A Full Day in Manchester

This past Saturday was our program excursion to Manchester. We left at about 8:00AM for a one-and-a-half-hour train ride. I tend to love train rides, but I was a bit sleep-deprived and napped for most of the way. Napping may not have been the best idea, as I felt disoriented and upside-down, like on a space station in another dimension, when I woke up. Coffee cured that quick enough, though, and we were off to the Manchester Art Gallery. Of course, only a few minutes into our walk, some of our group ran in front of a street tram and, narrowly avoiding death (maybe not quite that), managed to cause a huge traffic jam as the tram was stuck in the middle of an intersection while its brakes cooled. Another tram or two had to stop behind it, and there were cars backed up for a few blocks in every which way. God bless American tourists...

Our main task at the city gallery was to view their prime collection of Pre-Raphaelite work. We've been studying the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) for our class with Jamie, "Victorian Britain and Postmodern Culture," and they've made frequent appearances in my 19th Century Literature class, as well. My enjoyment of the PRB's work was dramatically increased in person, as their signature vibrant colors and almost neurotic attention to detail were more distinct than in mere facsimile. It was good to see the more well-known/essential works, such as Ford Madox Brown's "Work" or William Holman Hunt's "The Hireling Shepherd," but I think I most enjoyed the haunting "Ophelia," by Arthur Hughes. Their Modern(ist) collection wasn't anything too incredible, but I did enjoy seeing some pieces by Wyndham Lewis (whose literary work I've encountered), as well as LS Lowry, Francis Bacon, Modigliani, and some others I can't remember.

After that, we were off to the nearby Manchester City Hall, one of the most elaborate (and expensive) Gothic-revival structures around. The interior is incredibly elaborate on the first few floors, but as you climb higher through the building, the details get less intricate--clever, eh? The building's Great Hall features a dozen or so murals of varying quality by Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. These reminded me of the Diego Rivera murals in the Detroit Institute of Art (back when art mattered enough to be displayied in public?), although dramatically different in theme and content. The ceiling of the Great Hall is decorated by coats of arms from each of the cities and/or countries with which Manchester has/had connections, and some of these proved mildly entertaining (Canada=beaver?). Something that seemed especially quirky from our contemporary tourist context was the "Manchester bees" mosaic-ed into the tile floors outside the Great Hall. Not only did it seem odd to permanently embed a swarm of bees in the midst of the dramatic gothic architecture, but the things (which are supposed to represent the buzzing, busy spirit of the city) looked a bit like something from a newspaper comic strip.

We wrapped up at City Hall just in time for lunch, so John and I headed to one of the cheap buffets outside of town. The food wasn't that great, but we still managed to eat almost our body weight in greasy Asian-esque treats. We then headed into the small but densely-concentrated Chinatown to do some shopping at the Wing Fat Supermarket. We got some much-need goodies there, including:
- tea (Chinese longjing?) in a nice tin
- Sri Racha hot sauce (quite hard to find amongst the bland, creamy, meaty foods they stock in British supermarkets)
- incense
- kim chee
- cool little printed paper things
All in all, a very productive shopping venture.

We rushed off from Wing Fat to meet our group before leaving for the Museum of Science and Industry. Manchester has its claim to fame as the first industrialized city in the world, and we got to see the artifacts (some working) of their textile-industry heritage as well as the steam-engine power systems that fueled the industry. The steam engines were inspiring in their intricacy and brute mechanics (quite a contrast to our current digitized, microscopic machines), but I especially enjoyed learning about the processes and systems involved in producing cloth. Now I want to build a loom! Even learning about the fabric itself put me more in touch with something so commonplace as to usually avoid attention or scrutiny. I was surprised to learn how many common types of synthetic fabric (I believe polyster, acrylic, and nylon among others) are actually petroleum-based, aka oil. That's something I don't often hear discussed.

The Museum of Science and Industry marked the end of our official group program, so we were free to do our own thing. I had hoped to stay in the city later into the night, to see the sights and enjoy the new scenery, but for some reason the whole group was exhausted and wanted to get home by the time we were done with museums at 5:00PM. I had read online, though, that there was a great view from Cloud 23, the 23rd-story bar at the Manchester Hilton. This strange, modern, somewhat precarious-looking hotel structure was right near the Museum of Science and Industry, so I convinced Brian and John to take a detour there with me. We had to wait in line in the lobby until a couple slick-looking doormen let us up the elevator. The place was quite posh, with quiet electronic music playing and rich European socialites milling about with double-digit mixed drinks. We flipped through the menu (the first page featured a bottle of champagne for 2000 pounds), managing to select something that wouldn't break the bank. All the seats were taken up by the aforementioned city slickers, so we milled about trying to look natural with our backpacks and scruffy clothes while taking in the views of the city, which were fantastic! The sun was nearing the horizon, so the whole city was swamped in a blueish-orange haze. We could see the clock tower of the city hall, the authentic Chinese arch (commissioned by Chairman Mao back in the day), and the various waterways cutting through the city. Part of the bar extends out from the rest of the building, seemingly hovering over thin air, and part of the floor took advantage of this fact with glass plates that make it seem like you're standing on thin air above the miniature pedestrians and cars below. We were glad to have overcome our exhaustion and complete this expedition, but as nice as it was to seem posh for a short spell, I'm glad not to be one of the suave, refined people we saw there. It all seems quite dull and empty from an outside perspective, even after just a half hour.

Cloud 23 consumed the last of our reserve energy, so we walked back to Picadilly Station just in time for the next train to York. I again fell asleep, dreaming of steam engines on golden landscapes somehow mixed up in our class with Jamie. And again, my nap left me disoriented and dreamy for the walk back from station to campus. Oddly enough, we all agreed that coming back from Manchester felt like a return home. We knew the streets, the skyline, the campus, and our own individuals rooms and beds. I guess that's a good sign as we approach the halfway mark between our arrival in York and the coming insanity of Easter break. For a while, at least, I have a home across the Atlantic Ocean.



| photo: Ryan on Cloud 23, although the spectacular view of the city wasn't quite captured on film