So I’ve got the university to pay for my conference registration at Oxford, lodgings, and meals. It’s like pulling teeth but I’m making myself stay with it by browsing pictures of Oxford online.
Now I have to book the ticket. But the main part is done, and I will be in Oxford from July 10 to July 14.
“This is weird,” a colleague said. “Oxford is in England. What does it have to do with Spain?”
“Why would anyone believe that the British Museum could be capable of preserving culture? It’s nowhere near the cultures it’s trying to preserve!”
It’s not the location, it’s the quality of the institutions there and what they’re involved in …
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I live in Metro St. Louis area. I’m long overdue to look at some beautiful buildings for a change. I’ve been researching pubs in Oxford. I don’t drink alcohol but the pubs look like little works of art. especially when compared to the post-industrial bars in the Midwest.
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And I do like post-industrial landscapes. I just wish for some variety sometimes.
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More useful bits …
There’s a bus service between London and Oxford called Oxford Tube which I think is run by Stagecoach, one of the major bus operators here. Period-return trips to London are £20, so if you want to take a day to do things in London, it won’t be too terribly awful in terms of costs even if you have to pay for that yourself.
You can find them at:
http://www.oxfordtube.com/
Otherwise, Oxford Bus Company is unusually helpful:
http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/
These are not red tourist buses — this is an actual full-service bus company.
They do require a smartcard for journeys if you want to save money:
http://city.oxfordbus.co.uk/key/
You do have to visit one of their shops to get one — it’s not like the Tube where you can buy these from a machine:
http://oxfordbus.goahead.live.pancentric.net/about-us/travel-shops/
If you’ve never done a rail journey in the UK, try the train from London Paddington to Oxford, but the bus is considerably cheaper — I just paid a bit under £95 for a near-peak journey from London Paddington out to my writing cave in the West Country, but then again I insisted on travelling via first class.
But if your university’s paying for it … [wink wink nudge nudge]
SAY NO MORE! 🙂
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Scholarship can only be done by deeply immersing yourself in a culture, which itself can only be achieved only by being born in, educated by, and working for the country you are studying.
Was this colleague an american studies person, by any chance?
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Worse. Mass communications.
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Yay, Oxford is great! You’re definitely right about (at least some of) the pubs and should definitely check them out while you’re there.
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Thatcher’s Gold from Somerset, one excuse for you to have some alcohol … 🙂
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Happy to meet you down there if you’d like to. I’m Btw doing my masters at Oxford so it’s an easy excuse to get down there…
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Yes, absolutely! This will be fun. I can just imagine telling people at the conference, “And now please excuse me, I have a meeting with my readers.” 🙂
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One thing I’m curious about: will all of your time be spent in Oxford on matters related to the conference?
Nearby Cheltenham and Bath would give you a good experience of England outside London and Oxford, and you can reach both by bus as well as (considerably more expensive) rail.
Also, since you mention lovely buildings, I think you’d really like wandering around Bath, even if it’s just for a few hours.
I prefer Cheltenham except for the smell, of course — Cheltenham is known for horse racing, so you can imagine the smell during July.
Also, I like how trains have to reverse into Cheltenham Spa when arriving from Bristol Temple Meads, so you get the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong, and then you arrive. 🙂
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It’s the kind of a conference where the organizers want us to be present for all talks and eat together to avoid the situation where people come to recite their own talk and then disappear. I think it’s a good idea. So I will probably not get to see much besides Oxford. I’m not complaining, though! 🙂
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“Hi, I’m Professor Jones, and I’m here today to talk to you about butts — specifically, I’ve constructed mathematical models in order to prove without a doubt what constitutes the perfect butt …”
[starts out the presentation with the mellifluous sounds of “Baby Got Back”] 🙂
And this is why there can’t be any nice things around me. 🙂
Anyway, see if you can find a place near the conference where we can gather — I suggest a place that serves scrumpy cider as well as a light lunch …
I’m sure there will be good places around! I need to wipe out the traumatic memory of the worst lunch on the planet in a London place called something like Garfunkel.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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