Temples and Torture

Ok so my goal right now is to record everything I've done since February 10, so for the last two weeks, without loosing detail due to the sheer amount I'm describing or screaming at my computer in frustration over the difficultly of formatting pictures in blogger, so this should be interesting.

Additionally I realize the title is a bit ominous, don't worry all will be explained.

Interesting event number 1 for the last two weeks: I went to a Hindu Temple. 

(This actually happened on February 7, but I forgot to mention it in my earlier posts.)

I realize this may seem like a strange place to vista while in London, but it was actually very interesting. I went on a trip with my Transnational Studies class, we're studying the different immigration groups that have come to London over the last century or so and after we spend some time studying a group in class we go visit the neighborhood where they settled when they arrived. More often than not these visits include a trip to a religious center because most groups bring their faith with them when they come and as a result religious center's become the center of the community. At the time my class was studying the South Asian immigration and after several days in the class room we were rewarded by a trip to this temple.

Inside the temple is breath taking. We were only allowed to take pictures of the exterior, understandably, but the inside is amazing. It's made entirely of carved marble, the carving was done in India and then the blocks were shipped here to be assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and amazingly not a single block was damaged during the process. Much like in a Mosque you have to take your shoes off when you enter, but women do not have to cover their hair (we had all brought scarves just in case). The main prayer rooms doesn't have a single blank surface, except for the floor, every surface area (dealing, walls, pillars) is covered in pictures of different deities and stories from their faith. Then to add to this there are niches around the walls with beautiful statues of even more deities and holy men from the religion. All of these are in full color and dressed in amazingly well made silk outfits and jewelry. Our guide was very nice and willing to answer any question we had about the building and the religion as a whole. He showed us a wall with pictures of all the world leaders who have visited the temple over the years, and it's quite an impressive list. Several members of the Royal Family are on it, along with a few presidents, and Pope John Paul II. 

A few days later on February 11 I went to a Jewish Synagogue with the same class after looking at the Jewish Diaspora. The Synagogue is located in a historically Jewish part of the city. It was also very beautiful, but much more similar in style to the Christian Churches I'm used to than the Hindu temple. Our guide here was very nice also, but you could tell from the way she talked about some of the other people in the community (there seems to be some tensions between the Orthodox Jews and the more liberal Reformed Jews in the neighborhood, she is Reformed) that she wasn't "someone who suffered fools gladly"as my teacher put it. 

To round out our religious tour of the city next class (Feb 14) we visited a Muslim Mosque. I have to say I didn't expect to learn nearly as much about different religions as I have on this trip, or to visit as many religious centers. One thing I have learned from visiting all of them is that Catholic habits are much more ingrained in my then I realized. As soon as I enter any type of room dedicated to prayer, regardless of the religion, I immediately look for holy water to do the sign of the cross and feel the urge to genuflect. The Mosque was interesting, but having been to so many of them in Istanbul none of the information our guide gave us was new to me. The style of the Mosque was different from the ones in Turkey though. Turkish style Mosques are more opulent and make use of mosaic's and more color and decorations, this Mosque was a Moroccan style one and had fewer colors and paintings and instead carved calligraphy into the wood paneling along the walls. 

As you may have noticed the above mention trip occurred one Valentines Day, you know what else FIE had planned for all it's students on Valentines Day? A dance maybe? Or some form of social event? If you guessed either of those you are wrong, if however you guessed a required lecture on sustainability at 6:00 in the evening you would be correct. Can anyone imagine a less attentive audience than a group of people in their late teens and early twenties at 6:00 on a Friday evening? Luckily the guy giving the talk wasn't much older then us and understood how horrible the scheduling was and made it quick. He was actually reasonably entertaining, but I, along with everybody else in the room, would have been much more willing to listen to him earlier in the day. At the end the administrator in charge asked if any of use had questions for the presenter, no body dared raise their hand, I don't think I've ever seen a room of 300+ people clear out so fast in my life as when that man said we were free to go.

The next day was Saturday and my Shire, Morgan, Sarah, and I had tickets to go to a Ceilidh Dance with a group of students from FIE. And it was actually a ton of fun. I had only singed up for it originally because it was only five pounds and the others were going so I figured why not, but it was a lot more fun than I expected. We met up with the rest of the group, students and someone who works at FIE that goes to these all the time apparently at a bar in Camden called The Worlds End (I wouldn't recommend it, way too loud and kinda tacky, they tried to make it a theme bar but didn't go all out and the result looks like the just forgot to take down their Halloween decorations). Once everyone had arrived we went on a short walk to the dance hall.

Ceilidh is a traditional Scottish type of dancing that apparently is still very popular today. Rachael (the woman from FIE) is Scottish, she's probably only in her mid to late 20's, says that at every wedding she's ever been to this is how they dance so everyone from Scotland at least has some idea how to. The dances are all partner one and look a lot like a mix between Irish Step and Square Dancing. Shira wasn't feeling good so when we all left the bar for the dance she went home, and Sarah made friends with a cute guy, so Morgan and I danced together and took turns doing the boys parts. 

The way the dance works is the band is all instrumental parts, expect for one person who is known as the caller. They tell you how many couples you need in a group for each dance and walk you through the steps once or twice slowly, then the music starts and the caller calls out each step as it come. All the dances are really simple an repetitive so it's easy to get the hang of and really fun. Morgan and I weren't great because we kept forgetting which one of us was the guy, and there's a lot of spinning involved in some of the dances so you get dizzy and crash into people but everyones laughing and having fun so it doesn't really matter. I surprised me how many people were there, and how young most of them were because I don't feel like this is something that would be very popular in the US. Quite frankly there were too many people in the room for it to be super comfortable (hence the crashing into each other) but like I said everyone was really nice so it didn't matter too much, and I would say about 80% of them were young people, which I didn't expect at all. But apparently this is something people go out and do with their friends on Saturday nights. We might even go do it again one weekend since Shira got sick and missed out this time around. 

Sunday February 16 Ashley and I went on a Doctor Who tour of London. Have I mentioned yet how much I love living near all these places with connections to all the nerdy stuff I love? Because I really really love it! Anyway there's a company here called Brit Movies Tours that runs a tour every Sunday afternoon where you walk around London behind a lovely man named Dewi holding a sonic screwdriver above his head so everyone can see him while he points out places where episodes of Doctor Who were filmed and tells you funny stories about the production process. Dewi is an actor from Whales and was a really good guide, and very entraining. Whenever some people were falling behind he would call over his shoulder "Come along my lovely Whovians" to get people to catch up. His name isn't pronounced anything like it's spelled because it's an only Welsh name so when he introduced him self he told us how to say it (I don't remember how) and then said "I also answer to David, and 'oy you up at the front' if you have any questions during the tour". 

The Shard (11 rides a motorcycle up it)

The tour stated at the Shard (which the 11th Doctor rode a motorcycle up) and ended by Waterloo station two and a half hours later. It was a beautiful day, sunny with no wind (a very rare occurrence in London, and in the 50s. The tour was split about half and half between references to Classic Who, which I haven't seen much of, and the new series, which I've seen every episode of. Here are some pictures of the stuff we saw. I didn't take pictures of everything, mainly because as cool as it was to hear about the old show I knew I would recognize the picture as soon as I got back to my room since I haven't seen the episodes the places were in.

 This is the outside of the church used in Lazarus Rising. It's a Martha episode where a scientist finds a way to reverse the aging process but ends up horribly mutating himself. The final fight scene was done inside a different church, but they used the exterior of this one for the outside shots.

The shot above it taken from London Bridge (the sign below is on the bridge) with thankfully did not fall down while we were on. It several episode have been shot that use tower bridge, the Tower, or occur on the banks of the Themes, all shown in the above photo.

The two pictures above are of the Globe Theater, a replica of the theater that Shakespeare preformed in when he lived. It was used when filming the Shakespeare Code. Interestingly Doctor Who is the only TV show ever allowed to film in the building. Because it is an outdoor theater and they have such a short season where there is reliably food weather the theater can't afford to rent it out to TV shows and movies if they want to put on performances. But because Doctor Who is so well known they were allowed to come in for a few hours at a time to film the needed scenes, so long as the were able to set up their sets and lighting, film, and then break everything down again before the next performance went up.

 This has nothing to do with Doctor Who but still made me really happy. To get to the next stop on our tour after the Globe Theater we had to cross this bridge over the Themes, which happens to be the bridge the Death Eaters destroy in the opening scene of the seventh Harry Potter movie. I have no idea what it's real name is, Ashley and I dubbed it the Death Eater Bridge.

This is Saint Peters Church. Apparently there's an episode in classic Who where the Cybermen come down the front steps of the church while invading the city of London.

These two pictures are of the building where the 11th Doctor and Clara have breakfast in a recent episode, right before they ride a motorcycle up the side of the Shard. There isn't really a cafe at the top, it was just a conference room that the BBC rented and set up to look like one and apparently the hotel staff have been really annoyed by the amount of Whovians turning up and trying to go up to the roof since the episode aired. 

This house was used as the stand in for 10 Downing Street during the episode with Rose and 9 where the Slytheen try to take over Earth. Apparently this building is used by lots of movies and shows as 10 Downing Street because it looks so similar to the real thing. 

Now for some random fury stories about the making of Doctor Who:

During it was either the 2nd or the 3rd Doctor's time they needed to film in an area where a lot of homeless people liked to sleep. Because it was in a public area the city denied them permission to block it off for the time they needed it, this presented the producers with a dilemma. They could't film with all the people in the background, but they also weren't allowed to tell them to leave. Their idea of a genius solution was to put some of the actors in their alien makeup and costumes and send them running and yelling through the area where they wanted to film, which successfully scared everyone away for the few hours they needed to film the necessary scenes.

Several years later during the 4th Doctors time the pyrotechnics team caused two minor incidents within the space of several days. They were filming an episode where two different Dalek factions were fighting over Earth, the team was given the job of rigging up an explosion to blow up a set of doors so the Daleks could roll through them into the scene. The team had a bit too much fun however and created an explosion that not only blew the doors up, but also destroyed the Daleks. Consequently filming had to be halted to fix them damaged set and props and the scene slightly altered. A few days later the same team had to detonated a explosive device under a near by bridge. The locals had all been warned about the time and place of the small explosion, but they forgot to warn those staying in a near by hotel for retired service men. Additionally this was taking place during the time when the IRA were very active an setting bombs off all over London. So naturally when the service men heard the explosion they immediately called the bomb squad, who arrived on the scene soon after only to be greeted by a group of Daleks emerging out of the smoke. 

One weeks worth of adventures down one to go.

This last week wasn't quite as eventful as the one before it but a few things did occur worth talking about. 

The first half of my program here is almost over (which I can't believe) which means that three of my classes are ending this week (which in turn means I have a week of presentations, term papers, and finals ahead of me, yippee), then we have a week of spring break, and when we come back the internship part of the program begins. My internship is with a local chapter of the Liberal Democrat Party and getting it was a bit of an adventure for lack of a better term.

The office where I will be working is about an hour away, 40 min on a train and 20 on a bus give or take, but the bus stop it literally right next to the office so I don't have to do much walking which will be nice for rainy days. We had a meeting at FIE on Monday where we were told the date, time, and location of our interviews and encouraged to practice getting there at least once so we didn't get lost the day of the interview. 

My interview was scheduled for Thursday at 3:00 so Wednesday afternoon I set off to find it. You know how I titled this blog "not all who wander are lost"? Well it turns out some who wander are lost, very lost, so lost they aren't entirely sure how to get back home, and naturally they left their handy map of the bus routes in the city in their other bag because having it with them would just make things far too easy right? After wandering around in increasing panic in a area of London I am in no way familiar with for about 20 min I finally found the correct bus stop to wait at in order to get myself back to the Tube station and home, but I still hadn't found the place where I had to be the next day for my interview and it was getting dark which meant that continuing to wander around probably wasn't advisable. On the bus ride back to the Tube station however we ended up at the place I was unable to find earlier. It turns out the street name is pronounced very differently then it's spelled and since on my outward journey I had just been listening to the buses PA system and not looking at the screen with the stop names on it I had missed my stop and gone a few too far. I had been told that the office was above a pub call The Three Compasses and sure enough across the street from the station I saw a sing for the pub. I went in to check with the bartender that this was the correct pub (figuring with my luck there was only a fifty-fifty chance of that) but it was, which as you can imagine was a huge relief.

The next day I retired for my interview, and managed to find the place on my first try of the day. I pulled out all the stops dressing like an actual adult (heals, a collared shirt, blazer, and black pants that AREN'T jeans) and even doing my hair, but when they asked me question my mind went totally blank. By the end of the interview I was convinced I had blown my chance and they told me they would get back to me in a few days. My school contacted me the next day saying that I did manage to get the position (thank God) and I start work (unpaid of course) on March 12. I'm going to be working on the campaigns for the local council that are coming up and on prep work for the national elections in a year.

Now to explain the "Torture" aspect of today's title, yesterday Sarah and I went to the infamous Tower of London where monarchs used to imprison, torture, and behead people that they didn't like all that much. Calling it "The Tower" is a bit misleading because it's not a single tower but a complex of many buildings that have all served different purposes over the years. The whole place was beautiful and really cool, it also helped that we had another beautiful day yesterday in the 50s with the sun shining. It's kinda funny though how for the local this is still cool weather, we saw plenty of people with winter coats on and kids who had on hats and gloves where as I was just in a light sweatshop and Sarah was only in a t-shirt.

Above it the Tower from the outside, below it the catapult you walk past on your way to the entrance, which is pictured next to it.

Once we had entered the fortress our first stop was the exhibit on the royal mint, which was located here at one time. These are tools used to make coins and some coins that were made here. The coins survived because their owner was a Jewish resident of London during a time of great anti-Semitism in the area and he hid a decent amount of wealth so it couldn't be taken from him. The sign didn't say what untimely happened to the man, it wasn't even sure what his name was. 

Next came a walk along the wall and through several towers that were used as a royal residence before the Tower was converted into a prison. Some of the rooms are set up as replica's of what they would have looked like when the royal still lived here.

The view from the  wall was breath taking.

We also got to play with a, unloaded, cross bow

 There are people all around in fancy period costumes that are very helpful if you need information and always willing to pose for pictures. They also to reenactments of beheadings. The people in the picture below are setting up for a reenactment, but we didn't have enough time to stop and watch it.

More old fashioned weaponry, there was a ton of it everywhere

If you were unlucky enough to anger the king or queen at the time you could be sent to The Bloody Tower where the kept the rack, and other even less humane, torture instruments. 

These house that are part of the complex are still lived in today. Some of the people who work at The Tower are also allowed to live here. According to a sign I saw about 150 people live within the Tower Walls right now, and they even have a fancy guard outside their homes. In this picture he's standing still but soon after I took it he started doing a very official version of pacing.

 

There's a legend that says if the ravens ever level the Tower of London the country will fall. I'm going to guess that isn't true but if it is London is safe for the time being, there are ravens everywhere in the Tower. Some are kept in, very large, cages, and others are free to roam about. There must be some system for keeping track of them though because they all have little tags on their legs.

Traitor's Gate is where prisoners, such as Anne Boleyn, entered the Tower. Originally the gate led directly into the Themes and the area you see in the second picture would have been full of water. Sarah and I both squealed a little and got super excited when we saw it and we are choosing to not question what that says about our sanity that we were so excited to see the place where people were lead to their deaths centuries ago.

This is where Sir Walter Raleigh, known as the Gentleman Prisoner, was kept for several years. Because he was so rid and influential he was allowed to live in comfort as you can see and his wife was allowed to live here with him, in fact their youngest son was born here. Apparently it wasn't uncommon for wealthy prisoners be to allowed to bring their families and servants with them so long as the prisoner didn't leave. 

This is the memorial to those who were beheaded at the Tower, including the aforementioned Anne Boleyn.

This is the building where the crown jewels are kept and the soldier who guard it. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the jewels themselves but suffice to say they are huge, opulent, and extremely shinny.  One of the crowns contains a diamond that is over 100 karats, along with countless other smaller gems stones. There are dozens of solid gold serving plates, several crowns, each more opulent than the last, jewel encrusted swords, and robes made from cloth of gold, among other treasures. 

The sign explains it better than I could

After seeing the jewels we walked through a large building filled with armor and weapons which as incredible cool. The sign by the entrance called it the world oldest tourist attraction because apparently there have been displays of weapons and armor here open to the public since the 1600s.

This sword is taller than me and was actually used at one point in time (can you imagine trying to lift that never mind fight with it?) And the axe and block to the left were also actually used at one point in time.

These are just two random pretty pictures I took while we were walking around, the line (or que as they are called here) is of the people going into the Bloody Tower. The weapons building was the last stop on our tour, apart from the required gift shop you must exit through of course. 

Well now I'm all caught up, and I manage to do it with groans of frustration instead screams of anger at my computer while formatting the pictures so I'd say this was a success.