Chambers

I am in a big room that predates me by over 500 years, lined up with busts of Eton’s most illustrious sons, on the wooden panels on its walls thousands of names proudly carved in heavy Latin script.

I am in the midst of a gathering of a hundred and fifty men (and some 10 women) wearing penguin suits and bowties and harrypotteresque gowns over that, who are all stamping their feet (the accepted form of applause at Eton) and the floor is shaking, in spite of the padded carpet preemptively in place. The Head Master is masterfully delivering one of his encouraging “well done” speeches, which I always enjoy listening to but the point of which I invariably forget the instant he is done. After his final and dismissive "thank you”, the volume in the room rises up from complete silence to a “fahfahfahfahfohfoh” crescendo like there was someone slowly turning a knob.

This meeting is supposed to serve a double purpose: both to hear important announcements by the Head Master and Lower Master and to conduct official school business with other beaks in the few minutes before and after that. Tradition dictates that if you want to speak to someone you have to hold on to his gown (which is why everybody has to wear one*). This is recursive; if someone else wants to speak to that person he (very occasionally she) will then have to hold on to your gown and so on. It is quite common to have chains of 3 or 4 people holding on to each other’s gown.

The meeting finished, everybody rushes off to their divs, some stopping by School Office to check their pigeon holes. Outside the main building, boys are waiting to try and get hold of beaks, most often because they have been told by those masters to “see me after Chambers”. They might have misbehaved or want a quiet word about something.  

It is an interesting experience, bizarre and slightly surreal like everything else around here, but once the novelty fades it becomes just a right pain in the arse. This happens every morning, 11:20 to 11:40, Monday to Saturday, and it is compulsory to attend. Us Language Assistants don’t have to be there on a Saturday, but it still means Mon-Fri I have to jump out of bed into a suit just to go loaf around for 20 minutes (bonus picture: me in a suit) and all I can think is: there go 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Of course nowadays most school business is carried over email, which is quicker and better no matter how you look at it. So why Chambers then? Just for an extra bit of social atmosphere? Why compulsive Chapel for boys at 8:35am? Why the penguin suits and the black shoes? Why the gown-pulling and the foot stamping? Why beaks? Why the Wall Game**? 

There’s a saying around here, it goes:

“Ask not why, ask since when.”

 

* Except us Assistants, nobody wants to speak to us.
** Quidditch

Eton College

Slough is rumoured to be rough, and this year I am working at a public charity for boys just outside of Slough.

Technically, this is all true, as Slough “has a relatively high crime rate, with figures for all crime statistic categories above the English average and figures for several categories more than double the English average” and Eton College "is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868”, Wikipedia dixit. However, it is also true that Windsor Castle (one of the Queen’s residences) is a 10-min walk away, that Windsor is a tourist wonderland and that Eton is commonly perceived to be the cream of the crop amongst the most exclusive schools for boys in the world.

Only boys study here, so a boy is a pupil/student. Yet a beak is a teacher, the headmaster is the Head Master, a class is a div, boys in the same year are a block, a term is a half (Michaelmas, Lent and Summer, so 3 halves), lessons in the morning are scheduled as schools (1st School 9:00-9:40, 2nd School 9:50-10:30 and so on to 5th) and those after lunch as After Four (4:30-5:10), After Five (5:20-6:00) and After Six (6:15-7:15). After lessons and in between them, much sport is done, and a number of games unique to Eton are played here, like Eton Fives and The Wall Game.

So what am I doing here? I am not a boy, not yet a beak, but I am the Spanish Assistant at Eton College for 2010/2011 – though I prefer the rather pompous term Lector, fahfahfah. I am here to teach the boys and help them with their oral Spanish (however that may sound). There is a new Lector every year, all of them from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, so here is another reason to consider myself lucky to have studied there. This is for me an amazing opportunity to get to know the Tradition that inspired Harry Potter from the inside and to teach in possibly the best environment one could hope for.

For Eton is… special. It is special in so many ways that it will take me many, many posts to point it out. So as this new journey of discovery and understanding I am embarked on progresses I will endeavour to share my discoveries. You’re welcome to tag along!

Delayed

For the first time ever, I was able to sleep before a flight. I even slept well. I woke up in time, did the last things I had to do, left early but in no hurry. It was a nice clear summer night outside. The moon was pretty, the crickets were singing. The bus came on time. The driver was nice to me. The next bus came on time. People were nice to me and smiled. When I arrived at the terminal at the exact time I expected to I knew something wasn't right. This can't be happening, I told myself. No last-minute rushes, no running down aisles loaded with bulky items, shouting at morons and jumping queues, no sweating, no panting, no stress, no panic. Too good to be true. Too perfect.

A perfectly engineered plan working out just fine. I started to panic. Something's wrong, I kept telling myself.

I started going over my to-do list and my to-take list. Surely I had forgotten my ID? No such luck. Mobile phone charger? Securely in my backpack. Maybe I left the oven on at home? Nope. Left the lights on? Not at all.

A sense of impending doom started crawling up my spine. My plane's gonna blow up, I thought. Or worse, instead of London I'll end up in Liverpool. I must have cancer. And swine flu. And AIDS. I'm about to be robbed, then murdered. No, murdered first. My eyes kept darting side to side, expecting the unexpected any instant.

When I arrived at the check-in desk, the relief was tangible, warm and wet. My flight was delayed 4 hours. "Oh, so that was it!", I cried and started dancing around, kissing babies and hugging old ladies.

Flashback

It often happens that while I'm busy doing something of any interest, I can't find the time to tell the world: Hey, look at me, look at what I'm doing!

After I finish doing that thing I want to tell the world about, I often find I can't be bothered any more. When this does not happen, and the motivation lives on, it may then happen that I don't find the time or the inspiration.

Furthermore, it may happen that while I wait for the time or the inspiration, some new thing I want to tell the world about comes along and previous one gets discarded and buried in the scrapyard of ideas. The circle is complete.

In other words, I'm rubbish as a reporter.

This is why I have decided to stop apologizing about late updates to this blog and write. But the only way I can do that is by breaking its linear structure. Thank Hollywood for flashbacks. From now on, don't expect posts to appear in any order, be it thematic, chronological, or just logical. I will write about whatever I feel like, when I feel like, and try to cover everything I want to shout out to the big wide world. Hey! Look at me! Look at what I'm doing!

Tschörmany, also

Continuing my Ryanair-sponsored getaway-spree through Europe, I landed in the heart of Bremen.

Bremen strikes me as the greenest city I've ever been in. Polysemic greenness. They're big on trams. They're huge on bikes. They're monumental on parks. I've never seen so much greenness together. The Bürgerpark is perhaps the prettiest and greenest area I've seen in any city so far. It's so green it upsets your colour balance. You walk out of it and everything looks red and blue in comparison.


There is one thing people go to Bremen for: to take their picture with the statue of the musicians (though in the story they never actually make it to the city). I did that too. On a very different note, there's some important aviation/aerospace industry around the city, clustered around the airport and the university. Bremen is also home to the beer I most hate in the world: Becks.



I don't have that much more to comment on the places, but travelling is always full of anecdotes, so I'll give you a few of them.

Here's one: while enjoying an idyllic afternoon in one of the endless parks in Bremen, listening to an old accordion played by an old man, I saw a rape scene. Three males run after a female. They grab her by the back of her head and all together they pin her to the ground. They jump on her and penetrate her one by one, fighting over supremacy. It's ducks I'm talking about.

The female has 4 baby ducklings of most terminal cuteness, who run around clumsily, bobbing and clustering, not knowing what to do. Their mother runs away, and so they find a foster mother in a doormat-dog on a leash. They all run after it and cluster around it and chirp their filial love. The poor dog is utterly confused by this and doesn't know what to do. At this point the people passing by decide to intervene, and like an organized team they chase away the 3 rapist ducks, pick up the ducklings and take them to their mother. Everybody feels good and useful, and there is some heart-warming bonding between absolute strangers. The female duck swims with her ducklings to the other side of the lake, where, upon arrival, she gets raped again.

Here's another: the very kind lady who housed me in Bremerhaven (Tobias' aunt) was determined to put an extra 5 kg on my frame before I left. Though my German is rubbish, I could quite get what she was saying, as the word "essen" (food/to eat) featured predominantly in most of her sentences.

"Blah blah essen blah blah essen blah essen. Blah blah essen?"
"Oh no, I'm full, thank you very much"
"Blah blah essen essen essen blah!"

We cycled in Bremerhaven on borrowed bikes. If they're free, they're good. I, as per use, got a contraption of exotic wobbliness and exquisite rustiness. It was, ahem, wobblier by the time I gave it back. I also got a bit of a suntan and sharp pain all over my body. Great fun.



I went to Hamburg for a day and a bit. I took the only existing coach service between these two neighbouring cities: the Ryanair bus2fly (don't get me started on coach travel in Germany and railway fares, I feel foam coming out of my mouth already). The driver was an old man with a white shoe-brush moustache, who appeared to be in his 9th month of pregnancy. I asked him if I could get on. He didn't answer. I got on and handed him my ticket. He took it, sat there looking through it for a full minute, then all of a sudden banged his fist on the steering wheel and yelled "Scheiße!!!" (shit!). He handed me my ticket back. I asked, "everything ok?". He seemed to suddenly realize I was there, looked at me in surprise and nodded. Tic-tic-tic, ils sont fous, ces Goths.

There are some cute sights to see in Bremen & Bremerhaven, but after one day their touristic appeal is utterly dead. They look like nice quiet places to live, but boring as hell. Even the Universität Bremen seemed to elicit as much fun as an empty packet of crisps. Except for the tower. The tower can be had fun with:


Hamburg, on the other hand, though I couldn't see much of it, did tickle my curiosity enough to make me want to visit again. Big & bustling, night-life, ferries up and down the river. My kind of place. Darn, I wish I'd had time to visit the red light district...

Both in Bremerhaven and Hamburg I spent an impossibly long time watching enormous cargo ships docking, undocking and going through locks, loading and unloading containers. Not exactly your standard tourist attraction, I'll grant you, but I myself found entertainment aplenty in watching containers being loaded and unloaded. The novelty of it somehow made it very appealing.

Seventeen days, one hellish essay, one visit to Spain and many beers later, two Ryanair one-pounders took me all the way to Frankfurt. Well, not really. Not all the way. More like all the way to fuck-knows-where, smack in the middle of a beautiful nowhere, an area of amazing lush greenness, smooth hills, canopied riverbeds, fields of radioactive yellow and cute small towns. Frankfurt-Hahn airport, that is. It happens to be much closer to Luxembourg.




For the "financial capital" you expect, Frankfurt is remarkably cute and a surprisingly interesting place to visit, even if just for the day and to take in the architecture and go up a skyscraper for some sights. Who would've thought?


I got the sights, the photos, the beers and definitely the sausages. This wraps it up for Tschörmany for now. But I vill be bakkh, also.

A penny's worth

I love flying. It makes me think. I can't stop marvelling at the miracles of technology that I see all around me. A flying machine is roaring 30000 feet above the ground, and it's taking me in its bosom above the clouds, over the mountains and seas at 500 miles an hour. I keep smiling a silly smile and silently giggling in amazement. I look around me, trying to read in someone else's face similar signs of an inner epiphany. Am I the only one?


Maybe I'm weird, or maybe I'm still a child inside. I can't help it. I keep marvelling and wondering. I think of all the manpower, the knowledge and ability and effort and resources necessary to keep this steel bird flying. I think of all the engineers and technicians and their teachers and of the pilots and their instructors. I think of the fuel and the oil, of the middle eastern country it most likely comes from and of the rigs and tankers and pipelines and the occupying armies.

But I think back before the aircraft was even built, of the miners and machines that extracted the aluminium and iron and copper and titanium. I think of the traders and stock brokers who bought it and sold it and made it move around the world. I think of the rubber from Brazil and oil from Malaysia and cotton from the US that became the tyres and window frames and seat covers. I think of the kilometres of wiring snaking through its skin and I think of the thousands of kilometres those materials travelled, to be processed and then travel again to be reprocessed somewhere else. I think of the foundries and factories and warehouses, of all the farmers and truck drivers and grunts and foremen and factory workers.

But I think back before it was even in production, of the research and design teams that worked on each individual component. I think of the hundreds of companies involved, big and small, of their executives and secretaries and administrators and investors and receptionists and cleaners. I think of the market analysts and product design specialists who decided what the characteristics of that model of aircraft should be. I think of the state of technology at the time, what improvements were available that could make the final aircraft faster and cheaper to build, more secure and lighter, easier to fly and repair.

And I think of the cycle of industrial production, and I think of that cycle several thousands of iterations back, through the days of propellers and then through many, many wars, hot and cold, worldly and otherwise, and how without them technology would have never advanced at the pace it did. I think of politicians and businessmen and investment bankers and military strategists and international organizations and territory and resources. I think of how the use of planes for reconnaissance missions and for bombing troops and cities and shooting down other pilots put the focus on improving aircraft technology. I think of radar and radio and jet engines and pressurized compartments and computers and composite materials and navigation systems.

I think of all the pilots who were shot down and all the men and women and children who died in bombing raids. I think of all that had to be bombed, razed, burnt, of all the death and destruction. I also think of all the talent and genius and creativity and energy and chest-filling euphoria of those who made it all possible, one little step at a time, a small improvement here, suddenly a whole new idea there. And I think of the sweat and effort of those who worked hard to make it a reality, and of those who are still doing so right now.


And then I zap back to the now, and I see how it is all interconnected, and how every piece of the puzzle was necessary to get me where I am now, in this situation. Every invention, every breakthrough, every invasion, every takeover, every merger, every bead of sweat and droplet of blood and drop of oil were essential in allowing me to fly now in comfort and safety over thousands of kilometres. The whole world has come together with one aim: to give me the power to fly for the Ryanair price of £0.01, one penny sterling.

My eyes are sparkling. I can't help it.

Oslo, No way

For a country so preposterously sloshing in oil, the capital of No'way is strikingly unremarkable. I don't mean it's bad. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing much right either.



The first impression I got is that the most expensive city in Europe features a surprising number of junkies, beggars and tramps rummaging in rubbish bins. They've recently outlawed prostitution, ruining the business for the hordes of Nigerian hookers formerly active in the city, so I've narrowly missed seeing these as well.

From the last paragraph you might get the impression that Oslo is a bit of a lawless city. And you would be right. There are no policemen to be seen anywhere, save for the accidental lonely couple on horseback, minding their own business and filling the streets with manure. Laws are conspicuously not enforced, and for someone coming from Airstrip One, CCTV is shockingly yet blissfully absent. I guess it's basically just like any other normal city. London must've nibbled at my brains somehow.

Visitors and locals alike all agree on one thing about Oslo: public transport sucks. Not just because it's criminally expensive. Trains work when the planets get aligned in the right order. There is no public transport at night to speak of. There are some night buses that will take you to the suburbs, for the Guinness-world-record-breaking price of 100 NOK one way (a whopping £10 at the current exchange rate).

Trafikanten is the Oslo equivalent to Transport For London. The main office is situated just outside Oslo Sentralstasjon. Check out this picture.


See all those people hanging around, bottom-right, on top of the stairs? As you get out of the train station you'll have to walk past them. At this point any number of jolly fellows will approach you and greet you with one word: "hash?", "speed?" or "cocaine?", marking their stock in trade. In a situation of exquisite surrealism, the traficantes (drug dealers) of Oslo are all clustered around a Cyclopean column covered in red neon that shouts "Trafikanten".

With English and a few words of German in your linguistic toolbox, deciphering written Norse is fairly easy. On the other hand, when spoken it sounds like the bastard offspring of Finnish and Hindi. I constantly made life impossible for any Local who would be so polite to answer my questions. Like a hyperactive kid lost in an exposition of exotic interestingness, I kept poking my finger at random words and cooing "Whassat mean?". Tons of fun for me. I wish I could say the same for the poor victims of my geekiness.

The one inescapably unique thing in and about Oslo is Vigeland Park. The more I think about it, the less I can understand how it could ever be built, and the happier I am that it was. Naked statues everywhere? Naked boys and girls together? A huge phallic monument of intertwined naked bodies? Go build that in Spain in the 1940s, see what happens.



Central Oslo aside, people in Norway don't live. They camp. They don't have houses. They have bungalows. They all live in the forest, surrounded by the sounds of chirping birds and the smell of wood fire. I kept humming to myself that tune that goes "Little boxes, on the hillside" while beholding the ultimate suburban utopia.

Norway is of course not representative of all of Scandinavia, and Oslo is hardly representative of Norway as a whole. And yet, I did manage to get a fleeting glimpse of Scandinavianness, and two aspects of it have impressed me strongly: the houses and the people.

I'm on my knees in love with Scandinavian houses. I've finally found houses that are just the way houses are supposed to be. Or the way they teach you they're supposed to be when you're a kid. When you learn how to draw a house, you don't paint an appartment building in red brick exposed, nor a crumbling brown-bricked Victorian façade. You draw a roof and big square windows and a door and you paint it in screaming bright colours and add a green garden and smoke coming out of the chimney and maybe a tree or two. That's your basic Norwegian house.



Not only do I love them on the outside. The inside inescapably strikes you as a photo springing out of an IKEA catalogue. Don't tell the owners that (I did); IKEA is just as much despised for its cheapness as it is popular for its low prices. And it's not just the way they look. They just feel right. Having electric heating under your floor just feels right. Having a whole wall of your living room open to daylight just feels right. (Having your toilet always by your front door, this I do not quite grasp.) The lighting is great; the furniture is comfortable, practical and design-conscious; everything feels the right size and shape and position. I reckon Feng Shui is practiced most in the top end of Europe.

From my limited exposure to people in pubs, the impression they made on me was one of proverbial loud, boisterous, back-slapping, good-natured Vikingness. Manly slaps on the back and brotherly handshakes keep coming as glasses keep clinking to the chorus of "Skål!". After a few half-litres they tend to mix and match, always open to meeting new people to invade, pillage and rape, with a slap on the back and a belly-booming laugh. They are quite jolly-spirited, not easily offended (I've tried), and generally quite a fun bunch. Thumbs up.

I'd love to sprinkle this post with some nice panoramas of Oslo, but it has proven impossible. It's just not a pretty city. The best views of Oslo are from the top of the Opera House, because from there you can't see the Opera House.




So what about the experience? All in all, I've had a blast. Yet had I visited backpacking on my own, I wouldn't have had a tenth of the fun. Isn't it good to have friends. To friends! Skål!

A Canterbury Tale

Earlier today, while pondering over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, I chanced upon a mediaeval candybar wrapper, on which I discovered a scribbled fragment of Middle English poetry. I'm terribly excited. I think I've found Chaucer's missing 23rd Canterbury Tale. I've sent it out to experts in the field. In waiting for the fame and glory that must surely come with such a discovery, I've translated it for you into present-day English. Enjoy.

Here begynneth the Visittynge Studdentes tale

Once on a time, as old tales tell to us,
There was a happy student on Erasmus.

When sweet February with its weather mild
The snows of January left behind,
So happened that upon a sunny day
He saw a Facebook advert that said "Hey!
One pound will take you really far away."
He quickly clicked and found to his dismay
There were too many options to choose from
And he could not decide on where to go.

"Oh well", he thought, "I might well decide
That I to Canterbury town will ride,
To pay a visit to old friends; and new,
to have a pilgrimage like there've been few."

And so he packed his bags and onwards went,
And on the road found many an accident,
Till late in the morning and sleep-deprived
To Canterbury town his bus arrived.

And he went out the whole town to explore.
"Hey, I recall being here before!",
Every now and then he stopped to exclaim.
For it is true that with touristic aim,
Barely one and a half years agone,
Those very cobblestones he had stepped on.

Up to the University he climbed
(Up a hill with a slope truly inclined)
Where a friend he met -there was much rejoicing-
And crashed at the student halls, well poising.

They covered in their visit the whole grounds
Marking the campus, forests and happy sounds
And the many merry hopping bunnies
(And as a private joke he thought "Yummy!").

Then they gatecrashed a mirthful party
Where they found merriment and company
To last for the full night or even more,
But watchmen came and stopped it well before.

The next day to the Cathedral he went
As had been his first touristic intent.
He found it worthy of admiration
(Especially liked the decoration).

Later in the day, alone he found himself;
Companyless and deserted by friends
After musing a bit he did decide:
He gatecrashed another party that night!

Friends plenty at the party he then made
And from time to time someone would just say
"It's so odd I've never seen you before!"
He would stand, beer in hand, drinking more,
And then reply, grinning from ear to ear,
"That's 'cause I'm a Visiting Student here!"

And this is just the start of his story,
For he did go back to Canterbury.
Yet the remainder is a different tale
And won't be told but after much, much ale.

In memoriam

Classes are no more. They have ceased to be. They've gloriously expired and gone to meet their maker. The 2nd term finished on the 27th of March.

Four remaining Creative Writing workshops in May and 2 essays to hand in is all that keeps me a Goldsmiths student still.

One part of my stay here is over. Another one is just starting. My accommodation is secured at least until the 20th of June, yet in all probability July will see me here still. Three months left at least, and many, many possibilities.

I look out with a newborn's eyes into a glittering future heavy with potential. Study? Work? Travel? 'Tis for time to tell. In the meantime, I hum a requiem for the lost classes while drinking in memoriam.