Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The rest of my hols... (Continued)

I am truly a very very bad chronicler, I guess the world must be glad that I did not decide to become a historian. =)

As promised, here's the next installment of my travels in london and oxbridge.

London, the little red city who yearned to be big, achieved it, and still managed to stay the quaint little city it used to be, with all her über-old traditions, and funny little stories, inspirational, wonderful. I see how the phrase 'richly steeped in tradition' came about.

I stayed with Puee the entire time I was in London. She stays at the Bankside, and what a great place it is, just on the banks of the Thames. We went strolling on the first day, when we caught the sunset behind the Westminster Abbey, the Chambers of the Lords, as well as the Big Ben. (Trivial: Big Ben is the name of the bell in the tower. This gigantic specimen of a bell weights around 13 tonnes or more, if I recall correctly. It was named after the guy who built the tower plus the bell, Benjamin someone. One cool thing about the bell tower is that it lights up in the night when Parliament is sitting.) It was such a wonderful feeling to be there in London, the place in Europe; a city where there resides in every street the echoes of stories and legends; the centre of the world in an era long past but not quite so forgotten. Not to forget the wonderful company I had. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing 'long-lost' friends in a foreign place. (I even saw huishan and Shafa too!)

I visited the British Museum (my very first stop the next day), Chinatown, Oxford Street, Natural History Museum, Hyde Park (Speakers' Corner!), Harrod's, Covent Gardens, the West End (where puee and I watched Chicago), Buckingham Palace (just the outside), the Guards' house, had a walking tour around the area of Westminster, visited the National Gallery...there is just so much to describe, more than even my inclination to do so.

The British Musem can be said to be a statement to Britain's imperialist past. There are artifacts from all over the world, such as the shield that a bushman dropped as he was shot by Captain Cook on the first british foray into Australia. (The Brits had the cheek to include in their commentary that the first interactions with natives were unfortunately violent AT TIMES. What a laugh.) They even have the Gamelan set that Raffles took home with him after his first trip in the Malayan Archipelago. Other collections worth the mention: The Panthenon, temple to Athena. They had the real things brought along with them! There was also a very interesting exhibit on how bronze figures were made in Benin, a technique that has been going on for many, many hundreds, or even a thousand over years. It has to do with the melting of beeswax. Would you care to hazard a guess for how ingenious the method was?

First they made the core (the empty middle part of the bronze figures) with clay. This is baked, dried, then covered with beeswax for the details. Then they place another layer of clay on top of the beeswax. This is dried, then the mould is heated to melt the beeswax inside, which is then poured out. Molten bronze is poured into the mould. And...they cleverly break up the clay to expose the bronze figure within. Spiffing, isn't it?

The general feeling I had in London was that it was very, very cosmopolitan. Everyone's British, yet everyone has a different accent, a different skin colour, different ways of dressing. It is thus the norm to be different, and I love this feeling. *No one stares at you for uncomfortable periods of time like they do in some parts of Germany. But recently, I have begun to realise that sometimes it is not because you seem strange to them, but it is because they want to strike up a conversation about the weather to you, but Germans being shy, do not exactly know how to approach this particularly popular topic.* The people in London are very friendly too, (sometimes a mite too friendly) but pleasant on the whole.

One thing I absolutely would recommend to anyone going to London: take the Westminster walking tour. The tour guide opens your eyes to things quirky and amazing...things like how the phrase "to hold a candle to someone" came about in the first place; the gory history that happened behind the Abbey, the amazing fact that all laws are still written on vellum in this electronic age; the odd british habit of having gas-lamp-timer-winders instead of lamp lighters in this day and age; how the one person who built the House of Lords died in Bedlam while the other, apparently not-so-important person got knighted, etc. All these, told with a british accent that is pleasant to the ear, is an extreme enjoyment not to be forgotten.

Puee and I went for Mass on Maundy Thursday in the Westminster Abbey. It was truly something I did not even dream of being able to experience! In this Church, where Kings and Queens have been made, the presence of an Almighty cannot be doubted.


Oxford and Cambridge

I am terribly sorry that I would be lumping these two places together, apologies to students of both sides who cannot stand "the other side". =D But both consist of so many similar colleges (I cannot tell them apart in my photos, regrettably) as well as great histories, that it would be much repetition if I were to describe them separately.

I had more recollections of Oxford though, perhaps due to all the history that I have heard from it. Do you know that Cambridge is an offshoot of Oxford? The constant conflict between the "Gown" and the "Town" made some of the "Gown" decide to flee to Cambridge to set up another University there. (Then again, this was from an Oxfordian. But he's someone whose account of history I will never doubt.) A walk around Oxford would soon convince you that it is the Brits who invented the entire concept of lawns. In fact, it is doubtful if the word for a 'lawn' even exists in German, for Germans would consider proper lawns too boring to be of merit for a word--Sara just gave me a word for 'Garden' when I consulted her on this issue. I was rather impressed by the painting in Keble College's Chapel, Light of the World. It was so soft, yet so strong in its message, of Jesus knocking on the doors of the hearts of Sinners. A very arresting image.

ZK, Yijin and I went to have this great ice cream too, can't really recall the name. Apparently this ice cream shop would provide strange flavours on request too, every week. *cool* Another thing to note: many names are pronounced in inexplicable ways. E.g. Magdalene college is pronounced as "Maw-dlin", NOT "Mehg-de-lin". And of course there is the entire thing about Worcester sauces etc.

Cambridge, I think, is even smaller than Oxford is. But it has great lawns too (Surprise!) and I played frisbee with a few KUMSA pple, it was great! I hadn't done much sport in the last 7 months, and then suddenly I had to run for 2 hours non-stop, guarding Aud, of all pple. Her stamina was amazing. Got invited to a cookout by some of Aud's friends later on, (cook-out= ie They cook, I eat out.) And Aud trying to intro me to some "good men", but it was all for a good laugh (this alone is soooo extremely strange! Could I ever have imagined myself writing this six years ago, in Sec school, with the Aud I knew then? Definitely not.) Many thanks to Jiahui and HK for showing me around, and for the accomodation, it was great seeing them again.

Comp is running out of batt. Well, the pics would have to wait then=P

=D ting