Two Metropolises, Two Worlds

October 10 — My first month in London has been treating me extremely well. I have adjusted to my new life here and have made new friends, learned new things and been exposed to new cultures. London, and in particular the East End are incredibly diverse spaces. However, it is clear that there are strict societal splits just as there are back in America. What is striking to me is the similarities London has with my home city of New York.

The neighborhood we are in, Mile End, reminds of the neighborhood I briefly lived in when I was home from college over my breaks. The neighborhood, Jackson Heights, is one of the most diverse places in America. You can walk down the street and hear English, Thai, Hindi, Arabic and Spanish among other languages. The same is true over here. This neighborhood brings people of all different languages and culture together. Two different countries yet two very similar, multicultural neighborhoods!

Needless to say, the food is amazing! One of my favorite things to do is go to markets of different nationalities and ethnicities and buy up their ingredients and make some food of my own! I even bought an Indian cookbook on this note. It’s a super cheap way to eat your way through London. I love to cook and this is such a great outlet for that. One night, my friend Cindy from Beijing taught me how to cook a variety of Chinese dishes and she fed our whole flat! The next day, I went to a Chinese market and bought the same spices she had. I’ve been cooking Chinese food the same way she has for almost two weeks now. My Norwegian flatmate gave us all a taste of Norwegian cheese her dad brought with him when he visited her. I’ve been reciprocating as well, cooking my whole flat homemade pizza and showing them what Bagels are. I even travel half an hour often twice a week just to buy good bagels at a Jewish deli near here. All for a taste of home! Food tells stories and breaks down barriers, it’s great to see how this is working in my life here.

Not all neighborhoods of London are like the East End, however. Over the weekends, my friends and I have been exploring all different neighborhoods of London. We spent some time at the National Gallery and walked around. The neighborhood was very posh with small touristy shopping stretches. The same is true with the neighborhoods by Hyde Park and by the Tate Modern. This reminded me of the neighborhoods around the Met and Central Park back home. The diversity is still there, but much less so and the area is quite a bit “nicer.” For example, here in the East End there are still signs of grittiness with graffiti everywhere, homelessness, and drug dealers openly dealing in the park. The neighborhoods I saw near those other sights do not have these issues. The same is true for London and New York. It is clear that tradeoffs remain regarding neighborhoods and that there are still societal divisions that are hard set here in London.

 —Dan Koster

Dickens Didn't Prepare Me for This: Why is it so Sunny?

October 8 — London has a reputation of a grim landscape with one key characteristic. Charles Dickens writes in the first chapter of Bleak House (1852):

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green sits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside of a great (and dirty) city... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”

T.S. Eliot personifies this characteristic as a cat in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1911):

 “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”

Unsurprisingly, there is even an entire book which examines these distinctive “pea-soupers”: London Fog: A Biography (2015) by Christine Corton, not to mention an illustrious coat company and even a cocktail named after this not-so-natural phenomenon.

We, however, have been lucky enough to meet London in a sunny, late September hue. A woman sits outside a cafe, flicking through stapled papers, a mug of something dark in front of her, and smoke dissipating up to the sky from her cigarette. A small boy in a blue coat chases after geese in Victoria Park (only 1.3 miles/2 kilometers away from Queen Mary’s campus). The canal fades from an opaque green (where ducks and swans dive among litter and leaves) to a murky slate blue-grey. Someone ties their canal barge to a stake in the ground, waving to a woman sipping tea atop her own boat. Someone else unties their barge from the stake and moves down Regent’s Canal via the locks. Most pedestrians are in sweaters or light jackets at most. It almost feels as if London is trying to make a good impression on us, politely taking off its heathered hat to bid us “hello, nice to meet you.”

This city sits stuck in an empty snow globe, pausing not even to take a breath but to hover in the closest thing that gets to stillness for the living concrete organism. The tube still runs despite the sun (though make note of planned closures to the Central, District, and Hammersmith & City Lines if coming from the Mile End station). Pedestrians still jaywalk despite it. Markets still open and close in Camden and Brick Lane despite it. The clouds move lethargically in the sky unlike the people on the streets. I had expected the commotion of bodies to be accompanied by a precipitative commotion: the sound of rain on umbrellas, double-decker buses through oily puddles, a constant running down gutters and windows. Not only this, but I had expected any kind of dormancy to rely upon a thick grey fog: a blanket, a cat, a rolling grey actor upon the city.

As October settles in, so does a mist (of sorts), clouding the sunrises and sunsets, dipping the urban jungle in milky grey ink. The mist, like smoke off cigarettes, dissipates partway through the day after saying “Good Morning” and rolls away for the sun. No fog—not yet. Though I’m sure all we have to do is wait.

—India Roper-Moyes

London: a City of History, Size, and Chicken

October 5 — The first thing that struck me about London was just how big and old it is. While the Tube make most parts of London accessible, I always get a shock when my google maps shows me that a place I want to get to can be hours away by foot. Having subways is also a nice change from my time living in Portland and California. It was easy for me to map out the city of Portland in my head when I first arrived to Lewis and Clark. In contrast, I can’t make heads or tails of the layout of London. There are no hills, mountains, or rivers that distinguish downtown areas from the periphery. You can easily walk across the Thames and still find yourself in a densely urban area.

Out of all the things I have seen in London, what strikes me the most is the old architecture. Structures like Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Parliament building are so massive and beautiful to me. With histories longer than the entirety of the United States, buildings such as Westminster can have pieces ranging from a thousand years. For example, the grave of Stephen Hawking was added in 2018, while the tomb of Edward the Confessor has been in the abbey since 1066.

Aside from the physical differences I’ve experienced in London, there many cultural differences that I am trying to grow accustomed to. For instance, Londoners love chicken. I don’t understand why, but the sheer amount of different chicken restaurants I see on a daily basis convinces me of it. British people also have different tastes than I am used to. In the states, I am used to only seeing a few people put potato chips (or crisps) in their sandwiches. Here, things like potato chip, turkey and cranberry sauce, and pickle and cheese sandwiches are widely accepted as delicious while PB&J’s are less commonly enjoyed. Additionally, after Halloween is a holiday called Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes Day), where people celebrate the failed attack of Guy Fawkes on Parliament in 1605. During this holiday, a straw man (representing Fawkes) is burned and there are fireworks displays. This seems to be the closest patriotic holiday that the United Kingdom has comparable to our 4th of July (but we sadly don’t burn a straw man). Aside from the two cultural differences I have discussed, there are the more obvious ones such as having different and names or pronunciations for certain things, different brands, and single dorm rooms.

I’m eager to spend more time in London and experience as much of the city as I can. Due to its size, there will be lots of parts that I won’t get to see, but I’m excited to enjoy my time here for all it’s worth. I’m excited to join the celebration of Bonfire Night, try the different chicken restaurants, and learn more about its extensive history through David’s class with my Lewis & Clark classmates.

—Noémie Cloutier

Click your Dr. Martens together three times and say “there’s no place like home”

October 3 — I have lived in a big city for my whole life. When I moved up north for college, one of my biggest issues was how slow it was. However, when I got to know Portland, I began to realize it was a lot more like home than I had expected.

The same thing is happening with me in London. Leading up to my departure I kept on being told how big of a city London was, and how it would be very different from living in the States. I didn’t completely buy this, as I was moving from one English speaking country to another, instead of going somewhere with a different language, customs, etc. Nevertheless, I began to believe that it would truly be different than my life at home.

Once again, I am beginning to believe this not to be completely true. With each day that passes I am becoming more aware of how similar my life in London is to my life growing up at home. When I have my window open I recognize the sounds of car horns, yelling, and construction. I do not have trouble navigating crowded streets filled with fast-moving people. The coffee tastes exactly the same.

However, I have noticed some differences in culture here. People don’t make eye contact with and smile at strangers quite like they do at home. A lot of times it is hard to walk past someone, as (I assume) neither of us know which side to pass on, creating an awkward dance-like interaction before you can carry on walking. I haven’t managed to find a good burrito, but have had surprisingly good Thai food. And when you eat it seems to be a much more leisurely activity than it does at home. I will see dozens of people sitting and enjoying their meals outside, especially since it has been pretty warm. Very rarely do I see people eating while walking, which is common in the States. I can’t think of anything even remotely close to pub culture for people under 21 in the States. Even though they do speak English here, you still have to learn a whole new set of common slang.

These could be seen as small things. I think when you are in a place so similar to where you grew up the differences between the two cities are magnified. I know that London is a lot bigger than home, both in area and population. Though I recognize my home in the city, the people I do daily dances with on the street or see drinking coffee and people watching are completely new. That is what I find the most exciting. I have only been here for a few weeks, but in the next months I look forward to getting to know the people who see London as their home. There are around seven million more people here than at home, and I can only begin to imagine the experiences that’ll come from them that I wouldn’t get anywhere else.

—Claire Tauber

Citizen of Now(here)

October 1 — Cities deeply fascinate me. I enjoy what they usually have to offer to the bright-eyed newcomer: architecture, museums, landmarks, food, glitzy shopping areas (which honestly, I only limit to window shopping), and so on. However, I sometimes find these types of experiences as superfluous. I deeply believe that limiting our interaction with a city to mere tourism does not do justice either to the city nor its communities; a place such as London cannot be understood through those experiences alone. So, I usually find myself at co-ops, community gardens, or the subway, either actively crowd-watching or finding my bearings. Whether this mindset comes out of a sense of respect for the places I visit, or a vain desire of feeling that I am more than a tourist, it allows me to observe the deeper dynamics and peculiar features of cities such as London.

However, this discovery process has been more complex than I thought it would be. The fact is that my presence, and that of the rest of our study abroad group, is so common and —I would dare say— integral to the city’s cosmopolitan nature. Not only are we here as international students learning about London’s unique culture and history, but we are actively a part of it. I point this out because, though virtually all overseas programs are done with that very purpose in mind, this process of immersion in London has been as seamless as can be. This doesn’t mean it’s been easy to adapt to academics or to figure out our place in a larger university, but it does mean that there are many others who share the same struggle. Moreover, as a Mexican student abroad, I greatly identify with the large group of other international students at Queen Mary (I’d lie if I didn’t say I feel like a fish in the water). This might mean I am less of an outsider (which usually makes it easier to observe from afar and gain insights), but it also means that this time around I will discover a place in quite a different way, and come up with very different questions and answers.

I have yet much to learn, but an insight I have gained about London is that from its very conception, it has possessed the “cosmopolitan” nature for which we know it today. From its Roman foundation in 50 AD, the city has gone through very different periods; its population has not only drastically changed in number, but also in terms of ethnicity and origin. From the Anglo-Saxons to the Windrush generation, and currently, immigration from the EU and beyond, I am looking forward to the lessons that such a deeply multicultural place has to offer. These teachings, I believe, are needed now more than ever in a time where “citizens of the world” are deemed to be “citizens of nowhere”… (Hello, Theresa May!)

—Emma Franco Ceceña