Autumn in London '06

Touchdown Heathrow

Hullo Mates,

Well, I’ve finally arrived here in London, Europe’s biggest city and the most diverse place in the world. I arrive in the birthplace of my native language as Londoner number 7,500,001 or thereabout, to take a few elective courses at Goldsmiths’ College of the University of London toward my degrees back at Northeastern University. But this experience is about much more than that, of course. To satisfy the “journal” requirement for the Study Abroad Office at NU, I’ve chosen to keep a blog which is, of course, what you’re reading right now. I plan to update said blog 2 or 3 times per week or perhaps more often if something extraordinary occurs.

Straightaway after arriving at Heathrow Airport (a country of its own, really), the lot of us walked down several corridors to the immigration line. While I expected to have to pass through customs of some sort, I had no idea that I’d be waiting in a line longer than your average line at Disney World. It got me to thinking about some of the obvious similarities between the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as some of the differences, when it comes to immigration. Scanning the line, I could see people from all over the world, dressed in every way imaginable and speaking a myriad of languages. Some of these people, like me, are here to study. Some are here on vacation, and some on business. But intuitively, I could tell that many were here to make money. Money to send back home. Money that, given the extraordinary value of the British Pound Sterling, will be received like lottery winnings by the worker’s family. Given that a similar thing happens in the U.S. quite frequently, and given the reaction to it there, I would expect that immigration would be quite a contentious issue in the U.K. Smaller country, stronger currency, fewer jobs to be had…I would think that this would be a major issue here. Only time will tell.

At any rate, between waiting for the whole NU group to assemble (and temporarily losing 3 people), the hour-long shuttle ride to Goldsmiths’ College, and being bounced back and forth between registration buildings to find my room key and access card, I had become quite tired. Add that to not having slept at all on the plane ride over, and I was beat. Still, I threw my bags in my room and headed off to Central London to meet up with Kevin (for those of you who may not know me well enough, Kevin is my boyfriend who is also studying in London this term, only at the London School of Economics [LSE] through the Hansard Scholars Programme) at his flat in the South Kensington neighbourhood.

We spent the afternoon wandering about Central London, taking in all that is one of the most expensive urban regions in the world. We walk by real-estate agents advertising flats for 1,000,000 pounds each. And that’s just for a 95-year “rent-hold.” You see, all of the property in the central part of the city is technically owned by the estates of long-dead dukes, lords, and earls or their descendents. So one cannot buy a flat in the area, one just effectively owns it for about a century.

And that’s just one of the many very different things about my new country. Cars driving on the left side of the road, people walking even more briskly than in Boston, smaller cars and cars that do not make appearances in the States, crazy words in Shoppe windows and more and more and more. I’ll get to all of that in future posts.

Finally, after a long day of fretting about how expensive the city is and the fact that I do not have internet access in my dorm room in New Cross, where Goldsmiths’ is, I finally return home to my dorm room at about 22:00 (that’s 10 p.m.), unpack (not a long process for me), write this entry (for posting in the future when I figure out where to get internet access), and go straight to sleep, despite not having a pillow, mattress cover, sheets, or a duvet (comforter). I haven’t met any of my flatmates yet, but I’m sure I will tomorrow.

posted by Zachary Nicholson @ 4:11 PM