Neverending Adventure
...is not always a good thing. In addition to walking completely across Florence twice with my pack to find a hostel with a vacancy, I had an interesting time getting back to England on Thursday. The plane was late, which didn't really surprise or concern me until it was pointed out to me that the hostel I had a reservation at would be closed by the time I got there. The person who pointed this out was Neil. Neil and his girlfriend Amanda were returning to London after a few days spent scuba diving near Santa Margherita. Neil also, at the time of pointing this out to me, offered me the use of his couch for the night. I gratefully accepted. The ensuing plane ride, wait, bus ride, wait, train station, wait, and taxi ride were relatively painless compared with how bad it could have been, but we still didn't get to their flat until after 3:30 in the morning. So after a cup of tea, we didn't get to sleep until 4:00. But it beats sleeping outside the train station. They also pointed me toward the cheap bus line to Oxford the next morning, which saved me about ten pounds (that's around $8,000 for those of you not familiar with the exchange rate - about enough for a sandwich and a coke, if you find a cheap place, you could probably afford some crisps on top of that). That was part one of the adventure.
Part two consisted of showing up in Oxford with absolutely no idea of where I was or where I was going. I had Maggie's phone number, but due to an unfortunate miscommunication she had left her phone at home. I choose to look at the ensuing afternoon as comical rather than annoying (or disastrous). The short version is that I spent several hours sitting on a bench near the bus station realizing just how many degrees of latitude separate England and Italy. On the upside, I ran into my RA from Casa Italiana who is also starting at Oxford this fall. But just as I had given up and gotten too cold (even after a hot chocolate that only cost me about seventy or eighty bucks) Christina (my RA) showed up again, I rechecked my email and Maggie had emailed me back with precise directions on where to meet her and what to do in the meantime, and the sun came out. The sun coming out made absolutely no difference to the temperature, but it was nicely symbolic and so I didn't argue the point.
Oxford is an incredible town. It has an atmosphere all its own that I have never encountered the like of anywhere else in all my travels. This place is what the Ivy League schools are trying to be, and now I can see how far short they have fallen. In one of Maggie's earlier emails she had said that I would love it, all this Oxfordness. She was right. There really is no other way to put it without resorting to either complicated and inadequate descriptions of historical development of academic communities and synergies of disparate organizations of various types and general English culture or coming up with an entirely abstract vocabulary of ideas that can't be put directly into words. The best way to put it is to quote one of my favorite bits from Chesterton and say that here "ideas are real in the same way that people are real." The colleges themselves are merely ideas expressed through gothic (mostly) architecture and an accumulation of traditions. But if you asked me how it differed from any other university, I would be hard pressed to pin it down for you.
I can say that they have probably the best bookstore I've ever been in here. Blackwell's is about the size of a small aircraft carrier - or a large battleship. And combined with the Oxfordness in the air, one is likely to go off and start buying philosophy books at the slightest provocation. Luckily (depending on how you look at it) I made it out with only two books, one of which I had been planning to buy anyway. Go me. Maggie also showed me around some of the better local places to eat and drink, respectively. And I walked in the deer park at Magdalene College where CS Lewis and Tolkien used to stroll and talk. I'll have to go back and reread Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books again to see if I have gained a deeper insight into those guys. Maybe; I wouldn't be surprised.
My list of things to do is now down to Saint Paul's Cathedral and Gatwick airport. One tomorrow and one Wednesday morning. Then I get a couple weeks at home, where I hope it is warmer than it is here. That shouldn't be difficult.
Part two consisted of showing up in Oxford with absolutely no idea of where I was or where I was going. I had Maggie's phone number, but due to an unfortunate miscommunication she had left her phone at home. I choose to look at the ensuing afternoon as comical rather than annoying (or disastrous). The short version is that I spent several hours sitting on a bench near the bus station realizing just how many degrees of latitude separate England and Italy. On the upside, I ran into my RA from Casa Italiana who is also starting at Oxford this fall. But just as I had given up and gotten too cold (even after a hot chocolate that only cost me about seventy or eighty bucks) Christina (my RA) showed up again, I rechecked my email and Maggie had emailed me back with precise directions on where to meet her and what to do in the meantime, and the sun came out. The sun coming out made absolutely no difference to the temperature, but it was nicely symbolic and so I didn't argue the point.
Oxford is an incredible town. It has an atmosphere all its own that I have never encountered the like of anywhere else in all my travels. This place is what the Ivy League schools are trying to be, and now I can see how far short they have fallen. In one of Maggie's earlier emails she had said that I would love it, all this Oxfordness. She was right. There really is no other way to put it without resorting to either complicated and inadequate descriptions of historical development of academic communities and synergies of disparate organizations of various types and general English culture or coming up with an entirely abstract vocabulary of ideas that can't be put directly into words. The best way to put it is to quote one of my favorite bits from Chesterton and say that here "ideas are real in the same way that people are real." The colleges themselves are merely ideas expressed through gothic (mostly) architecture and an accumulation of traditions. But if you asked me how it differed from any other university, I would be hard pressed to pin it down for you.
I can say that they have probably the best bookstore I've ever been in here. Blackwell's is about the size of a small aircraft carrier - or a large battleship. And combined with the Oxfordness in the air, one is likely to go off and start buying philosophy books at the slightest provocation. Luckily (depending on how you look at it) I made it out with only two books, one of which I had been planning to buy anyway. Go me. Maggie also showed me around some of the better local places to eat and drink, respectively. And I walked in the deer park at Magdalene College where CS Lewis and Tolkien used to stroll and talk. I'll have to go back and reread Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books again to see if I have gained a deeper insight into those guys. Maybe; I wouldn't be surprised.
My list of things to do is now down to Saint Paul's Cathedral and Gatwick airport. One tomorrow and one Wednesday morning. Then I get a couple weeks at home, where I hope it is warmer than it is here. That shouldn't be difficult.