As mentioned earlier on, some Spanish acquaintances of ours invited me and a friend of mine to come and visit them in Oxford as we had a week off. Having been there already we knew exactly what was worth a visit, where to grab a bite and of course where to go out. An overwhelming city, free accommodation and that in only 1 hour and 51 minutes by High-speed rail.
Nevertheless we had already explored the place thoroughly, we had to deal with a great amount of bad luck during the very beginning of our little week off. Having left our hometown [Mol, BE ] at 7,57 local time, everything went pretty smooth, just chatting a bit about how this holiday would be the best one ever. We knew we had to change trains and platforms in a city called Herentals, but we arrived there a while before we expected to. Both panicking, we rapidly gathered all our belongings and ran for our next train, which left 4 minutes after we arrived. Making it right on time, my friend noticed he forgot his trolley ( containing my coat, his shoes and presents for the Spanish people we were going to ). At that very moment we saw our previous train taking off as our new one made a departing sound, so we got on board of the new one and we left for Brussels. At that point we were both sitting there quite confused. After half an hour of relativizing our loss we arrived at " Bruxelles-midi ", our final Belgian trainstation at that point. At about 10.59 English time our journey finally commenced for real as our High-speed rail left for London. In fewer than 2 hours we arrived at London St. Pancras, spared from all possible kinds of delays. At that moment we had about 40 minutes to take our "Megabus" to Oxford for as little as £1 ( single-trip ). After a 2 hour ride in a 150-seat bus with two, we were driven into that picturesque city called Oxford once again.
The Spanish people we were staying with rented a house just outside the city centre, in a small street just off Cowley road called St. Mary's street. Our house was nice, small and cosy. It was still quite empty as they just moved in. It was as if the 4 people in the house were actually living in digs, everybody had their own room and the kitchen and living room were used as a common room. Moreover, the street we were in seemed to be occupied by students only, which improved the friendly "neighbourhood-atmosphere".
The first day wasn't quite that fertile cause we were really at an end when we arrived over there at about 19.00 local time. After a good night of sleep we got up early to visit Christ church college as we had only visited the meadow and the surrounding buildings last time. Christ Church University is an overwhelming building that is still used to give University sessions in law for lawstudents at Oxford University. The most surprising and impressive thing about Christ Church college is the fact that a lot of scenes from the first two "Harry Potter" movies and the "Golden Compass" were filmed over there. Me and my friend had both seen the Harry Potter-series and The Golden Compass already, so it was fairly odd to actually walk onto the "filmset". Next to that, being the last persons visiting the building that day, we talked to the safety-guards for a while and they told us some secrets about the building: secret doors, shutters and things that happened in and around the building. We felt as if we were in a magical world full of secret entrances, hidden marks and striking narratives.
Going out the same evening, there was a guy who litteraly seemed to know every single girl in the whole club as he was talking to and dancing with every one of them. We wanted to know what this was all about so we took up our self-esteem and went to talk to him. He was really friendly and eloquent and told us that he just knew all of these girls well and so on. So we were like: " don't you have a girlfriend then ?" And he went like: " yeah dude, do you know her? " We were standing there, totally surprised by his response, after which we asked him: " We've been talking to you for about 10 minutes, how the hell could we know your girlfriend ". Whereas he responded, going like: " yeah, she's kind of famous mate, Emma Watson, Hermione, after which he threw us an asking look to see if we had like heard of her already, which we had of course.
I had the impression that he really loved telling us about his girlfriend and sort of loved bragging about her as well. Nevertheless his bragging, he honestly seemed really nice and friendly. We were quite curious about how it feels like to date a celebrity and stuff and he answered all our questions with great pleasure. When we left the club we asked him to join us to go to another local pub. I think he really felt like doing that but he decided not to, cause he had an important match the day afterwards. When we finally arrived back at our crib we wanted to know if he was really Emma Watson's boyfriend and not some kind of lonely hypocrite, so that's why we googled his first name: Tom ( that's all we actually knew ) together with "Emma Watson". The result was as expected, there were loads of articles about and pictures of Emma Watson and her boyfriend Tom Ducker, who seems to be a famous rugby player... Quite a Harry Potter coloured day that was!
Now the most striking thing of all is the fact that the day we arrived back home, [ Belgium ] I was flipping through the Newspaper and there was an article about this same Harry Potter-star, seeing razorlightsinger and ex-Kirsten Dunst boyfriend Johnny Borrell. I guess my mind really is too small to capture all this. Hollywood, it's a world apart. ( But then still, how do we know for sure, that the press ain't jumping to conclusions too rapidly ? )
O.K., I know that was quite a story, but seriously though, how could I not mention that? I should nevertheless mention that albeit that Tom Ducker being a "womanizer" and stuff, British girls are kind of different from other girls: more eloquent, less shy and very forthcoming. To give you a clear example about this I could say that when, in a club, a British girl likes you, she doesn't hesitate a single second to make an effort to seduce you. I can assure you that this is quite the surprise when you're not used to that.
Waking up the morning afterwards, that little devil called Murphy appeared once again. The house we were staying at, had these enormously annoying doors that locked themselves when they'd accidentally shut. So one morning, my friend went to go and take a shower when I ran after him to tell him he forgot his towel. At that point the door shut right behind me, with the key still being inside. The worst thing about this all was that I was standing there in a strange house, in my underwear ( as I was getting dressed ) without a key, without clothes. At that moment it was about 8.30 in the morning.
Spanish people, however, are honestly the best sleepers I ever saw. They go to sleep at about 22.00 and sleep till 14.30. Just imagine, us two sitting there for 6 hours, with nothing to do. We litterally tried everything. We tried to get in through our window, tried to get the door open with a little thin file,... But nothing worked. When those cinderella-sleepers got up, they took their time to take a shower, after which they called the landlord, who brought a sparekey at about 16.30. I can assure you, you don't have the smallest clue, which rubbish you go and talk about when you're locked up for 8 hours with nothing to do, I wish they had filmed that, hilarious! ( but nevertheless fairly frustrating )
As I mentioned earlier on in my little blog called " Oxford ", "South Park" is one of the most amazing public parks I ever saw. We went there a couple of times this time as well. It was about a 15 minute walk from our house, so that's quite o.k. . As usual at this time of year, the park was completely empty so we had it all to ourselves. We frisbeed for an hour or so, after which we started to write our very own world conquering song ( or at least that was our intention ). I brought my guitar so we sat down on a little bench in the very middle of the park with nothing but green and an amazing view on the city centre. The song is still in progress but if, one day, you'll hear a song called " Oxford city ", think about me for a while, will you.
There are still so many things that are and will always be left unsaid about our little trips to Oxford, but still I'd like to conclude by saying that it was, once again, an amazing week off. These journeys make you think about the most banal things, help you to cope with "failure" and let you enjoy everything beautiful in this world of ours. If you, yourself would decide to make your own trip to the U.K. one day, visit Oxford, you won't be sorry.
