I personally consider this one of the more obvious observations a traveler can make, but after visiting Stamford and Lincoln this past week, I can understand why bloggers freak out about Europe's age. In Stamford, we saw streets that were functional in medieval times. In Lincoln, we walked through a gate that was used by Roman emperors. At the Lincoln museum, we saw plates and goblets that were actually used by actual people in Romano-British times, and my friend summed up the awe we felt perfectly. "That plate is older than the United States," he said.
Actually, almost everything in the Lincoln museum was older than the United States. By a whole fracking lot. And while I was very much bowled over by that, what I almost found more impressive was the weird juxtaposition of time periods throughout English towns. The current Lincoln Cathedral (which is, like, too beautiful for words, by the way) was built in the 11th century on top of an even older cathedral that was built by the Anglo-Saxons. There were walls built on top of walls, glass-covered Roman wells that were built before people forgot how to do plumbing and then remembered again (weird, I know), and there was even a CASTLE.
Okay, so the castle was under construction. Still cool though.
And in the midst of all these crazy ancient artifacts, there were real-life modern people. When we were there, two men got in a tussle because one tried to park outside the other's house. A street musician heard our American accents and played "Yankee Doodle" on a piccolo. People had cell phones and music players and Instagram, and they had all of these things while they were standing on top of the castle or walking through the Roman gate or viewing a cadaver tomb in the cathedral.
Cadaver tombs are metal as shit, by the way.
The cathedral. Pictures don't do it justice.
And all this was really cool and really weird to me. It's like, modern culture and the preservation of ancient cultures don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's a little magical. But mostly it just makes me realize that we are not the only generation to live here, on this Earth. There have been billions of people here before us, and they weren't all club-thumping cave-men. They had art and religion and some of them could even build DOMES. Then I kind of wondered what our civilization will leave behind on the planet. What will insanely advanced cultures think of us? Will someone look at our silverware in the distant future and think how cool it is that real people just like them actually ate off of plastic? Will they think our relics are as hardcore as cadaver tombs? Who knows. I tried to fight it, but I guess my point is, "OMG EUROPE IS OLD. OMG MIND = BLOWN."
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