Hull-ing What?

Dear Readers,

I'm so excited to tell you about a place I'm pretty sure none of you have even heard of!  On Thursday, I caught the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross Station, rode two hours north to Doncaster, then made a sharp right turn, continued for another hour, and finally arrived in a small town called Hull.

To give you an idea of what the journey was like, here are a few important numbers:

sheep .......................... 188

horses ......................... 33

cows ........................... too many to count

wind turbines ............... 129

parish churches............. 27

mosques ...................... 1

nuclear power plants ...... 3

      *two of these sites had eight reactor cooling towers!

rolls of alfalfa ................ too many to count

Look familiar? It's Kings Cross Station!

When I was planning my Fall Break, I don't know what compelled me to type 'Hull' into Google - I'm not even sure where I had heard the name before - even my professor was pleasantly surprised to hear that I would be visiting Hull.  "They don't encounter many Americans there," he told me.  Coincidentally, Google informed me that Hull was the hometown of none other than William Wilberforce, the leader of the abolitionists in Britain.  It was a coincidence because my semester-long research project is on the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and slavery (1833) in Britain.  So, there I was ... on vacation, and on assignment to discover new information!  I was Bond for the day ...

Marina and Albert Docks

Humber Bridge over River Humber

Hull is located on the shore and delta of the River Humber, which empties into the North Sea.  If you were to swim (and you really cannot) straight across the North Sea from Hull, you would find yourself just off the north shores of the Netherlands.  No, it's not like being able to see Russia from the Palin's back porch .... ahem, moving on:  Because of its location, Hull was primarily a fishing and shipping town, similar to Liverpool, but was not as heavily involved in trade - Liverpool has much easier access to the Atlantic.  And lest you think Hull an insignificant place, I assure you it is not because any place that has a statue of Queen Victoria and docks named after her Prince Consort, is a real place. In fact, even Henry VIII visited Hull to make sure it had sufficient defenses against foreign enemies of the crown.

My first impression, other than "wow, it's really windy here," was that Hull is incredibly pretty.  (Again, the skies on this island are spectacular - check out the clouds!)  It is very quaint, but also very beautifully laid out.  From the train station I headed toward the Wilberforce House on High Street, the oldest street in Hull.  The Wilberforce family was fairly wealthy among those living in Hull during the 18th and early-19th centuries.  Their home was modest, but had very nice gardens, and a GIANT fireplace.  The museum in the house has all kinds of information about William Wilberforce (there was even a wax figure of him!), abolition, and the origins of slavery.  I was also lucky enough to see some of Wilberforce's handwritten letters to his right-hand man, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, another member of Parliament (MP) and vice president of the Anti-Slavery Society.

Victoria Square

Afterwards, I visited the Street Life Museum, a modest exhibit about the evolution of Hull's transportation from before and after the Industrial Revolution, but was quickly overwhelmed by all the school children there.  So, I returned to Victoria Square, which in my opinion should be called Victoria Circus because there is nothing quadrangle about it, to visit the Maritime Museum (arguably the prettiest building in town) and the Ferens Art Gallery.  I never used to have the patience to go to art museums, ironic for a Philadelphian, but there's just something about oil on canvas that just ensnares my attention and fascinates me to no end.  In fact, I probably spent a good 15 minutes staring at this piece by Francis Cotes, and then for another 10 right before I left the museum.  Just look at the texture and colors used in his clothing!  Really remarkable.  That being said, I cannot stand modern art!  You will never see me standing in front of a red triangle ... forgetaboutit!  Ironically, in the modern art section of the museum, my eye was caught by a photograph whose explanatory sign discussed the concept of "unattainable space."  And, since we're all about coincidences in Hull, the one modern art piece that I liked was by an Israeli woman named Sivan Lewin (see it here).  Go figure.

Maritime Museum

Before catching the train back to Kings Cross, I grabbed dinner at the local hole-in-the-wall bar/restaurant: pasta with smoke salmon in a horse-radish cream sauce, with some green leaves on top.  YUM!  I was going to kill my last hour in Hull by walking around, but before I had the chance, I was invited to play darts with some Frenchmen, Swedes, and a Scot (this sounds like the beginning of a joke, does it not?).  Oh man, I couldn't tell you which one of them was harder to understand.  Swedish people have remarkably clear English, Frenchies sound like they have a bad head cold, and forget about Scots - everything is so guttural that you start to confuse vowel and consonant sounds!  Fortunately for me, they made me do most of the talking - many of them had never met an American before.  Such a cultural exchange, I tell you!

I miss you all!  Stay tuned for more posts!

P.S. My travel companion, Oscar Wilde, and I slipped into a coffee shop just off Victoria Square for a bit of research review and a caffeine fix with our mutual friend Dorian Gray.