one buttery, flakey, deep-fried treat caught my eye.

Mary Kate Shellworth

London Review 2017

I believed in love at first sight but after this treat, I also believe in love at first bite. Harrods’s own doughsant is comparable to a cro-nut, but a million times better. The doughsant is a deep fried croissant covered in butter and coated in sugar. If you are finding yourself saying, “Wow, that sounds amazing. I need to try one,” then you are right. The dough-sant experience is one for the books. Now that I have returned to America, dough-sant-less, I will forever be on the lookout for dough-sants. If it just so happens that I will have to book a plane ticket back to London to taste this heavenly treat just one more time, I believe it will be worth the cost – and the calories!

An Ode to British Junk Food Carly Newman Ah, Cadbury Dairy Milk, it tastes smoother than silk. Don’t forget about Walkers, they’ll send you off your rockers. Maltesers are too in their ilk.

Is this a sloth or a dog? Taylor Avery People have told me I remind them of Sid the sloth from Ice Age. One girl was bold enough to say I looked like Sid the sloth. Because of this, I have always felt that I connect in multiple ways to this character. So when I was walking through Covent Garden market, I did not expect to see a picture of myself, or rather, a picture of something so similar to what I connect with. I stopped dead in my tracks. These watercolor paintings were so quirky! All different animals with many colors and some with designs. I started flipping through the paintings. I loved the two birds, the seal, the two pigs on a fence, the frog on a leaf, the koala bear in a tree, the giraffe, the fluffy duck... how was I ever going to pick?! I saw the artist looking at me. “I love these paintings!” I exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Thank you,” he replied. “I do not know which one to get; they are all so good!” The artist smiled and chuckled quietly. I came across a painting that looked like a sloth but had ears. Hoping I would not offend the artist, I wondered aloud, “Is this a sloth or a dog?” He thought for a second. “It is a slothy dog!” he declared. I laughed because of the name he gave the painting and because the painting reminded me of Sid the sloth. I continued to examine the paintings. My friends had wandered off but came back when they realized I was enlightened. “Which one do you like the best?” I asked them. “The pigs!” “Yes, the pigs are the cutest,” my friends responded. I thought to myself. I do like pigs; they were my favorite animals

at one point in my life. I even had a birthday cake with a pig on it. However, I did not want something that screamed, “Midwest” or implied, “I’m from Iowa and my mom grew up on a farm!” I thought for a moment more; the artist could see I was having a tough time making a decision. “I still don’t know which one to get,” I said again. The artist simply stated, “Get the one that makes you smile the most.” My mind stopped. The memories of every difficult decision I had ever

made in my life came rushing back to me as I remembered the hours spent pondering what the “right” thing to do was, but I had never thought about what would make me smile the most. My eyes lit up, I smiled a delighted grin, pondered for a second more and pointed to the slothy dog. “I’m goin’ with the slothy dog!” I declared. I then knew I had made the right decision, and I think you would agree.

“Geoff.” Nick Anaam. 23/11/16

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my bladder flooded with relief until that I needed to find a toilet, but we stepped into the shop and saw a we were also starving and needed five-person line for the toilet. Great. to find lunch, too. So we turned Kelly Werther We got in line, and I then proceedaround to head back toward the ed to discreetly do the ‘potty dance’ food, and hopefully a public restfor nearly 15 minutes. At last it was room. As we walked, I stopped to When traveling to a foreign my turn, and I did my duty. look in several different shops and country, or even another state in Fast-forward about two hours, the U.S., you spend lots of time out stores to ask about a bathroom. In and I am in M&S, a department a convenience store, the man said and about exploring. Of course, store, shopping when, you guessed they did not have a public toilet, this is what being a tourist is all it, I needed the toilet again. This but there was one ‘over there’ (inabout, but for those tourists with department store had four floors sert vague hand wave in random small and overactive bladders, a ranging from super market to indirection). Helpful. In a juice and lovely walk through South Kensingterior décor. I could not, for the smoothie shop, the toilets were ton or Portobellow Market can turn sake of my tiny bladder, find any out of order. Convenient. We even into a nightmarish search for the signs indicating a bathroom, but passed a public, stand-alone toilet nearest public restroom. I thought, Yes, unfortu“Come on, this nately, I am one is a multi-level of those tourists department with the bladstore, there has der of a kitten. to be a toilet The struggle to somewhere.” I stay hydrated looked on every without having floor, and I even to urinate every set off the alarm half hour has when I accidenalways been a tally opened the frustrating one emergency door for me. Countby the kitchenless times, for ware because I which several thought it led other students to a restroom. on the trip can I eventually vouch (thank found the toiyou for dealhttps://www.guidelondon.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/LondonPublicToilet_ let on the top ing with me, PortobelloRoadMarket.jpg floor with the Daniel), I menswear, but that wasn’t until I on the street, but it was closed. Are found myself frantically searching was sufficiently squirming yet again you kidding me?! for a public toilet. Sometimes, this and preparing for the worst possible Eventually we made it back to search was brief, as I would turn a outcome: needing to buy new pants the food area of the market and corner to find a glorious pub with from M&S. grabbed delicious gyro wraps. an empty bathroom. Other times Needless to say, I learned to always By this time, I was beginning to were more stressful. visit the toilet when I had the opOn the last day of our trip, many squirm, so I marched Daniel on portunity to, I minimized my water through the market praying for a of us went to Portobellow Road intake while still staying hydrated, toilet to appear. We walked several for the fabulous street market that and I got over any awkwardness or minutes past clothing stores and stretches almost endlessly. I was hesitation I ever had when asking walking along with Daniel (so pubs that weren’t yet open, until an establishment if I could use their sorry, Daniel), and we were nearfinally we found a Café Nero, one ing the end of the market when the of the chain London coffee shops. I toilet. urge began. I casually mentioned heard angels singing in my ears and

Ooh-la-wee, There’s Nowhere to Pee

London Review 2017

High Time for High Tea (And CHEESE SANDWICHES!) Erin Brady This is an account of the first time I had English high tea, complete with champagne, finger sandwiches, and the most amazing, dainty desserts. It begins with the dress code, which was designated as smart casual. We (Bridgette and I) dressed in heels, tights, neutral dresses, and cardigans. This outing also required doing our hair and makeup, something which often gets pushed to the side as engineering students. I shall start with our entrance to The Goring Hotel. Upon entering, we were escorted by a bellman in a full tuxedo who directed us to the receptionists. The lobby was remarkably fancy and well-kept. There, they took our coats, hung them up and gave us a key to claim them later in the afternoon, and then asked if we would like to freshen up before tea in the bathroom. The bathroom was full of luxury, with marble sinks and cloth hand towels and expensive hand soap and lotion. Even the toilets were spotless porcelain, along with everything else we had seen so far. After admiring the bathroom for a while longer we were ushered to our tea table, where our waiter seated us like a proper gentleman and put our napkins in our laps. Our tea started with a glass of Bollinger champagne (which goes for around $75 a bottle) and a pea

puree mousse, smoked salmon and crème fraiche (sour cream) on top. While I wasn’t a fan of the peas, the smoked salmon was amazing, and the champagne was heavenly with just enough bubbles and a smooth finish. Our tea was brought to us to finish off the appetizer-esque (maybe hors d’oeuvres?) course. I ordered a white tea called Silver Needle, which was light and fresh

and slightly sweet. At this point, we were becoming giggly: we felt so grown up and fancy, but also like silly little girls playing dress up. Our desserts and sandwiches then came on a beautiful tiered serving

tray, with four selections of sandwiches and five different desserts. Our favorite sandwich by far was the Lincolnshire cheese sandwich with caramelized onions and spiced mayonnaise on a French bread. We aren’t sure why it was so delicious, but something about this unusual combination was incredibly tasty! The onions were slightly sweet, the cheese had a nice bite to it, and the mayo made it all come perfectly together. Our favorite dessert was a banana bread with a salted caramel whipped frosting topped with gold leaf, but the other sweets were also amazing. They included a chocolate macaroon filled with a tangy orange-mango filling; a pretty and pink raspberry macaroon; a handcrafted white chocolate truffle, complete with a bright red glazed dome covered in fondant stars, making it look like a hot-air balloon; and a dark chocolate cake infused with coffee. We didn’t even eat lunch that day because everything was so filling and wonderful; the service was fit for a queen! (The Goring Hotel is the only hotel in London with the Royal Warrant. Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge stayed there the night before her wedding.) I would advise anyone to come here for a relaxing afternoon amidst the crazy touring of London, just to have those cheese sandwiches. In other words, if there is one thing you must do in London that isn’t touristy, it is to have high tea at The Goring. West

Why did they even let me into this Cigar Shop? Hunter Maude If you’ve been keeping up with the subject matter of my articles thus far, I may have given off the impression that I’m some kind of deviant who only writes about consumer goods that come with a sin tax. I wrote an earlier article about smoking cigarettes, and now I’m writing this one about cigars. You can look forward to reading my next three articles on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I was intrigued when Mary mentioned the specialty cigar shop next to the Ritz in Kensington where Winston Churchill used to buy his cigars back in the day. So naturally, I felt that it was my obligation to visit Davidoff’s in London in order to get closer to history (and also because I was getting annoyed with the pack of cigarettes I had purchased at the pub in Camden, probably because of its plain tobacco packaging). To clarify, Churchill did not purchase cigars from Davidoff’s, as Davidoff is a more modern distributor of cigars around the UK that has simply taken over the location adjacent to the Ritz. However, the Davidoff brand did not appear to lack in quality, or at least, their prices did not reflect a lack of quality. When I walked into the store, I immediately noticed the display case, which held three large wooden pipes, each valued at around 1,800 to 2,500 pounds. It was at that moment that panic began to set in, and I remembered I was wearing sweatpants and had less than 20 pounds in my pocket. However at that moment, a gentleman in an extremely fashionable suit approached me and asked if he could help. I told him I was looking to purchase a cigar (in order to really get the full

London Review 2017

A photo of Winston Churchill from 1940. Apparently Churchill wasn’t too stressed out about the WORLD WAR THAT WAS GOING ON.

Davidoff’s experience), and when he asked me my price range I simply told him “as cheap as possible”. The gentleman took me into a sealed cigar room that smelled exactly like my grandfather’s study (which explains a lot actually). According to this gentleman (let’s call him Alfred because Alfred seems like the name of someone who would work in one of the most famous cigar shops in London), the room was sealed in order to keep the cigars fresh, which made me feel like I was picking out grapefruit at a whole foods instead of dried tobacco at Davidoff’s. The cigars themselves were individually wrapped in plastic, and were all kept inside small cardboard

boxes that seemed to house about 20 cigars each. Alfred explained that there were different sections for Domestic, Cuban, and European cigars, all of which seemed to be extremely high quality. I decided this would be a good opportunity to check the prices. I had bought cigars before for roughly six dollars each back in the states. How much could one of these possibly be? The first box said 180 pounds, and I nearly vomited. Then I checked another box: 300 pounds. I was alarmed at these high prices (as was my experience in most shops in London). But then, a feeling of deep guilt began to seep into my stomach as Alfred rambled on about the boldness and length of various brands of

Alfred’s sealed cigar room.

cigars, and I real12 pounds. I ized that at the breathed a sigh end of his ramof relief, and blings, I would realized that I be forced to conwas in fact a fess that I had no classy gentleman money and was like Alfred who simply wasting could afford his time. the very finest However, luxuries in life. when I told As I’m writing him that I only this, I wonder had 20 pounds if perhaps they with me and only labeled would not be the cigars with able to afford the box price a 180 pound to make them My attempt at taking an artsy photo. cigar, Alfred seem cheap laughed. He when priced explained that the price was 180 individually so suckers like me pounds for the entire box, and that would pay 12 pounds for a glorified one cigar would only cost me about cigarette.

I decided to get a Partegas Serie D Cuban cigar to celebrate my last day on the London Review. I used my remaining money to buy a can of Session IPA from Tesco, and took the tube to High Street Kensington station. From there, I took a lift up to the Kensington Roof Gardens and enjoyed the sunny view. I then smoked the entire cigar (which took about 45 minutes), and read a few chapters of Aziz Ansari’s book Modern Romance. All in all, it was one of my most relaxing afternoons of my entire stay in London. The Cuban cigar tasted deliciously peppery, but by the end of it I was extremely dizzy and completely sick to my stomach. Regardless, I would still describe my customer experience at Davidoff’s as sublime.

Meditations on the Overheard: Walking through Kensington Rachel Atakpa “For some reason, everyone thinks they’re entitled to a property by the time they’re 20!” She spoke of flat parties and relics of antiquated landladies and plants in bathtubs, things that felt like they fell out of a grainy french art film from the 70s, and I wondered, as we walked past maseratis parked on streets that lined community gardens, what cultivating community access and culture could even look like when we live in a space of anti-community, where there is little to no altruism, little to no organizing, little to no asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. Why do I think I should live alone so soon, why is it a mark of failure if I don’t. What good is property with all new money or all no money anyway. There have always been weekends in the countryside and the petals of tree buds falling with no one underneath to watch, but those things couldn’t have made us all seem so far away as they do now. This is not to make the past seem rosy, it is to question all of the new ways we have departed from one another in times when we need each other the most. I wouldn’t mind if a flat filled with green, filled with laughter on the balcony under the sun and smoke off of the roof under the moon, with lace curtains and a hodgepodge that designers would call a hoard and us kids, who have always lived with not that much, would call treasure. Treasure to accent the rhythms of our late night storytelling. Immortal treasure – to be entitled to joy, not property.

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GoPro: 7,000 Girl:0 Mary Kate Shellworth The lovely GoPro my parents gifted me for Christmas, with the purpose of me taking awesome videos and photos in London, was nothing but trouble. Although I thought I knew what I was doing before the trip, I could not figure out how to take a video or photo for the life of me. In short, I was too frustrated with the lack of cooperation the GoPro was giving me, so I gave up on it, choosing to use my puny digital camera instead. Once I got home from London, I uploaded all my photos to my computer and discovered that I mistakenly took 7,000+ photo bursts of the inside of my purse. Yes, 7,000. I cannot tell if this is more tragic or embarrassing for me so I will just leave it at that. Here is a mini collage of the inside of my bag to commemorate this difficulty:

London Review 2017

The Last Supper Fengxue Zhang The last dinner did not carry the kind of weight I had expected it to. These twenty some strangers had become some sort of a dysfunctional yet loving family after this week; all the streets we’ve wandered, all the food we’ve tried, all the wind we’ve endured, all the sights we’ve seen, the sounds we’ve heard, have tied us together in more ways than we thought we could imagine. There was a quiet kind of acceptance of the destination of our travels the next day. There were occasionally more vocal protests, but they were drowned out by the sound of incessant chatter and bursts of laughter. That week, we fell in love with the coolness of London streets in the spring, but more than that, we fell in love with moments like this. At least, I did. Tall beer and water glasses were scattered about the long stretch of table, echoing fragments of poetry, of memories, of freestyle rapping, of bird metaphors. The food was incredible of course. Salad more green than I seem to remember, rich pasta, raspberry sherbet. You know you’re being spoiled when there’s more food than you can even fit into your stomach. The light outside Haverford Arms eventually softened as the hours passed, giving way to the dim glow of the restaurant itself. The warm, full, sound of our waiter’s voice acted like a catalyst to the slightly intoxicated group. We were too content in this little world we created, and this felt like a dinner like any other despite it being the last. I think I will remember it for quite some time: Owen’s poetry, Rachel’s voice, Sean’s drunken grin. I’ll remember my gin and tonic, the way everything about the night felt a bit fuzzy at the edges, the

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way Maggie K. and I diligently assigned a specific type bird to every member of our group. As our waiter tried on the “Mary Klayder” aesthetic, I couldn’t help feeling something almost too cheesy, too human to explain. Of course, I will remember London. These stones weathered by time yet made whole by history, these city lights, these footsteps, this kind of rain – how can you forget? Our last dinner did not carry the kind of weight I had expected. In fact, every time I think back to that moment, my heart feels lighter.

London Review 2017

Off the Map

London Review 2017

Advice: what works and what doesn’t Kelly Werther Before traveling to London, I received many tidbits of advice from many people who had been to London before, as well as people who had not. Some advice was useful, and some was rubbish. Bad advice “Take Dramamine before the flight”: I was recommended to buy Dramamine, a motion-sickness medicine, to take before the 10-hour flight to London to help me sleep most of the way. This did NOT work. I bought the Dramamine, and I took it when I sat down on the international plane. I then proceeded to watch two movies without falling asleep, getting a total of maybe 4 hours of sleep on the 9 hour flight. “British food isn’t that great”: Many people told me that British food is subpar. As someone who loves almost all foods, this was a disappointing thing to hear before my trip. I was not deterred completely, though. Knowing that London is such a global city, I was sure that I would be able to find good food, although it may not be essentially British. And I did! I loved every meal I had in London – even the British food. Fish and chips are a staple, and I loved it both times I ate it. At the Sherlock Holmes Pub, I enjoyed a classic British meat pie (beef & ale), and it was the most hearty and warming meal I had all week. Plus, the gravy was savory and full of flavor. In conclusion, foodies, don’t cancel your trip to London if someone tells you the food is bad. It’s not.

“Don’t go off on your own”: Some of my closest friends and family worried about me being in London by myself. They wished that I would stick with the group and not go off alone, but I could not let the opportunity to explore, both London and myself, pass me by. The day I spent navigating London on my own was the most exhausting day of the trip, but it was one of the best. I learned how to make my way around a foreign place on my own, and I built up my social confidence by talking to strangers and asking for directions. Most importantly, though, wandering around by myself gave me the opportunity to reflect internally on my self, my desires, my likes and dislikes, and who I am as a traveler. I was able to take my time when I wanted and speed up when I wanted. It is easy, as humans, to get caught up in the busy-ness (and business) of the people around us, and so I find it renewing when I give myself the chance to get caught up in myself, especially in a new environment. Good advice: “Pay for the guided tour at the Tower of London”: I did. It was amazing. I am by no means very interested in history, but the history pervading the Tower of London was impossible to ignore and easy to enjoy. I went on the tour guided by a beefeater, or Yeomen warder, which is a member of the Sovereign’s Body Guard who acts as a ceremonial guardian of the Tower. The Yeomen was funny, constantly making silly jokes pertaining to the history of the tower, and he was informative. I learned a lot about the functions of the different parts of the Tower and about certain events that had occurred at

different locations across the Tower. All in all, the £22 for the student ticket is well worth it. “Visit Camden Town”: Someone told me to get out to Camden, one of the many boroughs surrounding London. Camden is the hometown of Amy Winehouse, and there are many street art tributes to her. Camden also houses several amazing street markets, one of which I spent several hours browsing. I traveled to Camden by myself, and it was one of the best experiences I had during this trip. 10/10 would recommend wandering the market streets of Camden to anyone and everyone. “Let London discover you”: Many times I was told to enjoy London, and many times I was told to do as much as I could during my short trip there. But the advice I got the most was to not seek out every thrill and experience, but to pay attention to the people and the places around me and to let them lead me about the city. When I was walking around the neighborhoods surrounding our hotel just wandering about without a plan, I almost felt like a resident – as if I lived in London, and perhaps had done so for several years. It was when I wasn’t paying attention and had no destination in mind that I stumbled upon cute little boutiques, fancy coffee shops, and covered markets that I otherwise would never have found. While it was helpful to have an idea of the activities I wanted to do each day, it was also helpful to understand that my plans could change. Having the freedom to just wander aimlessly is the best opportunity you can give yourself when exploring London.

Off the Map

In the Presence of Greatness Bridgette Befort About 22 miles up the Thames lies the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world: Windsor Castle. This “casual” weekend home of the Queen and her beloved corgis is also the final resting place of many of the most famous (and infamous) English royals. I always believed Windsor Castle was the “country estate” of English royalty, with a medieval vibe and an outdoorsy hunting theme. However, moments into my first encounter with Windsor’s daunting presence, I realized I was completely misinformed. Let’s just say that I now understand why the Queen enjoys spending all her time at Windsor (it’s not because of her enjoyment of an antler and animal head interior design theme) and why so many royals chose to rest there in peace.

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Windsor Castle’s state rooms are opulent to the extreme. The Castle’s interior is filled with gilt, velvet, and marble, and is absolutely cavernous: the guided audio tour through the state rooms took almost two hours. The state rooms contain dozens of suits of armor, including Henry VIII’s very large set, many of the famous official coronation portraits seen in history books (or Google Images), and an intricate doll-house replica of a palace made specifically for the Queen’s

paternal grandmother, Queen Mary. Even the security system at Windsor is intense. The Castle has its own changing of the guard ceremonies, similar to those of Buckingham Palace, and visitors have to go through airport-style security to enter the grounds. Windsor also has its own church, St. George’s Chapel, which is much larger and grander than the term “chapel” suggests. To sum it up, Windsor Castle is made for royalty. But visitors to Windsor are not only surrounded by royal trimmings, they are literally in the presence of royalty. The queen is frequently in residence: the royal standard was flying when I visited (a possible reason for the tight security). Many former Kings and Queens are buried in St. George’s Chapel, including King

George VI, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret, of the current Queen’s immediate family. The Queen’s paternal grandparents are also there as well as most of the House of Hanover (including mad King George III, who lost the American Revolutionary War), and King Henry VIII and his favorite wife Jane Seymour (who died before she could irritate him). Although the opulence was impressive, I am always more in awe when visiting the resting places of British monarchs, similarly to how I feel in Westminster Abbey, but also at Arlington National

Cemetery, etc. British monarchs, as much or more than any other country’s leaders, are people who had a major influence on the world, shaping it into what it is today; and I loved reading and learning about them growing up. But in books and internet articles British monarchs seem like characters in stories or legends, not substantial human beings. When I walk by their graves, I realize they were humans who changed the world and that I am in the presence of major world players, which is a transformative and inspiring experience.

Windsor, including the Castle, surrounding town, and the added bonus of Eton (the famous boarding school for boys), was completely worth the visit. We arrived at Windsor’s train station at ten in the morning expecting to leave by early afternoon, but stayed until after six in the evening, due to the sheer amount of historic sites to glimpse. Windsor not only energized my love of history, often relegated to the back seat by my chemical engineering major, but also completely satisfied my appreciation for glitz and glam.

Mary’s Sass Sam Steuart 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

“Where is it? I mean, I’m not going, but where is it?” “Oh yeah I had coffee with [Sam] yesterday that should hold him off for a while.” “If you think Wescoe is pretty, it is definitely not ‘you and me’ anymore, Sam.” “My filter comes off on this trip… don’t even get me started about essays. If I would have spent all of the time I’ve spent reading essays reading books, I probably could have read 2,000 more books by now.” “This is Coke.” Sean says, “who told me I look like James Dean?” to which Mary responds, “nobody.” As she talks about selling her books to the Honors Program so they have to help her move them out of her house she says, “I am a sly dog.” “He is SAMming. He is his own verb.” to which Sam responds, “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” Mary adds, “you might as well.”

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So many shows! London is a magical place with a theatre practically around every corner. Posters for musicals and plays litter the wall of the Underground, advertising a night of music, magic, and magnificence. I love musicals. Before coming to London I have been obsessed with: Legally Blonde: The Musical, the spark that fueled my love for the art; Hamilton: The Musical, I can quote every word of every song minus the rapid fire rap section in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Guns and Shipsâ&#x20AC;?; and

performance! The voices of the characters were magnificent and the experience was absolutely one of the highlights of the trip. Like reading a book or watching a movie, theatre draws the audience into the story, immersing them in the emotions and the conflicts of the story, but the special aspect of musicals is that the characters are performing live and there is a palpable energy in the room from the characters on stage and from the audience. The individualistic experience is partnered with the collective effervescence of the entire crowd, the effect creating an experience that is unparalleled.

now I am obsessed with Phantom of the Opera, Aladdin, and American in Paris. The musical experience in London is way better than it is in the Midwest. Here I would have to search for a specific musical and plan to go sometime in the future. I was able to go to three musicals and one play in one week! The availability of the theatre arts is incredible. Phantom of the Opera, in particular, was memorable because of the jaw dropping set design and the manipulation of the chandelier. I was enthralled with the entire

I did not go to London planning to drop a load of pounds on theatre shows, but boy is that what I did (and would do again)! There is just so much to do and see in London and the many theatres around the city are part of the culture and the local entertainment. The play that we all went to, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was a great comical play. It was relaxing to watch because the ending isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much of a surprise. Spoiler: it ends the same way Hamlet ends, if you know the story. The witty banter

The Theatre, The Theatre Mariah Severud

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back and forth was hilarious and it was good to laugh. I find that laughing is not common in my everyday life anymore. It was a strange realization while sitting in a theater with a bunch of other college undergrads. I could go on and on about musicals, my obsession with the music and the wonderful experiences I had at the London theatres! My advice: if you are ever in London, go to a show! It will be worth it. The diversity of entertainment is overwhelming, but in a good way. I prefer musicals and plays but the possibilities are endless! It’s a “Whole New World”!

Harrods: A Guide Bridgette Befort Owned by the state of Qatar, sitting on a five-acre prime piece of central London property, and clocking in at over one million square feet of retail space, Harrods is an ENORMOUS department store. Upon walking through one of the many entrances there are seven floors to explore and thousands of high-priced goods in the over 330 departments to purchase. Here is some advice for making your way through the behemoth: 1. When entering the ground floor from the Brompton Road doors, walk straight back to get to the escalators or you will get sucked into the world of high quality handbags, makeup, jewelry, and groceries and you will never see any more of Harrods. 2. Avoid the perfume and cologne halls. You will not be able to breathe. 3. If finding a fascinator or any type of posh millinery is a priority, they are on the second floor along with gowns from every designer and in any color you could dream of and furs from animals you didn’t know existed. 4. Restrain yourself in the chocolate and confections department. You will want to buy everything, including the thousand pound milk-chocolate and pastel frosted bunny. 5. After purchasing your token Harrods item, smugly find your way to the exit to show the rest of London that you are special enough to shop at Harrods, along with the fifteen million other people each year who are acting the same way. 6. Frequently check the time, it is very easy to spend five hours in Harrods when you think it has only been fifteen minutes. This has been learned through experience. 7. Google the Harrods store guide. It would be more helpful if you did this before you enter than after. This was also learned from experience. 8. Try the Harrods at Heathrow. It has all the cute Harrods souvenirs and trinkets (key chains, mugs, wallets), all the items (including the tea sets) are duty free, and it is much, much easier to navigate. There is a Harrods in almost every terminal. Honestly, this Harrods is better.

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Adventuring in Cardiff: An Itinerary Carly Newman Wednesday, 22 March 2017 0700 Time to wake up! I get dressed, get everything that’s needed for the day (tickets, phone charger, phone), and head downstairs to get breakfast. 0745 I leave the Grange Strathmore for Gloucester Road Station and take a Circle Line train to London Paddington Station. 0810 I board the train bound for Cardiff and get cozy…After only a few minutes, I’m asleep. 1022 The train arrives at Cardiff Central Station. It’s cold and rainy, and I’m already in love. 1040 I get on a bus heading towards Cardiff Bay. Half of the people around are speaking Welsh, which is the most ridiculous language I’ve ever heard.

1100 Arrival at the Doctor Who Experience! I have a croissant and soul-warming coffee in the café. 1120 I start the queue for the interactive adventure and start to get even more excited. 1130 The adventure begins! We help the Doctor fight off aliens and save Earth. I have found my happy place. 1200 After the interactive adthe tenth Doctor’s TARDIS inside the exhibition venture and tour of the Gallifrey Museum (my official Doctor Who merchandise nerd soul is in tears), I spend an (worth it). hour exploring the exhibitions of real props and sets from the TV 1330 show (I am now in real tears, but I get on a bus headed back to Carit’s okay because I’m not the only diff Central Station and watch the one crying). beautiful grey sky and raincloud. 1300 I make my way to the gift shop and spend way too much money on

1355 I board the train bound for London Paddington Station and curl up in my seat. 1610 Before I know it, I’m back in London. I take the Tube back to Gloucester Road Station and run back to the Grange Strathmore to change for dinner. There are no words to describe how amazing Wales and the Doctor Who Experience were. But the drizzle and the clouded blue-grey sky and that ridiculous language drew me in and I’m longing to get back to Cardiff as soon as possible.

cloudy skies in Cardiff at the entrance to the Doctor Who Experience

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British life, even as mundane as Kate Poulose buying a drink at the local eatOne of the things that I was ery. But did the most excited about in London was humor at Pret to experience British humor. I was A Manger (you told that like a good glass of Borread that in a deaux, British humor is nice and French accent, dry. (Yes, I did have to look up a admit it) stop at list of dry wines due to my limited simple drink sigpalate and experience, and yes, that nage? Of course was an attempt at dry humor). As not! a personal fan of dry, witty humor, Once I had I was expecting to be right in my picked out my element when I was in London. My chilled can of expectations could not have been sparkling lemmore met, for my roommate, Mary onade and paid Kate Shellworth can certainly attest for my order, I to this on multiple occasions. sat with Mary My first indication that I was in Kate and Katie my comical sanctuary was when Phalen (there are I found myself giggling at some too many derisimple signage, in what I am govations of the name Kate on this ing to assert was everyone’s favorite trip and for that I am sorry. Please place to grab a quick and scrumpsend your grievances to our parents, tious (read: cheap) bite: the one and for we did not name ourselves) at only, Pret A Manger. I feel the need a barstool by the window and dug to italicize the name of our beloved in, inhaling our delicious lunch as stop due to the French origin of its if we hadn’t just eaten a full English name and italics just feel like the breakfast a little bit prior. After written manifestation of the attaking a refreshing sip of my sour tempted (read: bad) French accent sparkling lemonade, I realized that we all pronounced the back of the can Pret A Manger in. itself was emblaAfter grabbing my zoned with a Britprosciutto, fresh ish joke. It read basil, and tomato “NO NASTIES, sandwich from one we DO NOT refrigerated case, I ADD any weird made my way over chemicals or addito the drink case tives…(they listed for a quick inspecwhat they did not tion of the fleet. add, a sort of backIt was upon closer wards ingredient look that some list)…allegedly, the quintessential Britchemicals found ish humor was in quite a few cleverly packed soft drinks aren’t into a description of the drinks, good for your health. Who knows? “Best when chilled (AS INDEED We can’t be sure.” Before our trip, WE ALL ARE)” The capitalization I thought that the British have a is my own to emphasize that this stereotype to be obsessively proper, humor permeates in all aspects of but I would argue that they aren’t

British Humor

proper at all, from their humor it is evident that they don’t take themselves too seriously. It was on the tube that I heard my first illustration of live British humor. Traveling during the evening rush hour, the tube cars were packed like sardines with commuters and because of this, we were stranded in the middle of the aisle with nothing to hold on to but our breath. Our accents gave us away to be tourists and upon realizing our dismay, a group of older ladies that were squeezed into the end of the car said, “You girls can fall into us. We have plenty of padding!” Another quickly responded, “Talk for yourself!” and everyone involved laughed. British humor is light, quickpaced, and witty– an ethereal combination that appeals to the masses (read: me). With Mary Kate as my witness, I could not help but snicker at the humor in a book I found in Oxford’s Blackwell’s bookshop. I sunk into their plush, broken-in couches and delighted myself in a world of British humor. If anyone from Blackwell’s is reading this, don’t worry I bought the book! Off the Map

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Cambridge: A Tale of Two Travelers Erin Brady Cambridge – a lovely school outside London with beautiful green grass (walking was prohibited for non-fellows) and buildings featuring wonderful architecture and grandeur. It was a fine, sunny morning as we were waiting in front of King’s College, part of the University of Cambridge. It had already been a tiring morning, as most of us had taken a good nap on the hour-long train ride from King’s Cross Station. We also took a solid 45 minute walk to get here from the Cambridge Train Station. But, alas, we were there. I will start with my version of the rest of the day. The students leading our tour could each get two people in for free, but there were only four students and twelve of us. Some people had to buy tickets. I totally missed this part as I was standing in awe of the already beautiful glimpse of architecture that was the entrance to King’s college. Oops. I would have offered to buy a ticket. After entering I gazed upon a vast stretch of vibrant grass surrounded by a small fortress of buildings with a pathway at the back leading somewhere else. We walked through the area on a fine gravel path and were led into the chapel. It was overly done and beautiful, as all of the ones in London were, with vaulted ceilings and buttresses, and charming side areas with neat history facts and historical manuscripts. After leaving the chapel we walked some more

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along the path and crossed the River Cam to another path on Bin Brook that led to the Bridge of Sighs (supposedly aptly named for the students sighing after leaving exams). Next we walked through St. John’s college chapel (no speaking or entering the sanctuary), and our Cambridge tour ended there. We got a Panini lunch and separated into our little group from there. The first stop was Mr. Simm’s Olde Sweet Shoppe, where jars lined the entire wall behind registers, and other fun treats and special chocolate bars were in the cramped main area. It was a cute little place, and I bought a few different types of candy. We proceeded to the market and perused through the cute little setups people had going on, but didn’t buy anything. At this point Bridgette was ready to go, so we decided to start heading back to the train station. Our Cambridge day ended there. Now here is my version of Bridgette’s version of the day. I’ll be much more brief. She had lots of important emails to send the minute we got back from Cambridge that day, and they were pressing on her mind and causing a great deal of stress. As we walked through the colleges she thought about them a

lot and had trouble just enjoying the walk, although she did get to show off her knowledge a bit by explaining how vaulting a ceiling works to another person in our group. Then I am pretty sure she got a little hangry near the end going through St. John’s college, and it was already one in the afternoon. Her Panini at lunch helped a little bit, but she was still very preoccupied with the business she needed to take care of back at the hotel. The same with going through the market. She looked quite relieved when we started walking back to the train station, and even more so when we got on the train. By the time we got back to our room she was near her computer to do her thing and ended perfectly pleased she had gotten that done. Both of us had very different experiences at the same wonderful place. Which version of the Cambridge visit was yours?

not allowed to step on the grass, it was a welcome change to the moMariah Severud notonous hues of stone. The river at Cambridge was idyllic and seemed First thing first, I should probably to be straight from a book. I can explain what Punting is. A Punt is imagine myself reading by the quiet a type of boat that has a flat botflowing waters on a beautiful sumtom and a platform in the rear to mer day, the warm sun on my face, stand and steer the vessel from. To move, you use a long pole that reaches the bottom of the river and uses the river floor to move forward. The person guiding the punt must push straight back using the pole and then using the pole as a rudder can turn the punt as it glides through the water. Sounds easy but it is harder than it seems. The pole used to steer is heavy and long so it is awkward to handle when you bring it forward through the water to push off again. the soft grass tickling my toes. Never A group of students went to mind the fact that I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even Cambridge for a day on Thursday be allowed on the grass; but that is expecting to see a campus much beside the point. Anyways, the river like Oxford. Lots of beautiful stone is used for more than visual appeal. buildings, cobblestone roads and Punting is a popular activity. small courtyards of grass within the As I walked by the river on the colleges and a city waiting on the morning tour, there were punts other side of the campus walls. Well gliding down the river with ease, there were many beautiful stone the drivers clearly knew what they buildings but the differences were were doing. They made it look efsurprising. Cambridge had a beauti- fortless the way they captained their ful spread out campus with plenty of vessel down the river, in a straight scenic views. Grass was everywhere line too. As you can imagine, our and even though the average joe is punting adventure did not flow

Punting at Cambridge

majestically down the river in a straight line, more like bank to bank really. After wrangling our own vessel with the least amount of water in it, the 5 of us (3 current Cambridge students/Ku Alumni and Katie and I) piled into the small punt and set off. Ryan, being the most experienced in the art of punting, started us out explaining to the rest of us the subtle art of punting. Ryan made it look easy of course and therefore made the rest of us look like amatuers trying to navigate the titanic up the Mississippi river. When it was my turn to give it a try we had already been in a few circles, making slow but undeniable progress. I stepped up on the platform and felt the slippery deck slide under my converse. Cautiously I set my feet in a wide stance and tried to get the punt moving in the forward direction. The long wooden pole used for steering was already wet with river water and it made my hands red with cold. After a few initial tries the punt began to glide slowly through the water in a subtle side to side pattern. Once I got the punt moving in the right direction, I would lift, hand over hand, the pole out of the water and place it straight down in the water at the ready position to

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push off the river floor once again. It was awkward work and required constant maneuvering around other boats full of tourists or away from the stone sides of the river. It got easier though, in the short period of time in-between getting the hang of the movement and my arms getting tired, the punt seemed to work with me and glide in a straight line, effortlessly avoiding the obstacles on the water, including the everpresent ducks begging for food. Punting along, we were entertained by the professional punters around us babbling on about the history of Cambridge and other random facts. Ryan and Alex gladly educated Katie and I about the several historic bridges at Cambridge including the Bridge of Sighs, which some say got its name from the sighs of the people being led to their death many days past, others claim it acquired the name from all the students sighing on their way to their dreaded exams. And that ladies and gentleman is why undergraduates are not allowed to

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go to the top tower of the libraryâ&#x20AC;Ś Education is stressful. After putting in a good 30 minutes of manual labor I handed the responsibility to Alex and was pleasantly surprised when he managed to stay on the boat. We collided with a few other river-goers but no damage was done and we con-

tinued up the river very slowly. A few times we ended up backwards as Alex seemed to like going backwards better than forwards. A few circles, collisions and belly laughs later we were at the docks gliding into port by the talented punter Ryan, having concluded our punting adventure at Cambridge.

Dear Giles Taylor Avery Dear Giles, Hello! How are you doing? I hope you are enjoying living in London and working at Oxford University Press; I especially hope you enjoy the beautiful bus ride from London to Oxford, the beautiful greenery, the old English houses, and the lambs. But most of all, Giles, I hope the conversation we had impacted you in some way because it certainly impacted me. I remember you there, on the second story of the double-decker bus, sitting up front by the window. I told my friend Aliana I wanted to go up there and sit in front by the big window, but I hesitated. A simple “follow your heart, Taylor,” from her was all I needed to make the short walk from where I was sitting, to the window...and you. I walked up and asked if I could sit next to you. I seemed to have surprised you, but you said yes, and Giles, what a beautiful thing “yes” can lead to! But it was not only your “yes” and my “yes,” but Giles, it was a mutual decision of honesty and vulnerability. And those are the three things that I believe lead to a conversation that surpasses surface level. I started telling you my story: why I was in London, what I was studying, what I hoped to do after college. And BOOM! That’s when the conversation dove deep beyond surface-level, “small talk” if you will. I told you I was thinking about being a missionary, and the question, THE QUESTION, that was evoked when I stated my desires was, “Why?” Lots of people ask that Giles, you are certainly not the only one! Why do I want to postpone my work life and career to be a missionary? Giles, I believe I told you that I love to talk to people; I like helping people discover meaning in their lives through Jesus Christ. But Giles, what I did not tell you is that there is so much more to life than a career. A career is not the end goal. If you want something more lasting, more fulfilling, and more awe-inspiring than any career you will ever have, you have to go deeper, deeper within your heart to find what you desires - to “follow your heart” in Aliana’s words. And Giles, OH GILES, what stemmed from that was a conversation about love. It was not the romantic love; it was about the love we have for our brothers and sisters all around the world. We started talking about Christianity and how it is a religion based on love, love for God, love for your neighbor, and love for yourself. We talked about abortion and pondered the best way to love God, your neighbor, and yourself in this tough decision. We talked about contraception, natural family planning, waiting until marriage to have sex, and how I choose to live my life because of the way I believe I can best love God, my neighbor and myself. I talked about how I might want to be a gynecologist and how I could best explain to patients my viewpoints on things, and how they can best love themselves and others, and God. We talked about the menstrual cycle and ovulation and how amazing the human body is. Giles, I was not expecting this! We then started talking about health care in America and healthcare in the UK; we talked about Trump, the Church of England, the Catholic Church, Eucharistic miracles, and heaven and hell. I could have talked to you for hours longer, but Giles, it was your stop, you had to leave. Finally, I asked, “What’s your name?” You responded, “Giles” and I told you mine was Taylor. I told you it was great to talk to you and that I hoped you would continue to enjoy London and your job at Oxford University Press. I then thanked you for the great conversation. But dear Giles, what I did not tell you is that I am praying for you and I think about you a lot, not because I like your accent or I think you are cute (both true). But Giles, why I really think of you is because I do not think I have ever had a more honest, vulnerable, and fulfilling conversation with a stranger than I had with you. So, Giles, I have no way of contacting you, but I hope to meet you again, someday. And until we meet again I hope and pray that you find what your heart desires. With love, Taylor

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A Quick Jaunt to Germany Sheldon White I was fortunate enough to purchase a ticket to the England vs. Germany Futbol match in Dortmund, Germany on Wednesday, March 22nd. My travels began with a sense of determined ambition, timid optimism, and only my wallet, phone and passport. My excitement grew as a kindled fire, with each step helping add to the flames. Making it through the security check, step one. Boarding the plane, step two. Each incremental phase, its own milestone. The journey included a steep and persistent learning curve, such as finding an ATM in a German airport, (then navigating the actual ATM was its own challenge), or hailing a German Taxi (which happened to be a MercedezBenz). After arriving in Dortmund, I explored the city which had a familiar European pattern with multi-colored buildings, and bicycles in the streets. I walked until I found a nice pub to sit and enjoy a few drinks, the popular Dortmund beer is Brinklehoff’s. On my way to the game, I was surprised by the amount of English I heard being yelled in the streets, “the British

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were coming” as one might say. I navigated the sea of people to find my seat, (top row – nose bleeds) and observed the pre-game warm ups. Immediately, I could sense the passion in the stadium, cheers rang out from each corner as fans found their seats. The pregame highlights unified the cheers, as Lukas Podolski’s jersey appeared on screen. “LUUUUUKAS PO-DOL-SKI!” In a unique, and serendipitous turn of events, this game would be Podolski’s last in a German uniform. The game started slow, with German fans, unsure of the mixed English Crowd. German cheers were met with English opposition, as the two fan-bases battled for supremacy. The drums rang out, and the sides remained level at the half. During the intermission, I met a group of lads from West London who had

taken the trip to see the new and improved England squad. As I became acquainted with the fans around me, I realized that however divided their allegiances may have been, their love for Futbol is what brought them all to the stadium. In one of the more scripted moments I have ever witnessed, Lukas Podolski scored the lone goal of the game. As if written in the stars, the striker’s left boot placed a thunderous shot into the upper ninety, leaving Joe Hart helpless. “The way it finished up was like in a film” Podolski said after the game. With the ninety minutes nearly passed, one of the Londoners in my section declared that England played well, but Podolski deserved the goal. I thought this comment was indicative of the love for Futbol I found in the stadium. There was a respect among all the viewers, English or German. Following the game, I made my way to the train station with a few hundred other English travelers. English chants rang out in Dortmund’s Central station, reminding any Germans that the English fans thought they played well enough to win, and on any other night, the score could be different. However, as I boarded the train, I thought back on the game and felt a happiness for both sides. I came with only my wallet, phone, and passport, but on the way back I was taking one extra belonging, a love for Futbol.

An Oxford Fairytale Hannah Strader

“enchanted” and studied the engravings on either side of the dice There were frogs and crowns, wise old men and forests, all waiting to be explored in a tale. I thought they were a fun novelty I could use for prompts when I needed inspiration, but as the night wore on and I met the group at the legendary Turf Tavern, I found myself pulling them from my pocket and introducing them to my friends. We rolled the dice and invented a fairytale from what we rolled. A plethora of funny and creative tales emerged; stories that had already been written and metaphors for a Marxist society. My favorite was when we created together a long woven tale that continued from one person to the next until all six of us had a hand in creating the final outcome. I only remember small bits and pieces of it, but I’m going to attempt to re-create and embellish it here.

I can’t envision a more magical place to exist than Oxford. From the moment I took my first steps off that classic English double-decker bus, my breath hitched in my throat and my heart stilled. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. No wonder C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll spent their days in that city, weaving through the cobbled streets and creating new and exciting worlds. Oxford is unearthly. It’s my favorite place in the world. It was imperative to me that I take the time to wander the streets alone, if only for a little while. On the way to the Modern Art Museum I stopped in the Story Museum gift shop. As a writer, I felt immediately at home. I found myself surrounded by children’s books and literary characters hopping and playing along the walls. ***** My eyes suddenly caught on someOnce upon a time, in the corner thing called story dice, which were of what is today known as Hyde offered in different genres. I chose Park, lived a group of small goblins with long noses on their faces known as Nozzlemugs. The Nozzlemugs were relatively grumpy characters who formed tight knit groups and were often huddled together in mischievous whispers. Ozzy was the odd Nozzlemug out. As he grew older, Ozzy began to feel bad for judging other Nozzlemugs and only wanted to be friends with everyone. Unfortunately, this wasn’t allowed.

“Clique hopper,” some called him. “Friend abandoner,” others dubbed him. “Nice guy,” a few snarled. Ozzy felt so disconnected from his own home that he made the decision to follow a forbidden path deeper into the forest where he lived. He walked day and night before stumbling upon a rather dumpy old well. As he drew closer, however, he realized the well was full of treacle. Thinking he had nothing to lose, Ozzy tossed a pebble into the well and sighed. “I wish I could make friends.” Abruptly, there was a flutter of wings beside his ear. The buzzing startled him so badly that he nearly fell into the treacle well, but a small push on his back helped him keep his balance. “Ozzy,” said a soft, wispy voice. “You must listen to the instructions I give you, for I want to grant your wish.” Ozzy held his breath, fearful that if he breathed too hard the winged creature speaking in his ear would blow away and never be seen again. “First, you must pack all your favorite toys into a small rucksack. They represent important things you will learn to share with your new friends. Next, you must walk to the River Thames and throw the rucksack in. As water flows, energy builds, and your wish will have power. Do as I say and you will be lonely no longer.” Ozzy tilted his head down and to the left so the tip of his goblin nose touched his left breast where his heart beat steadily. This was a sign of gratitude from long ago, before the Nozzlemugs began to trade in gossip and sneers. The buzzing stopped, and in the distance a firefly blinked to life, its soft yellow light illuminating the

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upon dens of sleeping wolves. The world was a dangerous place for a single Nozzlemug. Eventually, Ozzy found the Thames and decided it would be wise to follow its twists and curves. At least then he would have fresh water to drink from and a solid path to follow. He headed downstream and happened to find a man who sat on a log just off the river, a funny contraption in his hand. “Hello, there,” the man greeted, though he had never seen a Nozpath leading back to his home. He sprung to his overlarge feet and be- zlemug before and wasn’t sure what Ozzy was. gan his journey with a light spring “Hello,” Ozzy replied. His voice in his step. Once he reached his was tired and the man frowned. dwellings, he quickly gathered all “Where are you going?” his favorite play things and dropped “Away,” Ozzy said simply. them into a burlap sack. As direct“Have you gotten there yet?” ed, he made his way to the Thames Ozzy took a moment to contemand hurled the sack into the water, plate this. He couldn’t remember watching with satisfaction as it how long he had been walking. All floated down the river. he knew was that his bare feet hurt “Now when I go home, things and his nose was rather limp these will be different,” Ozzy thought to days. himself. “Tomorrow, everything “Close enough, I think.” will be better for the Nozzlemugs.” “You should have some tea, It turned out he was right. The then,” the man said and hopped up. Nozzlemugs had learned of what He pulled a stick from the ground Ozzy had done and had a new beside him and patiently tugged in thing to ridicule him for. Ozzy a small, thin line with a hook on began to cry, upset by what had the end. Ozzy wasn’t sure what he happened. Nothing the firefly had promised him came true. In a fit of was trying to accomplish here, but sorrow, he decided to flee his village thought he shouldn’t offend a kind stranger who was offering him tea. and never return. The man lived in a hut a few Without a place to go, he kilometers from the river bank. stumbled through the woods and It was small on the outside, but followed unmarked and overgrown paths. Often he would lose his way, much larger on the inside, and a cat purred as it warmed itself beside an and occasionally he would come

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open fire. A kettle had already been put on and the tea was piping hot. As Ozzy sipped at his tea, the cat stretched its body and stood, lazily sauntering over to him. It was a black cat with a missing ear and it sniffed at him for a few moments before turning to the man. “Nozzlemug,” it said. Ozzy nearly spilled his tea in surprise. “Yes, I thought so,” the man said. “He is on his own, though. His demeanor is different.” “I’m quite different,” Ozzy chimed in. “How so?” the cat asked, sticking out its sandpaper tongue and lifting a paw. “Well, I like to be nice,” he began. “And I left my village because they teased me too much. Also, I threw all my toys into the river and made a wish.” The cat’s lone ear perked up, its marble eyes turning to the man in the chair across the room. “What sort of toys?” the man asked. “Well, I had a hoop and a few wood chunks to make structures with. I quite like building structures. Also, a crown and scepter made of vines to play make believe with, and a flute to make music with.” “We have those toys!” the cat declared. Ozzy’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He looked to the man for confirmation. “This is true. I hooked a sack on my line just a day ago. It must’ve known you’d be stopping here.” Ozzy looked into his teacup, then into the red burning blaze of the fire. His nose twitched just slightly and he found himself smiling. “What does it mean?” the cat asked. “It means my wish came true,” Ozzy answered.

Writing Invisible Strategies Rachel Atakpa Founded in 1965, the Modern Art Oxford is “a space for everyone to enjoy and experience contemporary art, for free.” My entire life, and much of my writing and research, has to do with discovery and understanding of space. This can manifest in understanding how the stars speak through the goodness in people’s eyes or in discovering how I can write a space for myself to exist in a world where there exists no space for me. It has to do with how people see me, if people see me, how I see myself, and how I perform visibility. And this – centering space, centering my space – is personally and politically radical as the world dictates that I do not inherently exist at all. This relationship to space is not confined to me, it is a central dealing in all Black women’s experiences. Our creation of space manifests in different ways: lullabies, recipes, sayings, tonality, poems, plays, myths, paintings, dance, and so forever on and so we go forth. Black women have always created space as they do, as they radically do. But because the environment in which we make ourselves exist is predicated on the idea that we do not, it is not common that the environment recognizes or centers our creation of space. Our creative subversion is unseen. Too often our space is unseen, but our bodies are on display. As spectacle, as contrast, as the vacuum in which whiteness dreams that it exists. As I wandered through miles worth of museums and galleries in London and Oxford and saw the lonely Africs painted into corners or beneath imposing gaze, I had visions of the spines and molding hands that were left behind for the dreams on display to look, but not be, clean. Nowhere did I see my radicalism, our radicalism, the radicalism of existence asserted in the face of light, blinding imposition. Nowhere did I see myself, even though I knew I had to have existed somewhere – wasn’t I occupying the very walls that suffocated with snowy film reels and too sharp edges. But once, amongst the expansive mapping of a paradoxical display of absence, I found myself fully. Lubaina Himid: Invisible Strategies. Modern Art Oxford, 2017 “Asserting political action through the medium of pain, Himid’s work speaks out against the erasure of black women (as artists and as subjects)... who are made invisible. [Himid] addresses historical narratives of the trauma and survival of African peoples by depicting monuments, vessels and fabrics in vivid colors and patterns,… [by] taking action in response to their experiences of oppression, not through violence but by continuing to survive and by making possible new conversations.” Notes; or, In Conversation With an Artist Who Has Seen Themselves and, In Themselves, Seen Me, Seen Us, Seen That Which Is Refused Understanding 1. Freedom and Change, 1984 Performance as an agent for political change Using the materials of a particular art medium in another form (i.e. using stage prop material in painting) as an expression of that medium’s transient/versatile power or, abstraction of experiential tools 2. Le Rodeur: The Lock, 2016 “This appalling set of mass murder would have gone unrecorded, were it not for someone documenting it in an insurance ledger.” The Igbo landing (wherein Igbo people, brought as chattel to St. Simons Island, Georgia in 1803, marched singing into the sea and drowned themselves in Dunbar Creek), my father’s language, why I don’t know how to swim, flying Africans Off the Map

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To be a bird, To live on the coast, To fly over large bodies of water 3. Le Rodeur: The Exchange, 2016 Where is the gaze, what is a glimpse, could it ever be balanced 4. Ankledeep, 1991 – In which the conversation pauses as the poet collapses on the museum floor before a painting of her soul – Q: What makes you cry? A: To see what I have imagined written into the fabric of the universe through art. A: I always find myself wanting to be left alone – for the space to belong to me. Q: Is that selfishness? Is that self preservation? 7. Fishing, 1987 Moses was born out of the Nile. When he told old pharaoh to let go, the earth shook and the sea rose because he had rivers running from his fingers and down his staff. It is not chance that he could survive in a desert for 40 years with a body and with a people. With the body of the people, out from under and into the water of liberation, manna falling from the sky. “The Warrior Uses Many Guises. The Educator Uses Many Tools” Teach a man to fish, they say, but we taught the man to fish, even as they stole our rivers, for the day, they still decided who ate for a lifetime, “We will remember those who are seen to die at the hands of the state but also bear witness and will testify to the lives and the deaths of so many others whose lives touch ours” We will remember those who are seen (who are unseen) We will remember We will r e m e m b e r We w i l l r e m e m b e r Wewillremember Rem e m b e r, rivers I have known rivers, We will remember those rivers 8. Unwrapped but not Untied, 1991 “The women take revenge; their revenge is that they are still here, they are still artists, that their creativity is still political and committed to change, to change for the good.” – Lubaina Himid (1992) 12. The Glare of the Sun, 1999/2000 Aren’t letters all that we have left of you, why do you waste them away, you would not need to burn them if you would wait for the break of day

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“ The glare of the sun was always intense the glare of the sun We suffered from exhaustion and lack was always intense Of water. After many days of this followed we suffered from exhaustion By the pain of freezing nights we had and lack of water. After many days To cross a deep and fast flowing of this followed by the pain of freezing River. Many of us were weeping with fear nights we had to cross a deep and And we were sure we would die there but fast and flowing river. Many of us were weeping Our friends helped and comforted us. with fear and we were sure we would die there but Our friends helped and comforted us. ”

19. Have Courage in the Crisis/Set Yourself Free, 2016

Sista, you ain’t gotta tell me twice 21. Zanzibar – Sea: Wave Goodbye Say Hello, 1999 “ 40 days and 40 nights alone, mourning ” Who mourns the bones at the bottom of the sea, when will you stop wishing for the mist of fog to settle and collect in your lungs, why did it take seventeen years for me to gift myself a rainbow, People love words like currents and trends and waves but never listen to me when I tell them that the moon is bleeding because she is being cut by the ropes they have thrown around her to bring her back, to take her away. 22, 23, 24. Negative Positives, 2007 – ongoing We can roll our eyes at “juxtaposition,” but there is no falsehood in observing how starkly the inhabitants of the world choose to posit themselves against one another How the colonizers love to scream of their singing, over the humming of our resolution. There Will Not Be a Headline When They Kill Me; or, Ways to Mourn and Immortalize an Invisible Girl 25. Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service, 2007 “... an intervention, a mapping and an excavation. It is a fragile monument to an invisible engine working for nothing in an amazingly greedy machine” Their faces painted on the porcelains they were made to serve, at least now, those who held death grips along the edges of our bodies will know that our bones shatter when smashed against pavement

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– When you spilled my blood but refused to carry my body I seeped into the earth, you have not escaped the crimson iron of my spirit, you will be made to drink it when history is painted, blue on your crumbling mausoleum – “This is not a memorial but more an encouraging incentive for everyone committed to restoring the balance, revealing the truths and continuing the dialogues” This is not a memorial, I am not a memorial, Nor a relic, You cannot be a relic without a past You cannot be, they say, This is not a memorial, This is a beginning

An Extremely Incomplete Survey of Libraries & Bookstores Centennial Clogston 1) The British Library The British Library in London has some of the largest and most diverse collections in the world. It is a legal deposit, which means that every publisher in the UK is required to give a copy to the library. You apply and they issue you a photo ID before you can even enter their reading rooms and look at their collections. Welcoming and busy. 2) The Bodleian Library The oldest library at the University of Oxford, one of almost a hundred libraries in total. This library dates back to 15th century, where it first contained a few hundred manuscripts. Today it is still a working library for students. (It was also the filming location for the Hogwarts library in the Harry Potter movies.) Ancient and whimsical. 3) Blackwell’s This bookstore is across the street from the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Two stories full of new books of all genres, plus a chain coffee shop inside. Friendly and bright. 4) Quinto Bookshop A secondhand bookshop in London. Ramshackle shelves with a vague organizational system. Small and dusty. 5) Persephone Books Charming dual publisher and bookstore that sells only underappreciated books written by women, particularly 19th and 20th century literature. Each book has the same plain gray cover, with a vibrant patterned inside. Quaint and impactful. 6) Gay’s the Word Sells only books that deal with LGBTQ+ topics in some way or another, of every genre from history to graphic novels to erotica. It is a struggle not to take every book home with me. Hip and empowering.

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Don’t Judge Leeds Castle By Its History Mariela Haug Mora On Thursday I took a day trip out to Leeds Castle, Canterbury and the Cliffs of Dover. As every castle or palace in England Leeds Castle has a rich and versatile history. The castle was a stronghold for the Normans during the 11th Century when William the Conqueror’s half brother first built a Manor in the area. It then became a castle and was introduced to British Politics by 1139. Around 150 years later, in1278 Queen Eleanor of Castille purchased the castle, which in turn made it a royal castle. In 1299 King Edward granted the castle to his new wife, Queen Margaret of France and this began a tradition for the Kings of England: when they married, Leeds Castle would be granted to their Queens. If this weren’t enough, Leeds Castle also played a role in King Henry VIII’s reign. He altered the castle from a fortress to a royal palace that could accommodate him and his wife when they visited. The end of the Tudor Dynasty also marked the end of an era for Leeds Castle, as it began to rely on private

owners for its repairs, maintenance and use. You would expect the inner areas of this castle to be rich in history, with an ability to take you back and connect with all its previous owners, but in my opinion, that wasn’t the case, As our bus turned into the grounds of Leeds Castle I was in awe. It was like jumping into a fairy tale. The grass was green, the trees were beginning to bloom, a small stream flowed next to the road, and of course, Leeds Castle, grandly sitting on its moat connected to the main grounds by gorgeous stone bridges. Naturally, I couldn’t wait to go in. As I walked into the castle through its 900-yearold cellar I could feel the history pulling me in, but then as I came up the stairs I was a little confused. Inside, the castle rooms were furnished in an extremely modern way. Yes, they tried to maintain some of the Tudor era style, but it seemed off. The inside of Leeds Castle was

not a walk into history but rather a walk into someone’s house, specifically Lady Baillie’s. The castle went through many changes when it became private property and Lady Baillie, who became the owner of the castle in the 1920s set out to recreate the medieval castle. From the outside the castle is a beautiful fortress towering over its moat, but in my opinion the inside was confused between history and Lady Baillie’s change and improvements. Regardless of the confusion this caused to my brain the views that I first had from Leeds Castle are the ones that make me think “I definitely have to go back!” Maybe next time I won’t go inside and I’ll just sit on the Courtyard with a cup of coffee looking down at the majestic views this castle has to offer and walk around its beautiful gardens.

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More than pretty Katie Bernard Very few things move me to tears. A sad movie is sad but not a reason to cry. Art work is impressive and certainly beautiful but no cause for emotion. And a pretty building is just that, a pretty building. Because of this, when I made my way to the crypts in Canterbury Cathedral, I barely recognized myself. When I entered the main part of the Cathedral I knew it was special. Like the other cathedrals Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been in in London, it was breathtaking; but I had no idea what I was about to experience. Canterbury Cathedral holds a large amount of history within its very big walls. The original church was founded in the sixth century and the cathedral that currently stands was built in the eleventh. The funding of the larger cathedral was made possible because of a murder that took place on its steps. Saint Thomas Beckett stood up to King Henry II and was consequently murdered on the steps of the church. Because of this, Canterbury Cathedral became a common place of pilgrimage for Catholics and later, Anglicans. As I walked into the crypts, I overheard the familiar sounds of a priest and congregation celebrating mass. In that moment, I was transported. There, standing in the former burial place of Saint Thomas Beckett, it was as if I could feel the weight of the prayers said in that chapel over the centuries. Time stood still as I wandered through the chapel, past shrines to various saints, stunning stained glass windows, and engravings carved in stone before the United States even existed. I have spent time in my fair share of churches but never had a building impacted me like

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this. Ironically enough, this feeling came in the least ornate part of the church. Compared to the rest of the Cathedral, the crypts were simple. There were only a few windows and the ceilings were vaulted, but simple. It may have been the simplicity of the crypts that took my mind off the physical appearance of my surrounding and instead caused me to attempt to understand its history. I found myself imagining the lives of the people who had walked

down the same corridor I was in, wondering what compelled them to make this same pilgrimage to Canterbury, and what it was they prayed for within these walls. Canterbury Cathedral is far more than just a pretty building. It is a place that has touched thousands of lives over hundreds of years and has, in turn, been touched by the prayers left by those who visit.

Quest for Water Erin Brady Most people on this trip knew that I am in school for chemical engineering, but few knew what I do for a job. I have worked at the drinking water and wastewater plants in Lawrence as the lab intern for a year. I have learned so much in the time I’ve been there that I have developed a newfound passion for water. It’s not as boring as it sounds, I promise. At the water plants I have the opportunity to run machinery so

fine-tuned cleaning products cannot be used in its presence, only water and a cloth. I get to work with many chemicals and use them to test for certain compounds to make sure we aren’t putting them out to our customers and I am also able to see where in the process our systems are weak and need to improve. It is just so amazing how, in a few hundred years, we as a race have happened upon and engineered ways to purify water and make it safe to drink and also discharge back into its original body of water; it is simply a phenomenon. The first form of water treatment was a simple sand filter, which proved useful in the United King-

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dom solving the problem of cholera outbreaks around the 1800s. The last trip I was on to San Diego I was able to tour a different type of wastewater plant and see how other places treat their water and dispose of the remaining waste. It was fascinating seeing how this other treatment plant discharged back into the ocean, with an outfall of impressive size, especially when considering the population it served was a major California city. Lawrence didn’t even compare to this operation. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to actually visit a British water

Westminster. Most of these places pull water from the Thames, and its pH was generally pretty high, which is good! In the United States it is actually illegal to send out water to customers less than pH 7.45 even though pH 7 is the natural neutral pH. I also noticed that the Thames is extremely turbid (stuff like dirt and other “floaties”), so my guess is they add lots of flocculaters (makes floaties not float anymore), which can sometimes drive the pH

Hyde Park Area

up due to their alkalinity. Overall, the quality of London water was just slightly more mineral-y than what we have here in Lawrence, but otherwise very similar in its clarity and level of pH. 8/10 on taste, but would still drink again. I now realize that I sound like a complete nerd… so I’ll stop boring you with my knowledge about water testing. Oxford had the best water, though! Just saying. They would, though, wouldn’t they? (Why?) Anyway, here are some

Westminster

treatment plant on this trip, I decided to find as many different types of drains and water mains as possible and connect them to see where they led in the end. I also took a small sample of each general place we visited to compare the cleanliness, palpability, and chlorine residual using a simple chlorine test strip similar to litmus paper. The places I was able to grab samples from include: Oxford, Cambridge, Windsor, Hyde Park area, and

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pictures of drains that I took to entertain you and so you may laugh at my unabashed love of water engineering. Off the Map

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A Rosy Remembrance Daniel Jalilpoor The weeks leading up to London were common enough: days spent rushing to be on time for class, cramming for exams, late nights with friends, KU basketball. Somehow even landing in London was not quite enough to wake me up. We weren’t strictly there for academic reasons or for vacation. The week in London exists outside of space and time. Completely out of the ordinary. All notions of routine and familiarity were lost somewhere over the Atlantic. Rather than rushing to class, we were rushing to some exciting new place by design

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or by chance: trips to Stonehenge or Canterbury, touring Oxford, frantically looking for Pizza Express. Learning a unit’s worth of information the night before an exam was replaced with memorizing the wonderful and intricate tube system. Fortunately, KU basketball remained the same. Somewhere in the streets of Oxford, I was walking slowly with my hands held behind my back and a va-

cant gaze plastered on my face as I soaked in the scenery when I realized how very lost I was and how little that mattered. I did not know where my classmates were, I did not yet know how to find the Turf to meet up with them to return to the hotel, I did not know the name of the street I was on, and I did not even know how much money I had. All I knew was that it was lunchtime. So I sat down in an Andalusian restaurant I happened to walk by. As I washed down the delicious tapas with a second glass of red wine, I took note of how content I was to temporarily abandon my routine in the States, but just as I eventually returned to the hotel, I returned home. That first week back was brutal. The old routine fit like an old, scratchy sweater. It still fit fine, but goodness was it uncomfortable, and I couldn’t remember why I ever wore it in the first place. Sitting in class, I was unable to focus on a single word my professors or classmates were saying. I was busy listening to my footsteps and raindrops echoing off English sidewalks. I was miles away. I may not have noticed leaving, but I was fully aware that I had not yet returned. I don’t want to come off as too melodramatic. Although I enjoy dwelling on romanticized thoughts and memories formed abroad, I am glad to be home. Still. As the semester wraps up and finals approach, these memories are a welcome escape to a week I spent wondering around the streets of London.

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