If you were to give me a year to live in London, completely on my own and with the freedom to do anything and everything I wanted to, I would come back wishing I had more time. With how quickly these days and weeks have gone by, it’s honestly hard to believe that a month has already passed. Now at the end of our journey, I find myself reflecting in Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Stratford itself is a beautiful, small town, with its slower pace and obsession with the Bard creating a perfect place to end our study abroad experience. I loved seeing and walking through locations like Shakespeare’s birthplace or Anne Hathaway’s cottage, and the town’s mixture of architectural styles made it amazing to walk through. Wandering through the streets at night, no other soul in sight, felt tranquil and almost magical compared to the bustle and unnatural brightness of nights in London. The experience of Stratford felt no more yielding than a dream, with its seemingly daily farmer’s markets stretching across plazas before vanishing at 5:00, its historical sites nestled between antique stores and candy shops, and the tourism depending almost entirely upon Shakespeare’s mere existence. Whether it was watching theatre in languages I did not understand or having afternoon tea in a cafe populated with cats named after Shakespeare characters or even just wandering the quiet streets in the dead of night, I adored every minute that I spent in this place.
All in all, my time in London has felt like a strange dream, as if I have but slumber’d here, while these visions did appear. Visions of an expansive urban setting, with buildings sprouting into the sky, and so many shops packed so tightly together that you could get anything you ever need within a five minute walk. Of a place so casually old you see people park their cars next to ancient Roman walls or over the graves of long dead kings (that has actually happened before. Twice). Of a city so large and sprawling and yet feeling so incredibly small and local. Of a public transit system where it feels like you step off into a completely different city from where you started at, even if you are just a stop away.
This trip taught me many things I never would have known about London without going. I learned about the many rich and expansive markets throughout the city, home to many different stores and restaurants (and barbershops) for almost anything you could ever want. I found my way through the surprisingly easy to understand tube system, which I first thought would be incredibly confusing and something I may not use often, but ended up taking casually every day. I became engrossed in the collections and stories of museums and galleries and even the small antique shops on the corners. I ate foods and tasted things that I had never seen before or just assumed would be vaguely gross, like a meat pie. I saw so many different shows and equally as many different ways of doing theatre, taking in what decisions and choices I thought worked and what did not to help me in my own sound design work this upcoming semester.
Overall, London has been an immensely powerful and incredibly educational trip to go on, and an experience I would not trade for anything else. While I feel like I left a part of myself in London (and, as I am an honest Ben, I would have to say I legitimately did. I left behind my mouse’s USB in the hotel room, after all), I feel like London has left me with a part of itself as well. Whether it is the souvenirs that I take home in my near bursting suitcase, or the stories that will unfurl off my tongue at any social gathering for the next five years, or the lessons I wish to put to practice and the recipes I wish to try etched into my brain, I have been changed by my experiences in London. I wish to return some day, if I have unearned luck, and do and see more than what I have already, but for now I think it would be better to rest at home.
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue, I will make amends ere long, and say goodbye to a little place called London.
Theatre in London U of A 