AixPatriots: Our Semester in Aix en Provence: Oxford: We go to a pub and get kicked out of a walking tour...

Oxford: October 23-25

We left for Oxford Monday afternoon. At the train station we ran into an old friend, the violinist from Saturday night’s concert! Sara, being the friendly gal that she is, went up and introduced herself and told him how good he was during the concert. According to her, he seemed a bit flustered so Sara backed off, but not before figuring out that he too was going to Oxford!!! He is actually a student there. So we got on the train, with Harry, and headed to the city of dreaming spires (that is literally their nickname – something to do with all the spires on the various colleges’ buildings and the fact that students dream (?))

Oxford was wonderful – so educational!!!! Our first real event was when we attempted to join the free tour. We saw a group of meeting in the correct meeting spot, asked one of the participants if this was the free tour, to which she responded yes, and headed off with the free tour. Or so we thought. Turns out, we were actually not on the free tour, the girl we asked had literally no idea what we had said (she was French…). So when we were asked to produce our tickets a few minutes later before entering some important and collegiate building, we responded that were had mistakenly believed this to be the free tour, and we were asked to leave. Whoops!

There is terribly much to do in Oxford, unless you are a student, in which case you are tremendously busy and important all of the time. As a tourist however you mostly just walk around a bunch and take tons of pictures, and try to sneak into tours or colleges, because Oxford is on the collegiate system. Basically that means that there are 38 colleges. Upon entering into the University you are accepted into one of the colleges and live and eat there your first year. Within each college all subjects are taught (no one college specializes in one subject over others). The main method of teaching is that weekly students meet with their individual tutor who gives them an assignment/reading/essay to be completed and discussed at the next meeting. There are lectures and labs sponsored by the university, which you attend as a student as well. All in all I do not think I would like this system because there doesn’t seem to be much of a plan and also it seems quite isolating. But tons of people like it. It takes all kinds of people.

The first day we snuck into Lincoln college and walked around the quad and in some buildings. All the colleges have a bright green immaculately cut quad lawn. Very beautiful. Also there are about 3 million bikes in Oxford – most of which driven by students. The bikers are indeed assassins who will try their hardest to run you over.

I took tons tons tons of notes during the free tour (we acutally found it!) the next day. Our tour guide kept mocking me and saying that he was going to include fake facts. But yo – I’m a history major. Taking notes about cool facts is in my blood. Allow me to share some of my favorites:

- every year there is a tortoise race among colleges #whathappenswhentoomanynerdsaretogether

- the Harry Potter hospital scenes (1^st movie) and dance class scenes (4^th movie) were filmed in the Divinity School – which Sara and I visited

- Cambridge University will never accept an Oxford reject – also you cannot apply to Cambridge and Oxford at the same time – there is a register in England that keeps track of all the schools to which you apply

- Hitler decided not to bomb Oxford because he wanted it as his capital city of England

- In 1355 the town attacked the students and killed 63 students #townvsgown

In the afternoon Sara and I went to the Science museum. She loved it! I was really tired at point. But we saw Einstein’s chalkboard upon which he proved relativity to Oxford. It was pretty cool – it stull had the equations on it.

Our last night in Oxford we went to the Eagle and Child pub where JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis (and others) had weekly Inklings meetings. Inklings was a literary society that both Tolkein and Lewis joined while undergrads at Oxford and where both pitched their manuscripts. We had pub food – good but unremarkable. What was really delicious was the cider!!! It is essentially half apple juice half beer and all delicious – and cheap!!

Wednesday Emily, Katie, and I went on the Inklings tour. The guide took us (we were the only participants that day) to places where Lewis or Tolkein studied/lived/worked/wrote/were inspired. It was pretty cool. My favorite fact was that when Tolkein entered Oxford in 1911 as a freshman he was put on the Oxford English Dictionary Committee researching the letter W. Tolkein also wrote the Hobbit as he graded papers.

All in all I really enjoyed Oxford. It was very educative. Our hostel was also super cool (and had all the free perks as the last one – same chain). The common room always had people in it. It looked like how TV shows try to depict college common rooms. Very colorful and people hanging out everywhere. Also everyone who worked there was super nice.