I think of Saturday as market day, and London provided many
options for markets. Ahmyn, Seryahna, Djanko, and I walked along Regents Canal
to Camden Market. The Canal had a wonderful walking path. House boats lined the
canal, and we wondered about what life would be like on a house boat. There
were some beautiful gardens and homes that lined the canal, and it offered a
great view of various aspects of life in London.
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| Ahmyn, Seryahna, & Djanko along Regents Canal |
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| Regents Canal |
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| Mural outside a club along the canal |
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| Musician singing to some friends on the canal |
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| Regents Canal |
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| Chinese restaurant/houseboat on the canal |
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| Chinatown | |
Chinatown for dinner. Chinatown had tons of shops and
restaurants. We did find a restaurant that had tofu for Djanko, the picky
eater. The menu had other interesting items that not even Ahmyn, the
adventurous eater, wanted to try: pig entrails, duck tongue, duck blood, and
offal to name a few.
Sunday meant more museums. There were two museums in London that
I needed to see as a psychology instructor. I had offered extra credit to
students to see either the Mind Maps exhibit at the Science Museum or the Freud
Museum. The Science Museum had an exhibit called Mind Maps that explored the studying
of the mind. Mind Maps offered eerie glimpses into how we have learned about
the nervous system and how mental illness was treated over the last 250 years.
The exhibit also showed more current methods that seem less barbaric. One display that was cool and creepy at the same time was a table or plank of wood that had someone's nerves laid out and varnished on it. One
modern treatment that intrigued me was using avatars to help treat auditory
hallucinations. For more information and pictures, see
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/mind_maps/object_highlights.aspx.
Other
than the Mind Maps exhibit, the museum had much to offer. One display that caught my eye was the Toaster Project.
Thomas Thwaites decided to make a toaster from scratch. For Thwaites, from
scratch meant doing everything that would be needed in a toaster, including
mining the materials that were needed. It took Thwaites 9 months and cost 300
times what a toaster normally costs. Thwaites’s project highlights the complex
technology and use of precious resources that we take for granted in our modern
society. For more, check out the information on the exhibit:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/smap/collection_index/thomas_thwaites_the_toaster_project.aspx
After the Science Museum, I was off to the Freud Museum. The
Freud Museum is in a quaint neighborhood quite a bit away from the heart of
London. The museum had been Sigmund Freud’s home for the last year of his life
after he escaped from Austria during the Nazi occupation. Thanks to his fame,
he was able to take many of his possessions including his whole library to
London. His daughter, psychoanalyst Anna Freud, lived there for decades after
Freud died and requested that the home be turned into a museum. No photography
was allowed, so you will have to check out the website:
http://www.freud.org.uk/.
To me, Freud’s library was the most
surprising room in the house. I did get to see the famous couch where his
patients would lie and talk about their dreams, their conflicts, their
relationships, etc. The library was filled with books and archeological
artifacts. Freud actually had a strong interest in archeology, and he was quite
a collector. His collection of archeological artifacts provided a great analogy
for the foundation of Freud’s theories. Just as an archeologist would dig deep
to discover the secrets of the people of the past, Freud attempted to dig deep
to discover the secrets of people’s past. To add some humor to the seriousness
of Freud’s ideas, the museum included an exhibit of Mel Calman’s cartoons.
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| Georgeobelisk at the British Library |
On the way back to the hotel from the Freud Museum, a giant
statue caught my eye. I peeked into the grounds of the British Library and saw
Sir Isaac Newton, or a huge statue of him. The other surprise outside of the
library was the Georgeobelisk, a topiary garden in honor of kings named George.
Sunday night’s treat was music at a local pub. The music was
a jam session of a few musicians sitting around their table, playing folk,
old-time, Americana style. It got more exciting, though, when a young woman put
a board on the floor and started clogging in the middle of the jam session.
When I talked to her later, she said that in Scotland they called clogging
“flat-footing.” I could see the similarities in some of the American musical
traditions and some of the Scottish music and traditions that I’ve experienced
since being here.
Monday – more museums, or to be more precise, the National Gallery.
The National Gallery sits on Trafalgar Square, a prime people watching spot.
Inside the National Gallery, navigating around the gobs of people was a
challenge. However, the challenge was worth it to see some original paintings
by Monet, van Gogh, Seurat, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Botticelli, and Raphael (to
name just a few). Of course, the Gallery is so vast that somehow we missed
seeing the da Vinci and Michelangelo paintings that were there. We could have
spent days wandering through the treasure troves.
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| Art outside of the museum -- enough said |
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| A local |
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| Trafalgar Square |
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| Trafalgar Square |
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| National Gallery and Trafalgar Square |
Outside of the gallery was entertainment. Street musicians,
magicians and performers, Yodas who seemed to magically float in the air – all
were there to entertain and to earn a day’s wage from generous tourists and
locals.
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| Recycle Man and Djanko in Covent Garden |
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| Along the River Thames |
After full days and nights, we met up with students,
faculty, and staff at the train station. We all shared stories of surprises and
adventures, satisfied that we all had soaked in as much as possible in a short
time. We also were relieved to head to what we now referred to as home,
Dalkeith.
