Windsor on a sunny Sunday

“What a beautiful, sunny morning. It makes you happy to be alive.” – Takayuki Ikkaku

During brunch one fine Sunday morning, my friends and I arrived at a spontaneous decision to make a trip to Windsor, which is approximately a 20 minute train journey from the station closest to Royal Holloway. It was a magnificent, sunny day, and being as sunshine-deprived as we are in England, we pounced on the one glorious day which came our way. The town of Windsor, a small, quaint suburban town located in the county of Berkshire in South-East England, is the location of the famous Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the Royal Family of Britain and the largest inhabited castle in the world. Upon our arrival in Windsor, we headed straight for the Castle, which is a 5 minute walk from the station itself. Although we chose not take the guided tour inside the Castle, we took ample time to walk around the grounds – the Castle is ancient but has been wonderfully maintained over the years, and teeming with international tourists. Although I was extremely impressed by the medieval exterior architecture, I’m sure we would’ve gotten a much better historical perspective on the Castle if we had taken the guided tour. Oh well…

Apart from the Castle, the town of Windsor itself is a great tourist destination, ideal for day-trips. It is a typical English town, with a small shopping area and lined with numerous cafes and pubs. My friends and I got rather distracted as we surfed through the numerous stores and shopping outlets (girls will be girls!), but when we were exhausted from all the window shopping we retired to a charming little coffee shop and sipped our mochas and cappuccinos before heading down to the Windsor Riverfront. On the other side of Windsor across the River Thames lies the town of Eton, home of the esteemed Eton College. We sat along the riverside for a long part of the afternoon, admiring the gorgeous sunset views and occasionally feeding the ducks and geese populating the bank.

Even though we didn’t cover as much of the town of Windsor as I would have liked (we didn’t enter the Castle or visit Windsor Great Park) on that day, I had a great time with my Royal Holloway buddies. Maybe I’ll come back one day to do what I had left unfinished!

London Calling

"One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you." - Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

Here’s the thing:

I’m in love with London.

London is my wonderland - I’m constantly amazed by how captivating, diverse and alive this city can be. There is so much to do, so much to explore and so much to discover – I don’t believe I’ll ever get bored or tired of it. It is true that living in and around London is a tremendous strain on a typical college student’s budget – four months here have almost exhausted my entire bank balance – but so much of it has been worth it. Before I came to London, I had pictured something similar to New York City. A sprawling metropolis bustling with people. All kinds of people. Skyscrapers. A busy, fast-paced lifestyle. It is very easy and in fact quite common to draw that analogy between London and New York, yet in myriad big and small ways, these two cities are very different from one another and unique.

In a word, London is classy - magnificent Victorian architecture and streets crawling with well-dressed, prim and proper pedestrians add to the majestic charm of the city. On a typical weekday you can see the roads bustling with tourists and sightseers; places like Oxford Street and Knightsbridge teem with happy shoppers around the clock while areas such as Canary Wharf and Victoria are alive with business and commercial activity. As the sun sets the city lights up brilliantly all around, transforming the landscape as the dynamic London nightlife begins. Pubs fill up around every street corner and people flock into the numerous bars around London town. Like any other newbie in the city of London, I did all the tourist-y things that there are to do, visiting the traditional tourist spots that everyone must visit while they’re in London – Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the London Eye, Tower Bridge, British Museum, Oxford Street and many others. After almost four months, all that was new and fascinating at first has become much more familiar, close to my heart. London has definitely grown on me.

Charing Cross Station

Travelling around London could not be more convenient – getting from one end of the city to another is just a matter of minutes with the London Underground System. Personally, I love hopping on board the red double-decked London buses and watching the city flow by around me from one of the front seats on the upper deck. You can also hire bicycles from Barclays Cycle Hire points all around the city for as cheap as £1 an hour!

Trafalgar Square, looking towards Whitehall

The thing that I love most about London is that there is a surprise around every corner. You never know what you will stumble upon while taking a casual stroll on the streets – there are interesting odd-spots almost everywhere you go. When the weather is pleasant, there’s nothing like a walk around Westminster. Last Monday I spent my afternoon roaming the streets on my own without a sense of purpose, exploring the South Bank Christmas Market. Although I passed by the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament for the umpteenth time, I did not feel that the charm had faded away. The subtle beauty and invigorating atmosphere never fails to mesmerize me.

This city persistently does and will continue to blow me away.

Red telephone booth - a defining feature of London

Clouds

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky." - Rabindranath Tagore

One of the essentials that I make it a point to put into my handbag every time I leave the house is my obnoxious lime green umbrella – we’ve all heard of the dismal, dreary British weather. Part of me had assumed that maybe it’s an exaggerated myth and perhaps it would not be raining all the time after all. And surely enough it doesn’t rain ALL the time, but it is safe to expect showers at least for a while at some point during the day, and definitely on the sunniest of days when you would least expect it to. I’ve never experienced weather that’s more unpredictable, more unsure of itself than in England. Only this Friday, it was pouring as I walked into my 9am lecture, and looking through the classroom window after just a few minutes I watched the rain cease and observed snowflakes starting to drift around. My professor pulled down the shutters and I didn’t see anymore, but when I stepped out of the building an hour and a half later, I was blinded by dazzling sunlight and there was no sign of the rain or snow that had occurred only a couple of hours ago.

The following is a famous excerpt from Bleak House by Charles Dickens that expresses in a fine manner the typical weather in dreary Britain. To be fair, there are days when the sun is high up and everything is absolutely gorgeous, but that’s a different story…

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. 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. 

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. 

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.” ― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

I did not take this picture myself, but this pretty much explains it

Royal Holloway

“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.” ― Audrey Hepburn

When I arrived at Royal Holloway in September 2012, I was terribly homesick. Clearly, a month and a half spent at home in Bangladesh was not enough. It felt like I was obliged to leave the comfort of home too soon, and this time I wasn’t even heading to my second home in South Hadley, MA, but to a completely new country and culture. Don’t get me wrong though – I was tremendously excited at the prospect of embarking on Study Abroad, Take 2. I didn’t have second thoughts, I had no misgivings. I just wasn’t as ready yet.

However, my first week at Royal Holloway was so incredibly busy that I soon abandoned my miseries. I came to realize that the British take their “Freshers’ Week” extremely seriously – and by that I don’t mean that they go out of their way to settle in and make themselves at home at their new university. I simply mean that the British believe in party-ing their homesickness/apprehension away. There were events going on all day, every day – informal socials, karaoke nights, live music, dance parties – you name it. As days flew by and lectures commenced, I began to settle in, met some wonderful people and slowly became acclimatized to the fresh environment, dismal British weather as well as the vibrant social environment here – there’s definitely much more to do when you’re living around the city and attending a large co-ed university. My time here has been nothing similar my two years so far at Mount Holyoke – a small, all-women’s liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Let’s just say that although I have had an incredible experience at Royal Holloway, there’s no place like Mount Holyoke, or as we fondly call it – MoHome.  I couldn’t be happier that I took advantage of this cultural experience – this semester has been an incredible, transformative journey for me.

It’s taken a while for me to adjust here, not in terms of settling in but in terms of ‘speaking British’ - such as adapting to saying ‘lift’ instead of ‘elevator’, ‘sofa’ instead of ‘couch’, or ‘lecturer’ instead of ‘professor’. Fish and chips have become my staple diet. The academic workload has not been nearly as demanding as the things we do at Mount Holyoke, which I’m thankful for as it has given me more time to enjoy and immerse myself in this brand new world. I’ve enjoyed myself studying British politics and European foreign policy, minus the intense pressure that leads to sleepless nights and frenzied weekends. Fewer nights have been spent toiling on essays in the library and more out with friends in English pubs or London streets or just in one of the numerous spots to chill around the Royal Holloway campus. Several trips have been made far and wide across the United Kingdom. This has been a good semester. A great one. No regrets!

Founders Building, Royal Holloway - the building I lived in this semester

A typical night at Crosslands Bar, Royal Holloway

Never too late?

"How did it get so late so soon?" - Dr. Seuss

I’ve contemplated the idea of blogging about my experiences several times since I first came to the United Kingdom around four months ago as an exchange student at Royal Holloway, University of London. However, on none of those occasions did I actually end up delivering on the thought. Looking back in retrospect at the last few months, the time I spent in England has been fantastic – in fact, beyond fantastic. Now that I’m well into my last week of classes and halfway through packing up, the realization kicks in that I’ll leave this country soon, so maybe it’s time to do what I should have done months ago. And in any case, this gives me a creative way to procrastinate on completing those final essays. It’s never too late right?