My little town blues... are melting away... I’ll make a brand new start of it, New York, New York...
Liza Minnelli’s voice pumped through my headphones. I sat in the tube, juggling my three bags, listening to my New York mix, even though I was in London. It wasn’t some random nostalgia trip that caused my New York-centricity. Nope. The reason I was listening wasn’t so much for NEW York...
I was going to OLD York. York the Original. York Senior. Elderly York.
And I was excited.
Back in November, not long after I found out I was accepted into my study abroad program, I was emailed by Arcadia a list of UK excursions I could apply to participate in. Some of them ranged from the boring (listening to people complain to the head of the British Opera) to the hardcore (mountain biking and diving in Wales... in February). I signed up for three- a night at the Comedy Store (which was awesome), a May Day excursion (obviously hasn’t happened yet) and then York, for the Jorvik Viking conference.
Why Anne, you may ask, why on earth would you go to a Viking conference in a smallish town in Northern England? Well, besides the fact that I’m an absolute freak, it actually does have something to do with my heritage. I’m half-Norwegian, and therefore, possibly half Viking. I’m also quarter German and quarter Irish, and ready to explore at least part of my heritage.
I got off the tube at King’s Cross, ready to board my train to York. After some searching (and a growing sense of frustration) I found my program and was surprised to see there were 12 students who actually chose the York trip. Their reasons ranged from “Hopefully chilling with some awesome Vikings” to “I just want to see the architecture” to “I’m just bored and this was something to do.” “Aren’t you guys excited for the historical stuff?” I asked, like the complete and utter nerd I am. I was met with shrugs.
The train to York only lasted about two and a half hours, and then there was a ten minute walk from the station to the hostel, a place optimistically named Ace Hotel. Seven of us crammed into one room while reading plaques on the walls that revealed the hostel used to be a nice house for a rich family in the 1800’s. Apparently our room was where they took their tea, though now instead of Georgian furniture it was furnished sparsely with metal bunk beds that creaked wickedly every time someone moved so much as a single toe. The first night I spent at the hostel, skyping with my parents to let them know I didn’t die in some freak accident on my way to York and then reading before calling it an early night. I was excited- we were supposed to attend the actual Viking conference tomorrow, and thoughts on Viking lore swirled in my head as I went to sleep.
We awoke early the next morning to a free breakfast of stale bread and pretty much nothing else. The sky was sunny and bright, especially for about 8 in the morning. Oh, yeah, did I mention that we had to wake up super early for this conference as well? We followed the group leaders through the “city” of York- through city is used pretty loosely and I generally just end up calling it a town- and I got my first real glimpse of the beautiful architecture and strong sense of history York is known for. Assuming, you know, it’s known for much of anything.
The Viking conference was in a local university, and we all grabbed seats near the top, taking up two rows in the lecture hall. Our group leaders ditched us the second we were safely at our destination and all checked in. Really, that should’ve been our first clue. But our main leader, when asked how the conference was supposed to be, claimed she heard it would be “fun, with humor but still very informative.” I knew we had a long day of speakers ahead of us, but I thought it’d be cool anyways. I legit thought we were going to hear stories of epic battles, massive discoveries, and interesting tidbits on day to day Viking life. I was geared up to learn about the sagas, their discovery of America, the sacking of Irish monasteries, and their influence on English history.
It was possibly one of the most boring things I’ve ever been to in my life. And I have a pretty high boring tolerance, too. I’ve never actually fallen asleep in a class before. I’ve come kinda close, like when your head starts to fall and you jerk yourself awake quickly. I stayed awake in driver’s ed, in boater’s ed, in every other boring lecture I’ve had to sit through. But for the first time ever, in my entire life, I fell asleep in the middle of a lecture. Multiple times.
Cause the lights would go down, and they’d bust out the powerpoint, and instead of talking about bloodshed and berserkers, they would talk about how they made a ride we still hadn’t seen yet. The Jorvik Viking Center is actually a ride, where you sit in a little dealie as it took you through a Viking village (more on that later). At the time, though, we knew next to nothing about the Jorvik Center, so listening to the history of it, and the differences in the animatronics throughout the years, wasn’t exactly a laugh riot. The guy would attempt to make jokes about different archeologists that everyone else in the room got but us. Oh, and by the way, we were the youngest people there, in a room of at least 50 people, by about 40 years. At one point I woke up just long enough to see that both of our rows were completely out, heads on the tables, drooling in our folded arms. By the time the second speech ended (on the archeological climate in Dublin, and how difficult it was to dig there for some reason), I knew it was pretty much over. I ditched it, and went out to explore York.
I’m a city girl, but I can appreciate smaller places, especially ones as steeped in history as York. As weird as it sounds, I couldn’t help but compare it New York, it’s cooler little brother. While Old York’s been around since pre-Roman times, complete with a column on display from 71 AD, New York’s super young. There’s a massive cathedral, York Minster, which on the outside resembles Westminster Abbey a lot, and was built around the same time.
Some people complain that Small Town America has a church on every corner, but even the most devout, dance-outlawed, conservative towns are beat by York, or at least York’s medieval incarnation. There are churches literally EVERYWHERE, and they’re all beautiful and hundreds of years old. I find most modern churches tacky and soulless, built of perfectly formed brownish gray stone, with the same kind of carpeted lobby and plush seats. I’m not a fan of modern churches, and with the lack of beauty or detail in our contemporary behemoths, you get the feeling most people aren’t either. But you can actually see the devotion of medieval people when it comes to their places of worship- instead of mass-produced tile and generic stained glass, they put some effort into making places pretty. I’m not making any comments on organized religion (I make it a habit not to discuss it, unless I feel close to you), but you can at least tell how people have felt throughout the ages by the sheer amount of energy they expound on their places of worship.
York is big on their local heros, no matter how weird some of these characters might seem. Any Shakespeare fan is likely familiar with his play, Richard III, though as a lazy student, even in the throes of IB, I never actually read it (how do I pass school again?). I am, however, a freakish history buff, and therefore have some knowledge on the real Richie. Turns out he never had a humpback, like Shakespeare apparently asserted, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a bad guy. History’s technically up to debate on this one, but here are the facts:
His older bro, Eddie IV, died, which is unfortunate enough, but he died with two young sons, which is even worse. Now-Edward V was only 12. Even though it was a simpler age, where major hobbies consisted of not dying of plague, starvation, or otherwise, that doesn’t mean that the average 12 year old was all that more responsible than your run of the mill, video game playing 12 year old boy today. My brother’s 14 and I wouldn’t trust him with a gerbil, much less an entire country, and the powers-that-be in England in 1483 tended to agree. So they appointed Uncle Richie to the post of Lord Protector, with the caveat that he can rule England until Eddie can be trusted not to abuse his kingly powers by making everyone mock fight each other with light sabers or something for his own entertainment.
There was one little thing, though. Turns out Eddie’s dad kinda sorta married his mom while already married to this other woman, which would make Eddie and his little brother illegitimate, and therefore unable to rule. Uncle Richie, instead of, you know, fighting for his little nephew’s rights, realized that hey, wait a minute, he’s the next one in line for the throne after these two little brats. So, come July, the poor kids were declared illegit, and Lord Protector Uncle Richie became King Richie. The boys had been living in the Tower of London, which, despite it’s rough history, is actually a traditional place for kings to live before they get their crowns. Unfortunately, unlike most kings and princes, they never left. After a month of Richie getting his crown, the boys were never seen again. Most historians agree he probably had them killed, which make Richard a Dick by any name.
Richie got his in the end. Henry Tudor later became King Henry VII (oh yeah, he’s the serial wife-killer’s daddy) by leading a rebellion against Richie and getting him killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richie is therefore the last English king to die in battle, and the last Plantagenet king.
So, why is York gaga enough for him to dedicate an ENTIRE MUSEUM to his memory? Turns out Richard, before he or his brother were kings, held the title Duke of York. He ended up controlling all of Northern England, and as king poured a ton of money into the region, most of all in their unofficial capital York. There are multiple buildings that owe their existence, or at least major improvements, to Richard, and he’s well-regarded in the area still since he was so good to them.
I’ve been to a lot of museums in my life, some of them weird, some of them pretty standard, but I’ve never been to one like the Richard III Museum. Most museums try to stay unbiased, or at least give that appearance. Not so much Richard III, which basically was an act of PR claiming that Richard, the most powerful man in the country of England, actually had absolutely NOTHING to do with the princes’ deaths, and in fact didn’t even realize they were gone. They were only his nephews and potential political rivals, and it was only his job to know everything they did, but, you know, I’m sure it was one of those things were he turned his back for ONE SECOND and they disappeared. It happens to the best of us, right? Sorry, but it’s hard for me to believe he didn’t have anything to do with their deaths. It’s just too far-fetched.
Not that the Richard III Museum doesn’t try. You first walk into the gift shop, where you’re confronted with a life-sized wax figure of the guy, with his dead eyes staring at you. Then you walk up some narrow steps, only to be confronted with ANOTHER life-sized wax Richie, this one even creepier than the last. Then they have pictures of his wax figure everywhere, with little things taped to it like he’s saying them, saying stuff like “I’m not the monster everyone thinks I am!” and “I loved my nephews!” and other random things he likely never said ever in real life. Posters give “evidence” of his innocence, demonizing Shakespeare of all people along the way for his hunchbacked portrayal of Richie. The entire museum feels bitter and defensive on the whole, as if daring you to spit on Richie’s corpse or something. There are portraits of him all over the place, clearly painted by modern artists who apparently have nothing better to do with their time. I was the only person there for about a half hour, and then two old people came in briefly.
I recommend it 100% to literally everyone. It’s sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Here’s the site: http://www.richard3museum.co.uk/main.html
After my Richard III field trip, I walked around a bit more and eventually found myself back at the hostel, where I slept until later that night, when we all decided to go out and explore York’s nightlife. We all ended up piling into one pub, before switching to another where we met an English couple from the area, both with undefinable ages. The guy looked a little like Fall Out Boy’s Andy Hurley, while the woman looked ultra hip, with a Sienna Miller t-shirt and leather pants she “hadn’t worn since the 80’s.” By this time both were clearly drunk, but of course extremely friendly. “Guess how old I am,” Sienna Miller Shirt asked, “just guess, and be COMPLETELY honest...” Guesses ranged from 25 to 32. Turns out she was the ripe age of 41, when she revealed the 80’s comment. Her boyfriend? 27. Talkative, she dominated every conversation.
“Oh, you’re 20? 20’s a great age to be, a great age,” she remarked, “Although I guess not in the States. Have you been to New York? I LOVE New York!” She pointed to her boyfriend and stage-whispered “He hated it. Thought it was disgusting.”
“I did not!” English Andy Hurley interrupted. “I just thought it was dirtier than here. Too fast for me. And the people were rude.” I can definitely see where he’s coming from. In Old York, people were generally friendly and polite, especially in the pubs. Cynically I thought at first it was just because they appreciated our tourist dollars, but I could soon see a lot of it was genuine. New York is a great place to live, but people will mow you down to get ahead, and can be ruthless. I guess all big cities are like that, but in London people give up train and bus seats for the elderly. In New York there’s no such consideration. It was soon apparent that the differences between Old and New York were growing by the minute.
The next day we woke up early once again, this time to explore the Jorvik Viking Center. It’s an Epcot-like ride that takes you through the recreated Viking village of Jorvik, with an omniscient voice narrating what you were seeing every step of the way. It’s recreated to smell like it was supposed to back in the day, the day in question being about 1000 years ago, so it smelled a little like rotting meat and human waste. The village was overall pretty realistic, not like most of us would really know otherwise, but the creepiest things, again, were the life-sized figures.
Only this time, the figures were animatronic, and could move and “speak.” People should really learn by now that no matter how much effort you put into reconstructing people, it will never, ever look right. Inevitably, all life-sized fake humans end up looking dead, with glassy eyes and jerky movements. You’d be sitting in the ride when a blonde fake guy would jerk his head towards you, menacingly raise an arm in your direction, and start talking to you in what sounded like gibberish. Then the omniscient voice would kick in, and explain that the guy’s name is Olaf or something, and he’s asking you if you want to buy a fish. Then the disembodied voice would have a conversation with Olaf about what a nice day it was, with the narrator translating what they were saying every so often.
I wondered if they were really planning a coordinated attack on the modern breathers in the car thing. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, and in the end Olaf would jerk his head back and ignore you as the omniscient voice would go on to tell you about how Vikings cooked or something. At one point, the ride stooped to a low I didn’t think an educational tour ever would- we came upon an animatronic guy sitting on a latrine, clearly straining at you-know-what, and then yelling in his ancient language for us to go away. The omniscient voice, when translating that last bit, actually had the indecency to be surprised that the Viking would want some privacy in this moment. Overall, it was a place that I would never want to be in after dark, in the event of a Night At The Museum-esque awakening, only instead of a kindly Theodore Roosevelt giving out advice, these were Viking zombies that wouldn’t hesitate in eating you.
Overall, I really liked the Jorvik museum, creepy animatronics aside. It was informative with an awesome gift shop, and one of the few things we got to do for free that was actually worth doing.
After Jorvik I headed on over to the York Castle Museum. On my way over I noticed couples being all romantic, a lot of people brandishing roses and giggling maniacally, as they had lost all sense of reason. I wondered if there was something in York’s water that just made people oddly love-dovey, until it hit me.
It was Valentine’s Day.
Of course I forgot Valentine’s Day. It’s not really high on my list of priorities. I care more about President’s Day than I do about Valentine’s Day. I was too caught up in learning about marauding Vikings and later in the day, executions in an old prison to care too much about the Day of Love. I’m not going to use this space to go off on Valentine’s Day, since every argument for and against it has been made before, I just think that my Valentine’s Day, dedicated, as it was, to the darker side of human nature, was probably the best one I’ve ever had, and superior to all of yours, no matter what you did. So... there you go.
I did spend the rest of the day in an old prison, learning about execution methods and Yorkshire crime. For me, that’s a day well-spent. Suddenly I found myself yearning for home, surprising myself, yet again (I’m easily surprised, apparently), at exactly what I was referring to as “home” inside my head. It wasn’t New York, and it definitely wasn’t Wisconsin, but rather, I realized that I just wanted to go back to London, and instead of calling it “Hampstead” or “the dorm” or whatever, I just thought “I want to get home and see if anyone’s hanging out in the kitchen and maybe get to the Blue Post and really just see my friends.”
Because that’s what home is to me, for the time being at least. It’s weird how much one place can become such a part of you so quickly, and London’s definitely gotten under my skin, in a good way. A city by itself can’t do that, at least not for me. What I’ve always looked for are human connections, making friends, finding comrades in this life. That’s far more important to me than seeing random cities and living out of a suitcase. People keep asking me why I haven’t traveled Europe more, or really at all, yet, and the fact of the matter is that I just like London too much. Having a great time with wonderful, witty people is far more important to me than checking Rome off my list of Places to See Before I Die. Because if we’re getting into the Before I Die lists, wouldn’t having a lovely time with worthy people count more than a checklist? Life’s all about what you feel, and I get more satisfaction at the same London bar we go to every week than I would having a lonely experience on my own just to see Prague or something, no matter how lovely I’m sure that city is. I guess my point is that I’m making this study abroad experience my own, and getting what I want out of it, even if it does mean I’m not necessarily living the jetset life I’m “supposed to.”
I spent the train ride from York sitting alone, staring out into the dark, counting the minutes until I got home. London’s calling indeed.
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