My son was invited by the University of Oxford to do selection interviews and we saw that as an opportunity to visit Middle England, where I've never been before. I've visited London a couple of times and I was in Ireland once, but was curious about the English countryside. Would it be as depicted on the telly? It was hardly imaginable.....
So, off we went..... We took the car to Dover, and took the tunneltrain to England. Being on the tunneltrain is a funny experience. You drive your car on a train, turn off the engine and wait. Once the train starts to move it feels like you are not really moving, but as if you are on a simulator : you move a little bit from left to right and vice versa but you do not feel yourself moving forwards. It only takes 35 minutes to arrive in England.
There we had to drive on the left side of the road. It is difficult in the beginning, but you get used to it quickly, except for the roundabouts. These remain crazy hurdles to take.
The English roads turned out to be very good: three lanes on every side, with reflectors on every stripe. The ringroad around London was easy to take. Despite traffic hour, we hardly had any congestion. It's funny to ride on the M25, looking around, seeing nice hills and fields and the city nowhere in sight and at the same time realizing this is the London ringroad. That's really different from say, the Amsterdam Ring, or the Groningen Ring or any other Dutch ringroad around a city ;) The Brits are good drivers, unlike the Belgians and the French....
We arrived in Oxford at a fairly nice time.
Our hotel in Headington turned out to be not so good. Its price was that of a five stars hotel, but its comfort of a two stars hotel: no central heating, no wifi (as was promised), an extremely tight and uncomfortable shower, English breakfast only between 7 and 8.15 and no real coffee. The latter was the most disappointing to me. But, the bed size was good and we slept very well. And on top of that, we had a lot of privacy, since the room was situated in the barn of the building. We knew finding a new room in Oxford during Application Week would be difficult, so we decided to stay.
Next day we dropped my son off in the city centre, at Trinity College. From that moment we hardly heard anything from him. Afterwards he told us he had a very good room, a good bed, a nice canteen with fairly good food. He had two interviews, with Trinity college only. He had to stay there for a couple of days in order to be present in case other colleges wanted to interview him as well, but he did not receive other invitations. We do not know this is a good or a bad thing. We decided to view it as a good thing, since the interviews at Trinity went very well. He was questioned about some ancient texts, about an author of his own choice (he chose Seneca), about philosophy and history. They warned him though, that the UK immigration office might refuse him a study permit due to his young age (Next year he will be 17). We'll see.
Walking through Oxford gives you a dejavu feeling: you've seen it al on the telly. But in reality it's even more impressing. A quarter of the city center of Oxford consists of very old, very beautiful colleges, build in the middle ages or a little later. I've seen more impressive city centers before, but these were more or less dead centres, e.g. the Grote Markt in Brussels, or the centre of Florence. Nobody lives there, and hardly nothing is done with these buildings except preservation. But these Oxford buildings are really used. Take for instance the Bodleian library: a library still in use, people walk in and out (visitors not allowed).
That day, we took the car to the English countryside to find out those nice landscapes and lovely villages are real! These are not only picked for some television series, as I suspected, but these truly exist. I allways thought these were rare sites, only used for the telly, as we do in the Netherlands. But in middle England it really looks like that. Amazing! Bad roads, by the way, with lots of mud and even water on them.
The next day I went to the city center of Oxford again, alone, since Kees didn't feel well. I took the bus this time. That experience evoked some thoughts about the British culture. The Brits are extremely polite and well-mannered. They do not only queue everywhere, they also stand up for everyone they think might need to sit down. They stand up as soon as they spot a woman with a stroller entering the bus, they help her in and out the bus and direct her to the reserved strollerplace in the bus. The same with people with wheel chairs.
On the other hand, the driver had to refuse one woman with a stroller, since the stroller plus the wheelchair spots were already occupied. That woman was disappointed but did not complain.... It was very cold outside and now she had to wait for the next bus.. That would take another ten minutes.....
For us, Dutch people, this is a strang experience. Dutch people do not only not care for other people, we also complain all the time, or even become angry when things aren't going as we want to.
You can also see another downside of this placid behaviour: Brits allways queue, without complaining, and you can sometimes see very long queues of 20 or more people, e.g. for buying a cup of coffee at the station. That is something you wouldn't see in The Netherlands that often ... If it becomes too crowded, companies quickly open another service desk. Sometimes complaining helps ;)
It's really wonderfull to be in public spaces where people try to adjust and make everything run smoothly. I've seen it in London as well, at the Underground stations. Extremely crowded, but efficient, because people try to follow some basic rules, e.g. to stand on the right on the stairways and to walk on the left. Sometimes an underground station is closed for a couple of minutes to prevent it becoming overcrowded. People then do not complain but immediately show that well-mannered behaviour, stand still and wait, and even queue to give room to other people. I'm extremely impressed by this. Take that with the well-mannered conversation methods, by being polite, smiling and making little jokes as social smearing and you have a society that is very good to live in, despite the weather. I do understand why the Brits are so proud of their culture.
Still, I have some mixed feelings about the English good manners. There are many implicit behaviour rules and for a stranger these are hard to catch. In those five of days I already had 4 of 5 small clashes with people who expected me to do something or say something, but I had no idea what that was.
Another downside is that you do not know for sure what a Brit feels or thinks about you. Is he really friendly or is he only acting so? I think that when I would be here for a longer time, I would feel insecure about that.
Thursday we took the opportunity to visit my beloved city of London. We took the train from Oxford to London. There was some delay, but again, no one complained and everything went smoothly. We arrived at Paddington station and took a long walk to Trafalgar Square to visit the National Gallery. Another thing I really like in London: all the museums are free!!! I think it's such a wonderfull thing. You show you are proud of your cultural treaures and want everyone to share in that. And what a treasures we saw! We saw some beautifull Rembrands and Hendrik Avercamps, and Monets and Manets, two nice Van Goghs and and and....
It's also nice to see some breasts painted by Rubens. I think there is no one so good in painting breasts that are full of milk. At one painting the breasts were even painfully engorged. You know, those breasts that become even square-shaped.
After visiting the National Gallery we received a call from my son. He announced he was done with his interviews. So, we decided to walk back to Paddington station. On our way we took the opportunity to get a flinch of the latest fashion. We did not only look at the shop windows, but also at the people on the streets. It seems that tight trousers with funny prints are the hottest thing for young men. Now you know!
On our way back we overheard a gentleman having several conversations over his cell phone. His conversation style was extremely well-spoken, well-mannered and enlarded with 'excellent's and 'splendid's, and I would have taken it for a caricature if I'd seen it on the telly. He was friendly, asking people to do small favours for him. It took a while before I realized he was a manager, directing people... This was a nice lesson management skills for me. Most important lesson: the bigger the favour, or the harder the message, the longer the introducing conversation with lots of jokes and laughs....
Back in Oxford we took diner at a Thai restuarant. Not really satisfying. When it comes to food, England does not seem to be the place to be. So far we had no luck with hotels and restaurants. I'll be glad when I'm able to eat some vegetables again, and some tasty cheese.
All those days we had luck with the weather. It was cold (around zero degrees centigrade) but there was no rain and no wind. The day we left though, we had a lot of rain and snow.....
We are now on our way back. Weather predictions said it would be snowy and stormy weather, but so far so good. We are at Hazeldonk now.
