London

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that  life can afford.
Samuel Johnson

Now I come to my last part of my travel. From Oxford I took a train to London. I have to say travelling by train in England was very pleasant. I think this was when I felt most independent. Especially when I arrived at London Paddington and had to find my way to the right tube. I love the tube. I don’t know why, really… it’s noisy, dirty, drafty… but still I was sitting on the train there and was just smiling to myself, thinking. I’m in London.

London makes me happy and again I can’t explain why. It’s just a feeling that I get … =) The hostel in London was quite amazing. It was a building from the Victorian area and the furniture and decoration really made you feel like you just travelled in time. On the other hand that’s about the only positive thing I can say about that hostel. There the bathrooms were on the hallway and it was a 6-bed room and people were really inconsiderate. But anyway. Back to the wonderful bliss that was London.

I started by going to King’s Cross. I planned to see the 9 3/4 platform but the whole thing was under construction and I simply walked down the one platform. It’s a huge hall under which all platforms are and just the size of it was quite breathtaking. But I didn’t stay long. Then I went to Covent Garden. I was hungry and I knew exactly where I was going to go. In the one hall where it’s more like on a jumble sale, right in the back on the left side there is a little snack bar. There I got a jacket potato. I had been looking forward to this simple thing the whole time. I think there is nothing on this whole world that tastes better than jacket potato. Then I sat outside Covent Garden on the stairs in the sun and ate. Covent Garden is a wondrous place =) Unfortunately the really beautiful things are expensive but the atmosphere alone is worth a visit. There was a Captain Jack Sparrow actor and even a small orchestra playing… it’s hard to explain… you need to experience it!

The rest of the day I spent at the National Portrait Gallery which was really cool. I saw a lot of paintings that I had already seen in class before. Astonishing when you really think you know a painting and then stand before it and actually see the layers of painting.

The rest of my little trip was uneventful. The next morning I left rather early, without breakfast and then had the best coffee of my whole life before I got on the bus to the airport. On the bus I was rather anxious that I would be too late as we were stuck in traffic for a bit but all went smooth.

Travelling alone was a gratifying experience. It was nice to be able to do just whatever I wanted without having to consider a companion. If I have learnt one thing this year, it is that, if you want to wait for the perfect time to do something or if you wait for someone to come with you, you will never do it. So just do it. I know now that I can do the things I want on my own.  And that I need to, as well.

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Well, I have a few more pictures to share

Christ Church College: the cloisters with a modern fountain and an olive tree of which you can see the tips of some branches on the right

the fountain

the amazing Harry Potter staircase – walking up those was incredible

one of the best pictures I shot, I think. view from the staircase into the Tom Quadrangle. See those gentlemen in black? They were watching, making sure everyone behaved. You weren’t allowed to cross the quadrangle for example, let alone step on the grass… they look very British I think

 

a window in the Cathedral; St. Katherine of Alexandria in the middle. I came across her in Book Studies before. She was a martyr in ancient Rome but is known for arguing in favour of Christianity with 50 philosophers who all converted to christianity because she argued so well. She is said to have been educated well and is patroness of female students and of the arts and see how she holds a book in her right and a quill in her left? ^^

Christ Church college was what you’d call a tourist attraction. There were a lot of people and they also charged the highest price of all the colleges though I don’t remember how much it was exactly. It was still worth it as the Cathedral is quite impressive. It might have been the biggest church I’ve been in. It feels like it. Of course also as a Harry Potter fan it’s a must-visit because of the staircase and also the hall which was the model for the great hall in the Potter films.

I do think they did a great job with the paper guide to the college. It told you exactly where to go and what was special about it. Much like a real guide.

After Christ Church I went to Merton college which couldn’t have been more different =) It was free frist of all, small and cute and almost completely deserted:

I think this has to be my favourite picture. I love all these arches.

When I was in the chapel at Merton there was someone singing. It was so beautiful and serene… One of my favourite moments but then the door made noise when it shut and the singing stopped and then an embarrassed looking woman showed up ^^ I smiled at her but she left.

all for now

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Yeah I know I’m lazy … but here I am and on it goes.

Oxford day 2. Maybe time to comment on the Hostel I stayed in in Oxford. I chose the one that belongs to the yha which was in the end a good decision. It was a bit more expensive than the other two would have been. One of those would have been just over a nightclub though and I don’t think I would have slept much at all Not that this one was a quiet place… no … there where at least two school classes staying there. One from Germany and one from the Netherlands and they were insanely noisy and running along the corridors … anyway =) We had a bathroom on our room there which was very nice. I don’t like it when I have to cross the hall to shower. The furniture and deco was all very simple but well, I just were there to sleep after all =) The breakfast was nice but the dining room was crowded with teenagers wearing more makeup than I ever owned in my life…

Well, I left the hostel early on that second day, around half past 8 :p I wanted to be at Bodleian Library as soon as they started selling tickets, which was at nine and I still needed to buy water. The library was amazing. I got my ticket from a very nice man and then, as the tour would only start at 10.30 I visited their exhibition on book binding. It was … breathtaking. I mean I studied all the theory about binding and about things like gilding and such and I have seen early printed books from the 17th century but they were nothing to those books they had there. All that splendour! Bindings with gold and ivory and gem stones, binding made of silk or even vellum (a kind of parchment), I didn’t even know you could actually do that! And they also talked about the purpose of bindings, how they could tell much about what kind of book it was, who it belonged to and if it was maybe just a copy to show off. It was so nice to read that familiar language of book studies. The Book as a physical object… my professor’s favourite phrase =) at times I thought she could have written the comments =) (she didn’t … but she also was in Oxford during the break, was it vacation or work…? I don’t know)

The tour of the library was great as well. It’s good to know that I can follow a tour guide speaking in English that well. I don’t think she knew I wasn’t a native speaker. The others were I think. Also I was by far the youngest  participant ^^

this is the Divinity school, maybe the most amazing room I have ever set foot in. The ceiling alone… so pretty =) It was used as a setting for the Hospital Wing scenes in the first Harry Potter movie, do you recognise it? =) What was also such a pretty room was of course Duke Humphrey’s library but I can’t show you a picture of it as we weren’t allowed it shoot photos. It is a place of study after all. It’s history is interesting… The room was built over the Divinity School when Duke Humphrey who was the Henry V’s brother gave his private library to the university in the 15th century.  Those were more than 281 manuscripts. Most of the books though were confiscated in 1550 during the English reformation when all traces of Roman Catholicism were to be moved from the English Church. Some books got burnt, some were sold. The tour guide said that only eight books of that original collection were known to have survived. Another little anecdote she told us was that during later centuries it happened again and again that books got lost when students took them home and never returned them. The library decided at some point to take measures against that and started to bind the books to the shelves with chains and to forbid the taking of books out of the rooms. And it also made their readers sign a kind of oath making them swear that they’d never remove books from their place. Until today, when you want to become a reader of Bodleian Library you have to sign that oath =)

After the tour at the Library I went to Blackwell bookshop which was very interesting. Waterstone’s in London is bigger I think but this one was far more charming.  It had three stories and the upper one had steep ceilings and in general it was rather narrow and felt… cosy and old. What was really surprising though was their basement room. It was huge. 10.000 square meters! Full of books of every kind of subject imaginable. I walked past all the subjects that interest me, Philosophy, Religion, Sociology, History Really amazing, google Norrington Room and be amazed

After Blackwell I visited another small college: Balliol and then I started searching Alice’s Shop of which I had read in my travel guide. I walked past it first as it’s so small and inconspicuous ^^ It was a really small, charming shop and only sold items connected to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I thought very long about what I would take, they had such great stuff. I got a bookmark and a small bag with characters printed on it in which I now keep my small knitting projects.

Then I turned across the road where Christ Church College is but more of that later …

war memorial garden and Christ Church in the background

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Hi again!

I’m back in Germany since two weeks actually and have spent a week only relaxing and now classes have started again. Everything is still rather quiet with not much workload so I can put all my England experiences into an organized tale Luckily I took the journal writing very seriously.

Well, I left home really early in the morning on Tuesday 22nd September as my flight was scheduled for 6.30 and the car ride to the airport takes an hour. It was an exhausting day … but everything went rather smooth. We had a very small plane that wasn’t even full. It was a tiny bit scary as it was a propeller driven airplane and made a hell of a noise! Luckily the flight only takes an hour =) and it also was a smooth flight and I don’t much mind flying What was really fascinating was that 6.30 in Germany was pitch-black night and 6.30 in England was morning sunshine. I guess that happens when you try to put something like time into standards.

Also fascinating was to witness dawn from up above. To see colour creeping up into everything. Slowly everything turns from shades of grey to colours. It was beautiful.

The journey from Stansted to Oxford was the longest it terms of time. I took a coach (it was the less expensive alternative) and it was a three hour ride. But the coach was comfortable and it had air conditioning and the driver was sweet. It was my first time on a british street, driving, not crossing it it was weird ^^

From this first day I don’t have any pictures as I had left the batteries for my camera at the hostel. I started with St. Mary the Virgin – the University Church. A very pretty church. And I walked around it a bit – I like walking through churches as I kind of still like the atmosphere and the architecture. Then I climbed the tower and had an amazing view over the city. The viewing platform was just above the clock that you can see on this picture and you could walk around the whole tower.

Then I visited New College which actually was my favourite college and I wish I could show you pictures  that I made myself… The cloisters (every college had its own chapel and cloisters as Oxford University has always held close ties to the church and in medieval times you coud only study Theology, Law or Medicine there and you had to take minor church oaths), anyway, the cloisters were very small and in a simple way very, very beautiful. Also they filmed scenes for the fourth Harry Potter film there.

I spend the rest of the afternoon hunting for something to eat (I ended up at McDonald’s :p), got something to eat and drink from a supermarket and then called it a day. I was exhausted

Wat struck me at this first day was that you always have a picture in mind of a place you want to visit. And from my travel guide book I kind of had the picture of a quiet, medieval city in mind. Of course Oxford is a normal mid-size modern town with shopping centres, clothes stores and McDonald’s. And it was packed that first day and I wasn’t really prepared for that. In a way though it is a bit like Münster … You walk into a side street of horribly noisy High Street and then into a college and there it is, the Oxford I expected. And Münster has these green, peaceful corners as well.

Well, more during the next days