Like everyone back at Carleton, we recently had our midterm break. Ours was a bit longer than the one the students at Carleton had; we had Friday, Monday, and Tuesday off. My classmates had some really fun plans for this five-day vacation, including trips to Edinburgh and Barcelona. Some of us stayed in London, including me. Before I arrived here, my dad and I talked about the possibility of him visiting me over this long weekend. He had never been to London and had always wanted to go, and the timing was perfect. A few weeks ago, we decided he would come and everything was arranged.
Although we live in Minneapolis now, my dad was born in Brooklyn and lived in New York City for all his young adulthood. Despite this, he never really experienced the chaotic city atmosphere as it is today. He hasn’t been to a major city in a very long time, and even when we visit family in Brooklyn we don’t tend to stray into Manhattan.
My dad left this morning, and the one aspect of London that he did not thoroughly enjoy was navigating the transit system. It’s extremely efficient, and he was impressed by the speed of the trains, but the fast-paced way Londoners navigate around the platforms was overwhelming to him from the beginning.
I picked my dad up at the airport on Wednesday morning, taking the Piccadilly line tube from Holborn to Heathrow. The ride is about an hour long; I got a lot of reading done for The Buddha of Suburbia reading assignment. As we were coming back from the airport and entering Zone 1, the center of London, the tube compartment started to fill up. My dad was nervous and kept trying to squeeze his three square foot luggage into a one square foot space under his feet. I nudged him and told him it was fine where it was.
Later in the week we went to see a play, and we had to take two tubes to get there. It was rush hour and my dad trailed behind me, not weaving in and out of crowds the way I was. I kept turning around to make sure he could see where I was going and we reunited on the platform. He was completely exhausted, more mentally than physically, and expressed his amazement at how calm I was in such a confusing, regimented, and hurried atmosphere.
I can see how the tube could be overwhelming, but by using it here with the whole class, with smaller groups, and on my own, I have learned the mechanics of the entrances and exits, how to read the tube maps, the unspoken etiquette in the stations and in the trains, and more. I am comfortable taking the tube to foreign stations and am confident that I can quickly figure out where I am going when I am there. All of this is completely new since arriving for this program in London, and it is a skill for which I am thankful. We can use the tube to get to all corners of London, so being comfortable on it makes exploring the city easy and not stressful, something I had gotten used to taking for granted until my dad’s visit.l
My dad requested that we take buses instead of tubes for the remaining days of his visit. I happily complied; he got to see more of the city out the window that way.
-Hannah Aylward, ’19
