Fischberg Flashback 13: Bathtime

Note: this was originally published to Fisch and Chips on October 11, 2013.  I have since made several grammatical changes.

Another week has come and gone and it’s time to kick my mind into high gear.  Next week, there will be four papers and three exams before I will be allowed to rest.  As a result, I will most likely spend the weekend working intensely, taking few breaks, and enjoying spartan meals and rest.  This will be the most intense weekend I have had in a while, so this will be my last blog post for a while.

And on that note, here’s what happened this week!

As I mentioned in the last post, Monday was dedicated to classes and Tuesday to Macbeth !ATTHEGLOBE!.  Wednesday proved to be a worthy addition, as my history class (finally) was able to see Westminster Abbey!  Sadly, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, so you’ll have to take my word when I said that it was really beautiful and contained some of the most elaborate tombs and commemorative plaques for famous historical figures that I have ever seen.  You will also have to take my word that there’s an underground fighting ring deep in the catacombs where 60-year-olds dressed as Pokémon fight each other to the death with the bones of Queen Elizabeth I and Charles Darwin.

One of the above statements is false.  Can you guess which one?

Anyhoo, Thursday, despite being Abbey/fighting ring-free, turned out to be quite superb as I received words of encouragement from my professors, a pair of books I ordered from the Internet arrived (funny story about that—I’ll elaborate in my Halloween post), and I attended an actually-quite-understandable lecture at the London School of Economics with friends, taking care of something that needed to be done with minimal difficulty.  At the end of the day, I felt like I was on top of the world, despite having four papers and three exams next week.

However, it was today’s excursion that proved the most fascinating, and provided the title for tonight’s blog post: the English spa town of Bath!

The day got off to a great start, as I arrived at Paddington Station over an hour in advance (clearly to compensate for the King’s Cross fiasco last month), giving me adequate time to relax for a moment and hang out with Paddington Bear.

After sleeping through the train ride there, I awoke in Bath, a city steeped in history.  In total, our excursion was divided into three mini-excursions, each representing a chapter in Bath’s history.  First up was Bath Abbey, dating bath (er, back) to Medieval Bath.  Like Westminster Abbey, it was gorgeous, huge, and contained intricate tombs and commemorations.

Next up was most of Bath as it stands today, which mostly dates back to Georgian England (for future reference, whenever I say “Georgian” on this blog, I am referring primarily the 18th century, despite King George V and King George VI ruling in the 20th century), when Bath enjoyed a massive resurgence as a tourist destination for the rich and a place of (relative) prosperity for the local poor.

Finally, we visited the Roman Baths, which, as the name implies, date back to the time of the Roman Empire, who built an intricate bathhouse coupled with a temple on the site of a natural hot spring that the Celts had regarded as sacred and with healing properties.

As you can see, the Great Bath (top) and the Sacred Spring (bottom) today both have high concentrations of algae and bacteria, meaning that it is not safe to even touch the water, let alone immerse oneself in it.  The irony is incredible, given everything I wrote in the last paragraph.

Not all the water in the area is contaminated, though.  At the end of the audio tour I took, I was allowed to drink from a tap that contained Sacred Spring water that had been (somewhat) cleaned, making it safe enough for human consumption.

I drank two cups of the stuff, and I must say…it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it might be, though I have no intent to drink more of it (and I sought out a Starbucks shortly afterward to get some fruit juice to wash the aftertaste out).  Appropriately enough, it tasted like hot bathwater.

With that, our AHA group headed back to London via train.  With Friday giving up the ghost, the weekend, and all the work that comes with it, will commence quickly and brutally.  I’ve more-or-less finished one paper, I have an excellent start two others (given that I got an A on my last politics paper, I’m not worried about my current one despite my complete lack of progress on it), and the exams shouldn’t present too much trouble, but I’ll need to be very vigilant.  I’m talking late-nighters, staying indoors, and studying with fellow AHA students.  I’m in for quite the two days, followed by quite the week…

…but first, I need to get myself dinner and a drink with friends.

A non-bathwater drink, to be exact.

Modern reflections:

Not a lot to add here.  I still vaguely remember the taste of Bath's water: not great, but not terrible.

I notice that in a lot of these blog posts, I keep talking about my school assignments.  While Present Me sympathizes with Past Me in regards to the workload, Present Me also laughs due to everything that's happened since 2013.  Compared to my senior thesis, the Law School Admission Test, three grueling years of law school, the Oregon Bar Examination, the day-to-day work of lawyering, and the personal/professional complications from a global pandemic, my workload while abroad (from what I remember of the assignments) was downright easy.  Having reached the point in my career that no one cares about my grades (let alone undergraduate grades), my worrying about exams seems rather alien from here.  Keeping grades up was still a daunting task, but I ultimately handled it well.  Excellent work, Past Me!