Paris (I)

Alright kids, here’s part one of my extra long post about Paris!  I know I still haven’t put up the second part of my Amsterdam trip, but I felt like writing this one so bear with me.  

I guess learning to get a feel for cities is a part of travelling.  So is sheer exhaustion.  Paris was Paris and different than I imagined: seedier, older, and bigger.  Whereas Amsterdam felt almost quaint, despite the coffee shops and prostitutes, I never got over the foreignness of Paris, the sheer European feel of the boulevards and brasseries.  I was struck by the combination of old and new, evidenced everywhere from small rues of cramped buildings covered with street art to the Louvre, the formidable wings encircling I.M. Pei’s glass pyramids.  I don’t think I could give my overall impression of Paris even if I was forced to: I’m still left confused by my extended weekend in the city of baguettes and espresso.

Attempting to save money for future travels, I booked a round trip fare onboard Megabus: a nine-hour bus ride including a trip on a ferry to cross the Channel.  I had to wake up at five in the morning (never again) to catch my train from Oxford to London, a journey that I don’t remember much because I was asleep for most of it.  The bus ride passed in a haze of naps and light reading, the ferry itself a commercial monstrosity offering everything from cheap double shots to slot machines and country music.  It was possible for a while to forget that you were on board a ship, that is until you decided to walk around and realized that the floor was swaying just a bit too much.  We arrived in Calais and drove to Paris under cover of dark: rain and night obscuring most of the French countryside.  On my way back to Calais at the end of my trip I was able to see bucolic farmlands and sweeping hills surrounded by small French villages. 

My arrival in Paris was remarkably anti-climactic; my bus cruised by the Arc de Triomphe before I could even register it.  We were an hour and a half later than the expected arrival time and the bus pulled into a different station than listed.  My friend Jess, who acted as my tour guide, hostess, and chef for the weekend, had a bit of difficulty finding me, but we eventually connected at a nearby shopping mall and hopped aboard the Metro to get to her neighbourhood in the first arrondissement.  For those unfamiliar with the structure of Paris, the city is comprised of numberous districts, called arroindissements, that start in the very heart of the city (the first, near all the tourist attractions) and wend their way outwards to the grimier outskirts of the city. 

Jess’s apartment, located in Châtelet, was at the top of an apartment building built sometime in the nineteenth century.  We had to hike up six flights of rickety stairs to a one-room apartment that consisted of a pullout bed, a table, a mini-fridge, a stove, sink, and a shower in the corner.  The toilet was half a flight of stairs down.  The view was spectacular: Parisian rooftops, chimneys, and the spire of a church rising above it all in the not too distant distance.  Sensory memories from this weekend include the smell of frites frying, cold air and siren wails coming through the window, and the simple warmth of a white duvet.

          

 –View from the apartment

Over my three full days in the city, I did many of the typical tourist attractions.  I walked along the Champs-Élysées, dutifully impressed, awed, and frankly bored with the wealth and overpriced merchandise on sale.  We wandered into Coach, minimalist shelves of bags stretching to the vaulted ceiling while carbon-copy salespeople scurried around glamorous individuals surveying the latest haute couture eyewear and shoes.  The Arc de Triomphe, located at the top of the Champs-Élysées was reached by an underground tunnel: the French flag billowed proudly at its centre.  A tasteful fire ringed by wreaths commemorated Veterans Day.  The Eiffel Tower was as imposing and ugly as I figured, the wrought iron designs stunning to behold however.  The cost and wait time was a bit too prohibitive for me to ascend to the top, but I figured a quick jaunt around the Tower and the nearby park was necessary.  Two rows of bear statues, one for each country in the world, stretched away from the national landmark, some type of art installation that Jess and I never ascertained the meaning of.  Each bear was painted in gaudy colours and designs indicative of its country, and they all seemed to be saluting a great ursine overlord.

–Stereotypically touristy shot.

–Arc de Triomphe

The Louvre was everything I expected and more.  I was particularly awed by the sheer size and grandeur of the building, each room distinct from the one that came before it. Modern atriums of marble gave way to cramped wood-panelled rooms that in turn became long halls hung with panoramic paintings.  I usually get bored in museums: my feet hurt, my attention wanders, and the crowds of people make me annoyed and anxious.  I was certainly ready to physically assault my fair share of tourists (see how I carefully exclude myself from that moniker?) but I was too overcome by the sheer majesty of the art contained within the Louvre to be distracted by people milling about.  I saw the Mona Lisa just so I could say I did, and it was as disappointingly small and unremarkable as everyone told me it would be.  The Egyptian wing was cavernous and dense, open coffins lined up next to artefacts from antiquity.  I got lost for a while and spent about twenty minutes walking the same polished floors, wandering by the same bust of Ramses II more times than I care to admit. 

I saw Manet and Monet, Delacroix and David, sculptures and replicated bedrooms.  There was a special exhibition of Raphael’s work from later years that I wandered through, and was slightly reprimanded by a composed Frenchwoman for taking photographs.  I feel impotent attempting to describe the museum simply because of how unique and simultaneously typical it was: I had seen all these paintings before in better resolution online, with the added benefit of being able to observe them by myself with no pants on in my bedroom.  The experience was more than worth it, and I am incredibly glad I went, but the more museums I visit the more I realize how much of their worth now is from the information they impart and the atmosphere they provide rather than a simple exhibition of their treasures.  There is nothing compared to seeing the fat brushstrokes of Van Gogh on the original canvas, or the chiselled marble abs of some Adonis or another, but the time of shock and awe at the mere sight of great artwork has mostly passed.

–View from the cruise ship on the way back to England

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I talk about Parisians, French food, and Notre Dame!

Amsterdam (Part 1)

Don’t wanna flood you guys with too much info, plus I’m feeling kinda lazy, so here’s part one of my two part post about Amsterdam!

The first frites vendor I went to in Amsterdam was called “Manneken Pis” which my friends and I affectionately dubbed “Mannequin Piss” because we are American and we can.  Frites are French fries on steroids: crispier, a heartier potato presence, and warmer.  They are served in a paper cone with “fritssause” on them, a mayonnaise based sauce that puts ketchup to shame.  And this coming from the guy who will put ketchup on everything.  Five of us shared a large on the street, watching the tourists wander around Amsterdam Centraal, the terminus of the city where the train station can be found.

 

 

Amsterdam was my first time traveling outside of the UK and, thankfully, I had friends with me.  I never felt in danger in Amsterdam, but I was constantly aware of my American status and my general unfamiliarity with the culture, the language, and the people.  All this in a city where virtually every citizen speaks English: I didn’t even attempt to make an effort at Dutch the entire weekend.  Saying Amsterdam is indicative of the Netherlands is like saying NYC is indicative of America; it’s semi-accurate in a broad sense, but collapses in detail.  Perhaps this weekend more than any other time abroad made me appreciate my status as an American, and the inherent privilege that entails.  One little blue book allows me unfettered access to almost any country in the world.

 

The city of Amsterdam can best be understood geographically as a series of semi-circles.  The first is Amsterdam Centraal, where all the main tourist attractions are in addition to the train station.  Radiating outward from this are residential areas, then parks, then industrial.  If you are only visiting the city for a few days like I was, you are limited to the main section, which isn’t really a problem as there is plenty to do here.  We approached travelling around Amsterdam on our own terms: we weren’t interested in feeling pressured to do anything and, actually, we didn’t do much.  Which doesn’t make sense because I feel like every minute I spent there was worthwhile.  I definitely got a feel for the city and enjoyed myself precisely because I didn’t feel pressured to hit up every museum and tourist trap.  We did a lot of walking, wandering, and exploring: sounds like travelling to me.

 

It’s impossible to understand Amsterdam without realizing their main industry: tourism.  The city, especially the parts I was in, was mostly comprised of tourists walking around, an odd juxtaposition to the Dutch signs everywhere.  The main industries are, you guessed it, weed and prostitution. 

 

More upcoming in Part 2! Here are some more pictures to tide you over, including wonderful Dutch architecture.

This weekend was a blur, and not even of the alcoholic variety.  I’ve been fighting a cold since I got to Oxford, the usual mix of coughing and snuffling, and it flared up this weekend – I was stretched out on my couch struggling to read a Victorian detective novel while also trying not to hack up a lung.  Thankfully, due to the fact that I didn’t leave my apartment for a couple of days, I am now feeling much better!  I still sound mildly unhealthy, but I am now capable of doing normal people things again, such as update my woefully neglected study abroad blog.

Last weekend I went to Blenheim Palace, built in the early eighteenth century for John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough.  The baroque castle was a gift to the Duke from Queen Anne to show her gratitude for the Duke triumphing at the Battle of Blenheim.  The castle itself is massive, but the grounds are even more impressive.  The estate boasts a pleasure garden, a hedge maze, multiple parks, a pond, rivers, a large monument, and the castle itself.  You have to walk up a half mile long driveway to even get to the entrance gate which leads to an inner courtyard from which you can see most of the estate.  

The interior of the castle is stuffy to say the least.  It smells like your grandma’s attic and looks about as dark.  One of Blenheim’s claims to fame is that it was the birth place and childhood haunt of Winston Churchill. They have a little exhibition set up in a few of the rooms that is actually quite nice, complete with Churchill memorabilia and photographs of the time he spent in the palace.  The number of rooms in the palace that are open to tourists is actually limited, mostly because the current family still lives in the palace.  Alas, I did not see any of them when I was wandering about.

The rooms are about what you would expect: lots of heavy drapery, huge and glowering portraits of dead people, and a ton of random crap strewn about.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen more china plates.  The library is amazing: floor to ceiling bookshelves in a cavernous space with a statue of Queen Anne at one end and an organ at the other.  This was probably my favorite part of the castle (for obvious reasons) and I only had to battle my way through three or four tourist groups to get to it!  Think of how much better sight seeing would be if you didn’t have to deal with other people.

The palace grounds are where it’s at, however.  I wish I could have stayed longer just to wander around them a bit more.  The gardens immediately outside the castle are filled with fountains, topiary, and strange mythological statues.  Tons of gravel paths leading down to the pond as well.  The front of the palace boasts a large swath of grass that stretches almost to the horizon, complete with pheasants and rabbits running around.  There are copses of trees and a small train which takes you to the pleasure gardens. I, unfortunately, was not able to see this area of the palace as I was pressed for time.  

The outskirts of the estate contains a large monument to something or other in addition to multiple other areas to hang out and picnic. The castle was a fun day trip, and I am hoping to back soon, if only to chill outside and feed the ducks.  

Tutorial

The education system at Oxford is a bit unique to say the least.  It doesn’t make much sense to someone who is used to the way American universities structure degrees, but once you’re here everything comes into focus and it seems like the most natural way of learning.  Essentially, as a visiting student, I am assigned two tutorials.  A tutorial is a one on one meeting with a professor (though, over here, you only call people who have endowed chairs in their departments professors, otherwise they’re referred to as tutors) in which you and he/she discuss the week’s reading and your paper.  Tutors handle tutorials different ways, and I’ll explain that in a bit.  I have a primary tutorial and a secondary tutorial: my primary meets once a week every week, and my secondary meets once every other week.  Each tutorial is for one hour.  These are the only things that I’m “required” to go to.

So, what do I/other students at Oxford do with the rest of our time?  Well, it depends on how motivated you are/what you want to get out of university.  During the week, each faculty (what we call departments in the states) presents lectures on a wide range of topics: for English, these lectures cover everything from Spenser and Milton to Faulkner and Woolf.  You can attend any of these lectures at any time. They convene on a weekly basis, and all you have to do is walk in, sit down, and listen.  There is virtually no audience participation and no attendance taken.  If you don’t want to go to a lecture one week, you don’t have to.  The onus is entirely on the student.  

The rest of a student’s week should be spent reading, writing, thinking, and pubbing.  Tutors will often give a reading list, complete with primary texts (what are absolutely required reading), suggested secondary (what you really should read, these are usually criticism/theory) and recommended (what you should read if you have the time.)  You can tackle most of this reading in any order, but tutors will often assign particular texts on particular weeks to guide discussion.

So, to put this in more concrete terms, my primary tutorial is Writing Empire, which uses Victorian literature to examine issues of British imperialism/colonialism with special attention paid to gender, and my secondary tutorial is The Rise of the Novel which explores how the novel came to be the dominant form of literature.  I have both my tutorials on Fridays: one from 3-4, the other from 4:30-5:30.  Though this may sound like a bummer, I actually like it: it allows me to have all week to do my work and then relax on the weekend.  Also, as I mentioned previously, I will only have one tutorial every other week, so this week I only have my primary.  

I was nervous about my tutorials to be honest.  I’d met with both my tutors before hand, so I knew what they were like, and I thought they were nice and good instructors, but I wasn’t sure how they would like my writing.  I wrote one of my papers on how Jane Eyre embodied a certain trait similar to that of Queen Victoria which allowed her to remain independent and become her own person.  This trait is termed “emmanlinacy” and I argued that both Rochester and St. John Rivers (the two male love interests in the novel) attempted to “colonize” Jane as she was the female “other.”  My other essay was mildly meta and examined how Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders was really a dual narrative text because Defoe was both attempting to tell a story through the persona of Moll and provide a critique of her life through his own words.  Therefore, the character of Moll really just became a mouthpiece for Defoe.

Both my tutors enjoyed my essays and thought they were promising.  They liked my writing style (one of my tutors called it “beautiful), which really made me happy as I was worried it would be a bit too American for their tastes.  I got an A- on one of the essays (Oxford uses a strange grading system, so I technically got a 67, which translates into an A-.  70 and higher is an A/first class marks.  It doesn’t make any sense and no one understands it, much like most of Oxford, but everyone just goes along with it) and though the other essay was not graded, the tutor’s comments were positive and instructive.

As I said earlier, different tutors approach tutorials differently.  Duh.  So, my first tutor started the session by asking me about the book and we spent a few minutes discussing some of the shortcomings of the narrative.  He then segued into reading my essay out loud which, though mildly nerve wracking at first, I eventually enjoyed because it was cool to hear my words come from someone else.  He handled the situation very well and when we stopped to discuss something in my essay, he was very kind but was not afraid to ask me to clarify.  My tutor did most of the talking in this tutorial.

My other tutor took a more direct approach: I was required to email the essay to her the day before, so she had already read it and marked it up.  I had attended a lecture earlier in the week about Victorian narrative (it basically explored beginnings and endings, what those mean for the text) and she mentioned an artIcle I thought would be interesting.  Turns out this article leant itself extremely well to my essay and since my tutor had not read it, she was really pleased with my scholarship and told her other first year students about it.  We talked briefly about the differences between myself as an American third year student and the British first years – essentially, I have far more writing/research skills than them, mostly because I’ve been doing this sort of thing for two years now.  The Brits, however, usually have more British primary texts under their belts because of the way British schools are structured.  My tutor was very impressed with my use of secondary sources, and we spent most of the tutorial discussing specific points I brought up in my essay.  She was more on the offensive and had me do most of the talking, which was a little intimidating at first because I was being asked to explain my reasoning and thinking processes, which was a bit difficult since even I usually don’t understand how I arrived at where I did half the time.  However, I was able to adapt and performed fairly well.  We had good discussions, and she made me realize themes in the text that I hadn’t even seen.

Once I was done with tutorials for the day I understood why everyone raves about them.  They truly are one of the best learning experiences I’ve yet had in my undergraduate career, and I’m very much looking forward to them in the future.  They allow you to discuss your ideas and writing with a specialist in the field, and the one on one nature of them allows for unparalleled levels of attention paid to you as a student and scholar.  Tutors, at least mine, seem very interested in helping you succeed.  For people who go to office hours in the states, tutorials are similar to that, except you are expected to be on your game and you don’t have to worry about other students taking your time away from the professor.

My goal in this blog post was to explain a bit about the education system here, and what my experiences have been with it so far.  I realize it probably sounds bizarre, but it’s one of those things where you have to be here to understand why it works.  I hope this post wasn’t too didactic and, if it was, no worries – my next post will be about travel, specifically the trip I took to a castle yesterday!  How’s that for a cliff hanger?

By the way, if you’re friends with me on facebook, I posted an album full of pictures from around Oxford.  Look through it if you haven’t already, and try to ignore the poor photography skills!

What They Don’t Tell You

These are the most important things, so listen and listen well.  

• There’s a strange solitude and quiet and calm in walking through a park in fifty degree weather at twilight.
• Drinking tea all day and reading literature can be productive.
• It’s okay to speak to very few people and conserve your words.  They’re more precious than we think and people forget the meaning of speech easily.
• Don’t be afraid to talk to someone who looks intimidating.  Most likely they’re just as self-conscious as you are.
• Open your eyes.  This one is so important.  Look around wherever you go, there’s beauty to be had in everything.
• Talk to old women in parks.  They’ll tell you about their lives and make you appreciate your youth.
• Befriend those you buy food from.  Smile and say thank you and ask them how their day is.  Relate to them on a personal level, they probably have stories to share.
• Always say yes when someone asks if you want to try a new type of food/drink.  You don’t know what you like until you try it.
• Try your hardest to stay in contact with people from home.  The urge to distance yourself can be totalizing; remember to keep those connections you left behind strong.
• Don’t worry about the small stuff.  Chances are no one else is.
• See as much as you can and don’t worry about the cost.  That’s what credit cards are for.
• Try and save your money.  Coffee and cookies add up easily.  Make every pound count.
• Take a break from studying to appreciate your surroundings, especially if you find yourself too tired to read.
• Update your study abroad blog as much as possible, if only so people don’t forget about you.

A Week, Gone

And I’m already surprisingly used to walking across marble floors and climbing stone staircases to cold libraries, rain coming down outside.  I’ve been reading Jane Eyre this week and I think it’s the perfect book to use to get acclimated to Oxford.  I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Radcliffe Camera, a large, circular tower that rises from the middle of Oxford, its rounded top jutting into the skyline.  Its prominence hints at its importance: it constitutes a part of the Bodleian Libraries, the main library of the University of Oxford.  The library is non-circulating, meaning you cannot remove books from its walls, and by British law it is also supposed to have a copy of every book published in the UK.  At an orientation earlier in the week, they told us that they have a storage facility in Swindon (about thirty miles north of Oxford) where they keep all older books.  They showed us a picture: a sterile room with harsh lighting and floor to ceiling metal shelving.  I thought of the final scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, when the government hides away the Ark of the Covenant alongside hundreds of other treasures.

The Gladstone Link connects the Radcliffe Camera with the Bodleian’s main building, a sprawling and nonsensical collection of reading rooms.  I’m sitting in one now, portraits of dead people looking down at the endless wooden study carrels.  Mine is U199 and I’m wondering if anyone famous ever sat here, if love poems or political treatises were ever penned on the same surface that I’m typing on.  I also have access to my college’s library, a drafty but beautiful stone room, complete with curved arches and high ceilings, as well as the English faculty library, which I have not yet visited.  I don’t think I will want for different places to read in while I’m here.

Mansfield had a welcome dinner for freshers and visiting students on Wednesday night.  I had to walk a half hour in the rain in nice pants and a tie, worrying if I would be over/under dressed.  We took pre-drinks in the foyer, champagne and stilted conversation with officials.  Dinner was served promptly at 7, and we walked the short distance to the chapel en masse, the gravel crunching under loafers and high heels.  We had been assigned tables, complete with name placards.  At the end of the evening I took mine, as gauche as it may seem – I wanted a permanent reminder of that evening, candles illuminating the chapel that isn’t a church (true to Mansfield’s non-conformist leanings, the ground on which the chapel was built was never consecrated, allowing us to do things like drink and dance inside it.)  I spent the evening talking with a fellow English major next to me, and I told her about this blog and I hope she’s reading it.  She mentioned that she was from Maine and I remembered New England autumn.  There was soup and chicken and wine and dessert.  The head of Mansfield, Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is a famous human right’s lawyer, as well as a member of the House of Lords and a part of the Man Booker Prize committee, gave a speech that made me unaccountably emotional.

I signed up for everything from The Cherwell (student newspaper) to the pistol club at the activity’s fair yesterday.  Oxford has so many students that each college was assigned a specific time when they would be allowed to enter the Examination Building, a large and imposing front on High Street.  Within this building is where culminating exams are administered to students; one must show up at these tests in full academic dress, including a mortar board and gown.  We threaded our way through rooms designed for rows of desks and hunched over students, instead populated by raucous rugby players and human advocacy groups.  

I need to stop spending money, but that is a bit difficult when it’s as easy as walking a few minutes to have a pint in the same building that C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkein, or Oscar Wilde frequented.

Oriented

My legs are sore and I have a giant blood blister on the heel of my right foot.  I’ve met at least three Catherines, have asked “what are you studying” in the same fake-enthusiastic inflection more times than I care to admit, and have mentally matched the wrong faces to the correct names.  It’s getting harder to find blasé conversation topics to repeat over cheap cocktails in crowded rooms. It’s only the second day of orientation and I’m tired.

Tired but happy.  Because I’ve already learned a lot about myself being abroad.  Everyone says this is a growing experience and I think I”m beginning to understand why.  Being at Oxford is fundamentally different than being at Dickinson because here, for the moment at least, I am not surrounded by a close group of friends and confidants.  Sure I have people I regularly hang out with: my two flatmates and I get along great and we’ve already met most of the other American abroad students, some who come from places like Brown, others from small colleges in Minnesota.  I’m startled by how different we all are while simultaneously sharing a curious characteristic: this “been there done that” look on our faces.

We had a meeting in Mansfield’s Chapel last night, a typically ornate building that dwarfs (both in size and grandeur) any church I’ve ever seen in the states.  We all crowded in, gazing around wide eyed.  You could almost see our bushy tails wagging.  The floor echoed as we walked across it and the stained glass windows let in the last of the twilight.  I settled down with my flatmates and listened to the JCR Bench (essentially the equivalent of a student council in the states, but with more beer) mumble their way through introductions.  Between the poor acoustics, the hushed chatter around me, and my own difficulty in comprehending English accents, I understood approximately 20% of what was being said.  However, I did hear one important sentence: “this will be the best week of your college life.”

I understand this sentiment, I do, especially as most of the people this lecture was aimed toward are freshers (first year college students) who have not yet been away from home.  My group, the American students (called JYA’s – junior year abroad), have done this all before: we’ve been successfully “oriented” at our American institutions and now we have to deal with a similar version of it here.  To be sure, we have learned some useful information about living in the UK and acclimating to the often baroque climate here.  But I often find my eyes glazing over when they begin to talk about the clubbing or the parties, because I am not a first year student.  I want something different from my abroad experience.

I have a feeling that once orientation week finishes, and we have to get back to the grind of work and organizations, everything will settle down and I can meet more people with similar interests.  Until then, I am going to continue wandering around Oxford, enjoying the smell of autumn and the feel of the wind.  I have different people I can talk to, and enough books to keep me busy.  For now, I am content with this.  I am beginning to feel more adult and more responsible.  It’s a good feeling.

Saint Michael’s Mount

I’m settled into my room in Oxford, unpacked and unwound.  I wandered around town a bit today, rode my bike through cobblestone alleys and walked past a couple of wrought iron gates taller than Jack’s beanstalk.  I bought a pasty and a coke and ate slowly on a bench, smiled at an old woman with a cute dog and received nothing in return.  I saw a man playing the saxophone and thought about giving him a pound coin and then didn’t.  I wish I had now.  I bought a raincoat yesterday and a five inch tall statue of an owl in Bath.  

Internet cafés are great places to listen to foreign tongues.

I went to St. Michael’s Mount on Wednesday.  The monastery turned castle was built sometime in the 1200’s.  It was used as a military encampment for a while before being bought by a Colonel in the 1600’s.  It’s been in the same family ever since.  It’s located off the coast of Cornwall, in a small town called Marazion which I misread as marzipan about a million times.  You get to the island castle by walking across a causeway, which is covered by the tide during most of the day.  Boats captained by older seaman and younger Cornish men ferry tourists across all day for two pounds a person.  The local pub, called the The Godolphin Arms and named after the wife of the Colonel who bought the mount (and also, coincidentally, the name of one of the handful of horses first brought to England through which all English horses are now descended) has window seats that look out upon the castle and upon the tide, which comes closer to the mainland every minute.  Well, before it recedes that is. 

There tide is cyclic, just like St. Michael’s Mount, perching on top of a craggy hill like it does.  You buy tickets in small village at the base of the mountain, where the wind threatens to push you off the quay and into the cold Cornish water.  The walk up to the castle is tiring and dangerous: the path, called Peasant’s Way, is made of small chunks of rock and other debris.  Wear sneakers and bring a raincoat, good advice for most of the country.  About halfway up the hill lies a small shrine with a heart shaped rock overshadowed by taller stones: this is Giant’s Heart, and local legend tells that Jack killed his giant on this island.  I didn’t see any abnormally large footprints in the surrounding gardens, perfectly maintained and only open to visitors on Thursdays.

The St. Aubyn family (“filthy rich” according to the captain of the boat who took me back to the mainland) has owned the castle since their ancestor, the Colonel, bought it, and the husband and wife of the family still live there today with a serving staff of three or four.  Their children, two girls and two boys, have gone off.  Their quarters are located in a wing built in the 1800’s; access to this area is not allowed, though the rest of the castle is open as part of the tour.  The summit of the hill, before you go into the castle proper, is surrounded by balustrades and canons.  You can see the entire coastline and what seems to be most of the ocean from here.

Famous visitors to the Mount include: Queen Victoria, (who said that the housekeeper was a “nice, elderly lady”) Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, and Queen Elizabeth II.  

The castle itself is everything a castle should be, complete with drafty stonemasonry and ancient furniture.  There’s a map room and a smoking room.  You go out onto the roof at one point, and there’s a tower you can peer into that has larger than life lobsters hanging in it.  The garrison has a suit of armor from when one of the previous St. Aubyn’s was stationed in Hong Kong as an aide de camp.  I took about a hundred pictures of the castle and its grounds and most of them look the same but I was just trying to capture what I  was seeing.  I couldn’t, though, because there’s something non-visual about standing on top of a castle and feeling the wind try and move your body, the sea salt settled into your hair, moisture splattering against your face.  I saw a double rainbow as I was gazing out to sea.  The castle contains its own chapel, which still holds services every week that mainlanders often come to.  It has a statue of St. Michael battling Lucifer and offering the hand of conciliation.    

Old British ladies tottered around during my visit and most got in my way.  I prefer to sightsee with no one else around, though that hasn’t been very feasible during my travels.  I had a cheddar cheese and Cornish chutney sandwich at the pub for lunch, with a local Cornish ale that no less than three people told me was a  “right proper pint.”  

I went to bed that night thinking of the castle and of the sea.  

Oxford and Stonehenge

I’m already behind on this blog and I’ve barely started.  I’m currently using the wifi hotspot capability on my British phone (which I finally got Internet on after going back and forth between the place where I bought the phone and my service provider for an hour and a half today) to write this on my laptop because the hotel I’m currently at only has wifi in the reception room, natch.

So tomorrow I go back to Oxford, for good this time.  I started the week there immediately after leaving London and was able to get my first look at Mansfield after navigating the picturesque but horribly narrow streets of Oxford and almost getting stuck in a small alley that I really shouldn’t have been driving down.  The town of Oxford and the university of Oxford are really inseparable, as the multiple college campuses (Oxford is made up of thirty eight independent colleges) are interspersed throughout the town.  What this means is that you’ll be wandering along a busy street and suddenly stumble into a college quadrangle, complete with ivy-covered buildings and long gravel pathways.  

Mansfield itself is probably one of the medium sized colleges, comprised of just three buildings around a quad encircled by a pathway.  I had to go to the porter’s lodge to pick up my keys, where my pigeonhole (mailbox) and an elderly British man complete with a cat reside.  I then journeyed to my lodgings, which are located about a mile away from Mansfield’s campus.  My flat is located above a VW dealership on a fairly busy but still suburban road.  The flat has a living room with attached dining room and a kitchen on the first floor, and four single bedrooms and two bathrooms (one with shower) on the second floor.  It’s nicely furnished, bright, and comfortable.  

After doing some shopping for mundane objects like hangers and shampoo, I had just enough time for a quick walk about downtown before bed.  Oxford itself is a nice mix of ancient buildings and modern shops, and the people seem eclectic and overall friendly.  I recognize how bland the previous statement is, but I really don’t have too much to go on.  I’ll be sure to fill in the blanks once I’ve settled in a bit more.

Tuesday was Stonehenge day.  After driving through the English countryside for a a few hours, I arrived at the standing stones, which appeared out of the countryside like they were noting more than random boulders in the middle of the field.  Oh wait….  I’ve been wanting to visit Stonehenge since I first heard about it, so this was a tense moment for me: would it be as amazing as I’d hoped, or disappointing and slightly soul crushing? I am pleased to say that the site lived up to my expectations, even exceeded them.  Though I am slightly sad that you cannot get within fifty feet of the stones due to the rope fence that surrounds it, this did not diminish my excitement upon finally seeing them.  I won’t even try to describe them, as I’m sure plenty of people have done it better than me, and there are all kinds of pictures online, but suffice to say you can actually feel something standing on that hill in the English countryside beneath giant clouds.  The view is panoramic as the stones stand slightly above the countryside: you can see for miles in each direction.  

The accompanying audio tour was actually both informative and interesting, providing details about the construction of the stones (fun fact: the current site is actually the third or fourth iteration of the monument) and the mythology that surrounds the entire experience.  Some people say it’s a giant calendar, others a marker made for/by aliens, and others still insist they were magicked there by Merlin or the devil.  Whatever the reason, the site was as breathtaking (and I use this word despite its cringe-inducing cliché) as anything you’re likely to see in your travels.  For those who cannot understand what is so great about a bunch of rocks in a field, take a moment to realize that these stones, weighing tons, were erected by humans before any of the tools that we take for granted in modern architecture.  

I’ll end this post now before I use up all my allotted monthly internet (pay as you go phones ftw) and have to  use my computer to tweet: the horror, the horror.  I promise I’ll post a ton of picture soon, as I’ve been taking them like the annoying American I am, but I really can’t do that until I get some reliable wifi.  

First Impressions

Sitting in my hotel room, exhausted, but wanted to fill everyone in on what’s been going on.

• Lodon is amazing.  I love it.  It has the same busy/city feel as New York, without most of the dirt.  And the people are more friendly.  However, the city has a severe shortage of trash cans.  People just leave their garbage everywhere (mostly the tube stations) because there’s nowhere else to put it.  Also, the phone booths still smell like piss.
• I am actually obsessed with the British pound, the entire unit of currency.  Coppers are annoyingly big, but the one and two pound coins are the perfect size and are super useful when you’re wandering around.  The bills are big and colorful like Monopoly money, except they have the queen’s face on them.
• Went to three museums: the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert.  So.  Much.  Stuff.  Everywhere.  Highlights: the Rosetta Stone, mummies, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, the plaster cast room in the V&A.  
• I was a little disappointed with the Eye.  Well, maybe not disappointed, I more found it anti-climactic. It was an amazingly panoramic view, but in the end it was just a better way to see all the buildings I’d already seen.
• Favorite building: St. Paul’s.  I went today and didn’t get to take an actual tour because they only do services on Sundays, but the entire building is impressive and gorgeous.  
• Didn’t get to Hyde Park, unfortunately, but that’s what future visits are for.
• The Tube was fun at first, but it lost its charm after multiple rides where I had to abruptly switch lines due to closures.  I think it’s fast, efficient, cheap, and clean, but it’s still mildly obnoxious.
• The people in this city are super friendly.  Everyone I’ve asked for directions/advice has either been more than willing to provide info or been sincerely apologetic about not being able to direct me.
• Wasn’t that impressed with Buckingham Palace.  Didn’t get to see much because there were a million people when I went (changing of the guards, which I didn’t even try to plan) so that’s on a future list.
• Seen the best and worst of English weather, I think: yesterday was sunny and breezy while today was cold, damp, dismal, and super rainy.  I almost got blown off London Bridge.
• Today was my last day in the city, and though I’m sad to leave, I’m looking forward to getting out into the country.  
• Here’s a few random pics (I’m an awful photographer) but the wifi at my current hotel isn’t the best so they’re kind of a pain to upload.  I’ll post more soon!
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