I went to the Continuing Education library instead where the clerk spoke English with a Czech accent and I could actually borrow books. On the way I stopped by the twice-a-month antique and Farmer’s market. It had everything you’d expect at a flea market here – somebody’s overpriced junk, some imports, veggies and sausage. So I went home and did laundry. I really did think $5 for a wash and dry was too much to pay, but I was sick of rinsing stuff out in the sink and draping it all around my room.

Our professor was out doing a field trip that afternoon so we had a special speaker. She lectured for the first half of the afternoon and then we went over to New College (actually one of the oldest Colleges in Oxford). The gardens have a piece of Oxford’s original city wall and the chapel was stunning. The wall behind the altar is all niches filled with statues of saints and heroes. These were all destroyed as Catholicism fell out of favor, but have been ‘restored’ – which in this case means redone altogether. Very stunning. Then we got a little history of the Merton chapel and she answered the one burning question I’d had since I arrived: why are all the doors blue. I’d stumped two experts with that one and felt very much like the proverbial three-year-old. She attributed it to ‘Oxford Blue’ which is a very traditional color to the town. Now I just need to go back to Croatia and ask them why all the doors are green.

I then trekked down to the Museum of Oxford. Not a bad little place, it chronicles Oxford’s rise from ‘the town near the ford’ through it’s academic history and even delved into it’s history as a car manufacturing hub. (Can you blame me for skipping that part?)

After lunch we headed out to Stratford-Upon-Avon passing the afternoon (what was left of it) in town and attending an evening performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of course I broke off from the group almost immediately and wandered around snapping photos. It seemed like all the more churlish folks from our larger group had made it onto that bus and I admit that I actually hid from a couple of them when I wandered into the more touristy parts of town.

Shakespeare’s hometown is much like everywhere else  – it all closes down between 4 and 5 p.m. and had a large old town which could also be translated as ‘tourist pen’ filled with shops totally irrelevant to the destination. Example: one of the oldest looking shops in Oxford on Cornmarket street sells cell phones. That kind of thing. It’s also under construction – the Shakespeare theater that is.

I wandered down by the river and back. I got a fish dinner which, aside from the vinegar and salt covering my ‘chips’ tasted remarkably like any American pre-processed and fried fish served with french fries. At least there was plenty of it.

The play was good. We were seated in the rafters, but the ‘curtain’ was actually a mirror so you could still see the action (albeit in reverse) if it wandered to the front of the stage. I’m not really a Shakespeare buff so I could not fully appreciate the whole thing. The play-within-a-play at the end was quite funny. They had a few clever plays on words some of which involved a guy running around in red undies. This caused a great deal of discussion back on the bus. Some folks found it ‘offensive’ to have a guy with red undies included in a classic play; I found it to break up the monotony. Personally I could have left our poor lovers stranded in the woods for a very – long – time.

The Oxford Museum of Natural History is a wonder. The first thing I saw was a taxidermied bobcat and a sign reading ‘Please Touch.’ I’d never been to a museum where they actually want you to touch stuff. They had displays aimed at children with fossils, a meteorite and taxidermied critters.

There was the essential dino-in-the-doorway display of a towering skeleton, but they had a whole line-up on one side of everything from a deer to a giraffe. Statues of great scientific minds line the perimeter – there’s one for everyone no matter who you admire, Darwin, Bacon, they’re all there. The pillars are displays themselves, carved of native stone. There were an abundance of taxidermied displays behind glass, all tattered with age: birds from the rainforest, a kangaroo rat and other small mammals. Upstairs was filled with butterflies and beetles and bugs and slugs. There is a working beehive encased in glass mounted in the stairwell. I really enjoyed the rock displays as well. It was one of those places I told myself I’d come back to, but I lied. I was pretty much lost in there all morning.

Once our afternoon class was over we got all gussied up for dinner. This was our ‘High-Table’ experience. One of those formal dinners where you not only have to behave nicely and not spill the milk, but you’re on center stage and wine stains easier. The director said the grace in Welsh and everything was very neat and nice. We made it through just fine, although some of our elders were a little worse for the brandy.

Dr. Geoffrey Thomas, founder of Kellogg College (why, yes, it is named for the famous cereal company) spoke on the state of education in England. Seems they’re in culture shock themselves at the new restrictions being placed on them by the government. Oxford and Cambridge have, by some long tradition, been underwritten by the government to such a degree that once a student was accepted their education was paid in full. A few years back they were allowed to start charging because the government allotment had been reduced. Now they’d like to charge premium, but the government says all the universities have to be priced (essentially) the same. Need cash; looking for donors – That’s it in a nutshell. I guess most Europeans aren’t used to paying for their education. If you’re good enough you go. It’s that simple. Well, not anymore.

‘Going to London’ seems to be some sort of rite of passage. If you’ve been to London then apparently you’ve been somewhere. After my unpleasant night in racing from airport to airport a few weeks earlier London was not top on my list, but it seemed like somewhere that must be done so off I went. Perhaps I made up my mind beforehand, but I was not impressed. London is big. It’s also much dirtier and (on a weekend) more abandoned than I pictured it.

The bus dumped me somewhere near Victoria and I just set off walking to the river. (Yes, from here on out I will always travel with a teeny little compass – I have no idea what I’d have done without it.) Map and compass notwithstanding I got a little lost, all I had was a general direction. That was how I stumbled into Westminster Cathedral. Now I know – anyone reading this is chanting ‘Princess Di, Princess Di.’ Wrong church. The Cathedral is huge and brick and set just back from the street. In retrospect I should have climbed the church tower because it was only 4 or 5 pounds or so and that would have made it the cheapest attraction in London, but I didn’t. I walked in and was in one of the side chapels staring at a particularly nice ceiling when I heard singing – Mass was starting up. So I went to Mass. I checked the gift shop later for ‘My 1st Mass’ T-shirts, but they must have been out. It’s a very nice church. It needs restoring and if you can help I’m quite sure they’d appreciate it.

An hour and a few blocks later I came upon Westminster Abbey. There were Morris dancers in the parking lot and tourists everywhere and tour guides with umbrellas and all the usual tourist buzz. (Now you can shout ‘Princess Di, Princess Di.’) I was pretty well shocked to find it cost more than 20 bucks just to look inside. I’ve been to my fair share of touristy churches, but that’s a little extreme. One look at the price, the crowd and the outside and I decided I’d seen my big fancy church for the day.

Big Ben (that’s the name of the bell, not the tower) lives across the street. So I took pictures, bumped into a guy from Iran (who had me take his picture) and lost him all in one intersection. He’d come from Paris to visit a friend who apparently turned him loose on the city without so much as a howdy-do. The crowd just swept along and next thing I knew he was gone.

The crowd was definitely setting the pace. I guess they all crossed at Westminster Bridge because if you walk the Victoria Embankment it’s just you and a few lost lovers, the tour bus drivers (who all park there) and the bums. So I walked from there to St. Paul’s which has a 12 pound (or almost $24) entry fee. Not having the funds to drop everytime I passed a place of worship I found a bombed out church-turned flower garden (free), St. Bart’s church (where the usher encouraged me to return later, but they had a wedding starting up in a few) and Central Market (closed). I was close to the City of London Museum so I dropped in there.

You know you’ve been gone too long when you make mental attachments to people you meet. I ended up inadvertently following this guy around (or maybe it was the other way round). No, not the old guy in the wheelchair – I was trying to avoid him and his ‘Beware-of-me-I-am-preparing-to-back-into-you’ beep. The one with the backpack – which is really all I saw of him because it was in front of half the displays. It was funny traveling in a country where you speak the language. I felt almost more isolated because of it. I mean, if I speak the language it follows that I should understand the currency, read the warning signs, be acquainted with the culture and read and recognize street signs – right?

Traveling in England is just as confusing as traveling elsewhere, only the language is a little reversed. In ‘Elsewhere’ the shopkeepers understand you and the tourists speak your tongue; in England the tourists don’t speak English, but the shopkeepers are fluent. Shopkeepers and museum employees alike seem to have eastern European accents attached to their English. People ask me if I picked up an English accent while I was gone. That’s impossible. The folks at the University have had all the ‘accent’ cultured out of them and I met hardly any other ‘true English.’ If there are people who are born and die in England then they must live in the boondocks.

From the London Museum I followed ‘my’ backpack towards the river. I was so ‘close’ that I just had to walk on down to the Tower of London – another exorbitant entry fee. It was late in the day so I thought I’d pass. I walked around, got my shots and then crossed the bridge for more pictures. (You can go in the tower there too – another 20 bucks.) It is all fancy restaurants and apartments on that side so I crossed back over and took a spin through All Hallows by the Tower. Then I found a grocery store. Since a bottle of water cost $3 or more elsewhere and I had found very little in the way of fast or cheap food I went in and stocked up. Of course I’d forgotten that it was another four miles back to the bus station.

Dinner al fresco on a bench facing the Thames was a lovely affair with a couscous starter, some sort of pastry and a side of apple with a candied dessert. Eating on a bench in the wind with grocery bags at your feet does provoke the ‘hey-is-that-chick-a-bum’ look from passerbys, but I was too tuckered out to care. As I figured it up later I walked about nine miles that day, that doesn’t count any double tracking or moments of lost. It took more than an hour to walk from the Tower to the Eye.

Since I was somewhat revived I kept going. I walked through St. James’s park (hey, that’s how they spell it) and saw Buckingham Palace. Then I went through Hyde Park just for fun and finally found the bus stop.

Sunday I slept in. I wandered in Oxford for a while. I went to the Botanic Gardens where everything is green but nothing much was in bloom. During my tour of the greenhouses I ended up behind a botanical student narrating a tour for two friends who were enthralled by everything. Cacti? Oooooo. A banana tree? Oooooo. A leaf? Ooooooo. I left them to admiring all things spiny and leafy and found myself in the fern room. They water ‘only’ three times a day the gal told me because it has been so wet and cool lately. She was just there to mist and she was doing such a through job that I went outside. There were punters to watch and rock gardens to enjoy. I did have to admire the heavily billed ‘Tolkien’s Favorite Tree.’ If there was such a thing as a favorite tree this would have to be a winner. It was huge and gnarled and the branches extend in such a way that you wait for it to open it’s Ent eyes and come to life. Although I sat near it for a while it stayed immobile so I left.

Just in case you plan to drop by let me tell you now – the Ashmolean is under renovation. This year it’s open about half strength, next year it will be closed altogether. While we’re at it the Bate Music museum is also closed this year and Pitt Rivers closed about three days before I arrived in Oxford. (Quite a shame really because it came highly recommended.)

The part of the Ashmolean that is open and on display includes two galleries of paintings which chronicle the development of the art to modern times. As I am no art critic these probably went under appreciated. There is a special display called the ‘Treasures of the Ashmolean’ which if I remember properly was just past the painters and drop clothes and across from the antique porringers, chamber pots and the like. The largest item in this display was a cape of sorts covered in little conch shells which once belonged to the father of Pocahontas. The smallest item would have to be one of an assortment of gems. The Egyptian rooms in the basement were still open. Part of a tomb or perhaps a low chapel-sized temple, the requisite mummy, a sphinx, some stone tablets and another roomful of artifacts and a roomful of scarabs. The scarab display was quite impressive. Mounted much like a beetle display each little stone corresponded with its number or description handwritten long ago in neat, thin lines. The paper was beginning to wrinkle and the ink had faded to a sepia brown and there were all these lines and lines of itty-bitty beetles as if they had been arranged by some fantastic Victorian collector. The shameful thing is that the whole thing will probably be dismantled when the ‘renovation’ hits that part of the museum – it is quite marvelous the way it is. I doubt it can be improved upon by transferring everything out of the old wooden cases or giving it a vertical mount.

Then it was back to Merton and off to Windsor. Let me just add here that an afternoon is far too short a time to properly explore the place – oh, yeah and it starts shutting down about 4 p.m. We didn’t leave Oxford until 2 p.m. so you can guess that we didn’t have much time.

One of our group wanted to see the famous doll house so once inside it was a sprint of a walk to the doll house entry. There is one benefit of arriving late in the afternoon: everyone else has given up and gone home. There was no line. The doll house itself is massive and apparently has working lights and toilets (although we did not try them).

The rest of the tour was quite incredible. My favorite was the old guard ‘lounge’ area with walls covered in weapons. Pistols, rifles, swords, jeweled swords locked in glass cabinets and you can look back from that room and see the display with the tiger’s head and stuff, looking forward is this massive hall where carved and painted bosses represent the shields of those families included in the Order of the Garter. In fact, much of the tour was stuff related to the Order of the Garter. The interesting thing about the ceiling is that some of the shields were blank – these members had failed in some respect and their crests removed. It was huge and quite incredible.

We were really rushing through, but we’d neglected to note that entry to St. George’s Chapel closes early – we weren’t due back at the bus for a while and had left some time and the end for the chapel and outdoors. Mistake. The minute we exited the building it started to pour buckets and we ran down the hill where we would spend the better part of half and hour waiting in the rain for the slowpokes. One of our professors was – throughout the trip – very punctual in a fashionably late sort of way. We could have left sooner or made a dash for some other shelter but for waiting for our rear guard. The girls hit the gift shop and then we all hung out under the exit gate and watched men wearing sunglasses pull through the gate in dark-tinted sedans while the guards paced around with machine guns. Thoroughly entertaining.

Kenilworth is truly an exceptional castle. Like most English castles it was ‘slighted’ or partially torn down after the civil war, but it holds a great deal of history. Much of the display focused on the Elizabethan era where the joint was owned by a would-be suitor. He built a very large and lavish set of rooms for Elizabeth to stay in and she, of course, came to visit. Apparently it was a big three-week party with fireworks going off into the night. When the queen got there she was even greeted by the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and rowed across the moat.

Funny thing that this guy’s wife died by falling down the stairs … hmmm. So the Kenilworth story goes that it was this and that Robert Dudley was a commoner that rather tainted him and how we ended up with the Virgin Queen. Other high points in the castle’s history include King John digging the fantastic moat. I never realized how big a ‘moat’ could be. This one stretched on forever. Of course you have to use your imagination because there’s no water in the moat and half the walls are gone. Oh, and it’s fixing to rain … run!

Back on the home front our fearless leader pops up after dinner dressed in white pyjamas and a little vest. There are bells on his ankles and a beer in his hand and he’s got a cheesehead on. Welcome to Morris dancing – best form of humiliation known to even the British. If you’ve never seen a bunch of grown men skipping around waving hankies at each other then you’ve never seen Morris dancing. If those same guys don’t break for a beer and then get back up and skip some more – stopping only to hit each other’s baseball bats … Of course the accordian player was standing under a great huge umbrella held by his wife or something. While all the other guys were skipping about, waving their hankies and clapping, Mike Breakell, our guide, is playing the fool or joker or whatever. He keeps popping up with different hats on: a cheesehead, a cow puppet, a chicken shaped tea cosy. Then he would pretend to not know the steps. Problem was they did have a guy who did not know the steps, but I heard he’d been doing this for a while and just can’t seem to get them down. It was just about the funniest thing ever.

The thing that shocked me the most about Oxford is that it really does not get rolling until about about 10 a.m. By that time everything is open, but you’ll still see the street sweepers making their rounds at 10:30.

Since all of our classes had been moved to the afternoon I spent a frustrating first day of exploring wondering if this city ever wakes up. The University Church or St. Mary the Virgin (whichever you feel like calling it) does open at 9 a.m. so I was able to scamper up there first thing. It’s a stunning view. I wandered around a bit, but couldn’t really make heads or tails of things. It’s just so odd when there isn’t anything open until say 9 or 9:30 or 10.

Of course I got lost in Blackwell’s. This is the gigantic bookstore next to the new Bodleian. It fills several stories of that building and then it has a huge poster/art shop and also a music shop of similar dimensions. It’s quite easy to lose yourself in there. Then it takes a while to find yourself again. If I remember properly I was on the third floor submerged in page 99 of the history of the AK 47. Too bad that wasn’t on the bar quiz.

Lunch. Class. Tea break for tea or coffee served with little cookie packets. After looking at nearly two hours of slides detailing what a hilltop looks like if there’s a ruined castle underneath the girls drew motte and bailey formations in the sugar. Then we took pictures. Then we went back to class and looked at pictures of rocks – lots of rocks.

Our evening program ended with a lecture on the history of Oxford. It’s quite fun to watch these ‘Oxford men’ speak. Several of them are these little white-haired British guys who look as if they’ve crawled out of some illustration for a children’s book. Fluffy little white beard and neat little pants. There are moments where I think these guys are frozen in time, but they’re just British.

So we trotted around all morning and in the afternoon they marched all 115 folks staying at Merton to Exeter and parked us in a warm room. Librarians who had certainly not seen the outside of a book for years were successively trotted out to tell us about themselves and their libraries. I’d love to tell you what they said, but I’m afraid I fell asleep – repeatedly. They all had nice quiet sing-songy little voices and chatted incessantly about where to find books and which ones we couldn’t have. Snooze.

It was day two and still no class, not that this disturbed us very much. Our tutor had something dreadful happen in his family and didn’t come. Apparently this all transpired in the week or two before we arrived so they’d redone the schedule and recruited a replacement. Thing was he already had a class so he’d teach in the morning for them and teach in the afternoon for us. But he’d scheduled field trips for his group and they didn’t want to overwork him so we had lots of odd little excursions or special guests or trips or whatnot and less class time than everyone else. This worked out just great for us, but on day two you do begin to wonder if you have a class or not.

After our library nap it was time to get all dolled up for dinner – another formal affair. Then off to the college pub for a bar quiz. Apparently this is some very English tradition where everyone pits his knowledge against his neighbor. I don’t know if all Brits delight in trivial knowledge about who recorded what where and when so-n-so died or what is on the eastern border of Slovenia, but you get the general idea. Now if they could only have been asking about word etymologies …

They don’t do fancy in a small way in Oxford. First up was a smoked salmon all wavy on the plate. The girls thought it was raw – I think it was smoked, probably some kind of lox. We’ve had duck served several different ways. I think we had lamb. They’ll serve these little pastry crusted things – perhaps they were squabs, with stuffing and a spinach layer all coated in phyllo.

I’m never really sure what I’m eating, but it’s well prepared and looks great. They don’t salt the potatoes here – I was surprised by that. Leeks seem to be a favorite side dish – just cooked leeks rather shredded up. Some kind of curly cabbage is another favorite side. One day we had a salad with some kind of white wine sauce on teeny little shrimp. Lots of salads with cucumber and cheese: shaved cucumbers with a lemon sauce, roasted tomatoes and mozzarella or maybe just the cucumbers and greens with some feta and nuts. It just amazes me the trouble they go to with the food.

But back to day one … So we finally get through this marvelous meal and they troop us outside and shoot a group photo and we were pretty much done for the day. I mean they fed us again, but you don’t really want me to talk about melty-roasts and steak and some kind of ‘ale pie’ which was really good. Or I could write miles on the strawberries and cream or the night we had little individual pots of dipping chocolate plus fruit and marshmallows. Fish – yes, they love fish here: salmon several different ways, some other fish I couldn’t identify and kippers for breakfast. Kippers are these salty little fishies they’ll serve up next to your eggs and ham – they’re a bit more of an acquired taste than say little chocolate mousse cakes edged with this chocolate sponge cake with a pattern combed through it, but kippers are nice too.

Apparently I like food. It was really good here. It’s one of the things that kept me from kicking myself for how much it cost to come. Now we did have our fair share of formal dinners where everyone gets dressed up and parades down to the dining hall. The high table guests come in and the grace is said and everybody sits there dressed like peacocks and chatting about how marvelously posh they are. (Which is pretty silly and more than a little pretentious.) But the food was really absolutely marvelous – in a restrained and very British kind of way. And (as our group kept telling me) when you walk this much it really doesn’t count.

Looking down at the street from my hostel the first morning I saw this beautiful carpet … of gum. The streets look like there was just an apple blossom festival then a strong wind. Gum, gum, everywhere gum. I assume it is from the million-zillion tourists who descend like a flock during the day and vanish when the stores close up. Every single one of them is wearing an Oxford sweatshirt that cost them upwards of £20 pounds and half of them have on matching backpacks so the group leaders can pick them out in a crowd. It can be utter mayhem on certain streets during certain parts of the day.

Oxford is an old city full of old buildings. It has a lot of history. MissouriSouthern goes way back having held some kind of joint study agreement here for 20 years. Berkley, which has a program running in conjunction with Southern’s program, has had a joint study agreement here for 40 years and some of the folks have been coming here every year.

It seems our program runs concurrent with the aristocracy of California, some of whom feel their blue blood quite strongly. This makes for some interesting cultural exchanges. I don’t think they’re quite sure what to make of us.

Mornings are free to explore. Oxfordis not a city of morning people however, as nothing opens before say 9 or 9:30. In fact the street sweepers are still doing their rounds at 10 a.m. and one morning I was surprised by a sidewalk sweeper (mini-version of the street sweeper). Everything shuts early too. Most stores are shuttered by 6 p.m. although there are two liquor/convenience stores and a grocery open ’till 11 p.m. or so. Even the pubs close at 11p.m. (much to the dismay of some of my fellow young people). The only thing open late around here is a gay bar called ‘Baby Love’ and the kebab vans. It really was a shocker to walk by a Starbucks at 8 p.m. and find it all buttoned up. Maybe the one around the corner was open. McDonalds – one of the few things to be open late – will have a queue out into the street. All the local teens hang out on Cornmarket street. They’re either on their way to the bar or just come out of one. Girls stagger by in shorter, fluffier versions of what we’d call a prom dress or maybe a mini-skirt and leggings. Guys slouch around in groups, leaning on the benches that are at anything but bench height (like about butt height).

Oxford seems to be divided by it’s linguistic categories. Folks just tend to socialize with the ones they can understand. Apparently parents all over Europe send their kids here to go to language school. This probably does not help the kiddos because they just run around speaking their native gibberish. Mostly it’s Spanish or maybe French, Italian, Japanese, you-name-it. I never hear English on the street, not without a heavy accent and it’s not Brit.

It rained every day the first week. The weather is unseasonably cold (or so they say). Sweaters are definitely not out of order. Umbrellas are the fashion accessory of the hour. If you have both of those and still want to look like a native then you need a bicycle – they are all the rage. If you’re out of the tourist district in the mornings the bicycles outnumber the cars and the cars are mostly delivery vans. I don’t think folks drive to work around here.