Nostalgia

London, my old beloved and my dream!

Yesterday, as I listened to Graeme (I’m happy I can call him with his first name), I was mapping my constellation. Graeme’s is different from mine, though it is also in London. Mine is around western and southern districts, while his eastern and northern. I remember the summer of 2008 in London. It was the happiest moment in my life when I was there. I could have been to Paris or any other city of Europe, but ignored others. They would be my second option. Only London (including short visit to Margate and Oxford) was my longing option, then.

Two weeks were too short for all over London. I recall Hounslow, Hammersmith, Clapham Common, Bermonsey, and so on. I miss H91 bus and its announcing voice of guidance, which the bus oscillating between Hounslow West and Hammersmith. I also miss Osterley underground station in the twilight. London makes me feel home with just two weeks, yet in fact, I’ve felt home in England since my childhood, and I’ve dearly loved London and several English provinces, so I think I might be a Londoner/Englander before life. Perhaps I was brainwashed by English writers from early childhood. What an education!

It doesn’t mean that I don’t like French, German or Russian writers. I was equally fascinated with the Russian and German writing, yet the Latin was not that much. I’ve read Flaubert’s, Balzac’s, Dumas’s and others’, but I’ve never been in love with them. I don’t know why, maybe it depends on my taste or disposition [or because of some indescribable feeling]. Sagan’s modern works were popular in a time in Korea and they were interesting, but I hardly sympathised with the French feeling. It’d have been due to that I was too young then or the translations didn’t revitalise them. Anyway, my experience of them was of decades ago, and now I wonder how they would appeal to me if I re-read them as an adult.

Now I’m looking at the map of Paris’s Metro & Bus which Graeme gave me (Kindly of him!). The net of close texture of the map provokes something roving inside me. Suddenly I want to see Paris, all of it, the Seine, the Louvre, the Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomph, Montmartre, etc. I imagine Ravic and Joan drinking Calvados in a pub. Dimitri said to me that Calvados was not a delicious drink, not of quality, but Remarque made the name aurally romantic. For me, Paris is not more intriguing than London, so I don’t regret that I didn’t spare time for her in 2008. I hope I can take a roam over the Europe someday, however. Before that, I’d like to journey whole Britain including Wales and Scotland.

Brit…