Oxford

After a quick few days in York, I took a long bus trip down to Oxford. 

Oxford is home to the illustrious Oxford University and its many colleges.  These colleges are essentially dorms in the American sense, but with a greater level of personal identification.  It is said that this style of house allegiance with shared classes across the colleges was the inspiration for the houses of Hogwarts.  It is then unsurprising that numerous scenes from the Harry Potter movies were filmed in various university buildings.

After checking into the hostel, I teamed up with a friend in my room for the evening.  Maxim, a frenchman, was taking a solo motorcycle tour through the UK and had many great pictures to share.  Maxim and I went on a walk through the town center on our way to meet up with Andres, a Spanish friend I’d made on the bus trip.  We had some real ales and enjoyed some cover tunes as the evening moved into night.  We then said goodbye to Andres and his friends before turning in for the evening.

The next day, I went for a guided tour of some of Oxford’s historic buildings.

The first section took us into two of the colleges.  These were quite fancy and incredibly old.  Like many ancient buildings that are still in use, they have seen tremendous renovations over the years.  Many of these were done about 200 years ago.  Interestingly enough, no buildings in Oxford were destroyed during the blitzes of World War II.  It is believed that Hitler wanted to make Oxford his new capital (due to its historic importance and tremendous education system) upon conquering England.  Perhaps because of this, much of the invasion of Normandy was planned from Oxford.  

The next section of the tour was largely about the Bodleian libraries, which are some of the worlds most prestigious.  These include a wide variety of original texts dating back hundreds or even thousands of years.  Our tour guide mentioned that he had tried to attain permission to examine a first edition copy of Gray’s Anatomy but found the process not to be worth the effort.  We were also taken into one particularly beautiful room that was used as two different locations during the course of the Harry Potter films (one was the infirmary, the other was a defense against the dark arts classroom).

The final section of the tour took us past a few more important buildings, including an extremely old church.  The most interesting story we heard was that of the infamous Bullingdon Club, one of Oxford’s secret societies of the extremely rich.  The Club is known for their rambunctious and often abusive behavior of the local town.  On one night, the club went into a pub and set about destroying as much of the pub as possible, from glasses to chairs to one of the sinks in the bathroom (damages came out to over 5k pound).  They rectified the situation by dropping 10k pounds cash on the bar and leaving.  Notable former members include multiple kings, Boris Johnson (known for his role in Brexit) and former prime minister David Cameron.

After a lunch break and some reading in the park, I took a trip to Oxford’s Natural History Museum.  The museum had an excellent selection of dinosaur fossils, as well as a wide variety of stuffed animals (including the extinct Dodo bird).  I always appreciate when a museum can create something that is full of information and science, but that it still enjoyable for kids.

That night I went out for drinks with a couchsurfer friend and met some locals at the bar.  Overall, a solid day.

Next stop, London.