Visiting Hogwarts---er, Oxford

Ok, so I'm procrastinating working on my essay by writing about my trip to Oxford this past Saturday instead.

Visiting Oxford was great and made me incredibly jealous that it's too expensive for me to go there! At the same time, it was a bit different than I expected. It really had no "campus," so to speak. Instead, all of the colleges of the university were spread out over the city. It reminded me a lot of Yale, actually. Although Oxford is right in the middle of a bustling, lively university town, the inside of each college is beautiful and peaceful.

Christ Church College:


We only went in a few of the colleges, because most of them charged entry fees (what's that about, it's a college!) Christ Church College we had to see, even though it was the most expensive, because it's where they filmed the Harry Potter movies! And it's, you know, one of the oldest, most famous and prestigious institutes of higher learning in the world. Whatever! ;)


It was beautiful inside, from the courtyard to the stairway leading up to the dining hall (the model of the Great Hall at Hogwarts). Christ Church Cathedral was also amazing--it's one of the smallest cathedrals in England, and it doesn't look like a traditional church inside. The pews are in long vertical rows along the sides of the church and have desks with them.


We also got to go inside Exeter College, where we listened to an impromptu concert--a choir and orchestra rehearsal inside their church. The acoustics were perfect, and they sounded wonderful. Finally, we visited Balliol College, which had special significance to me. One of my favorite novels, To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, begins at Oxford and the main characters go to Balliol. So it was absolutely cool and surreal to get to see it for real. And I have to say, as old and lovely as the colleges look from the outside, they're even better on the inside. I walked around the Balliol courtyard marveling that this was actually a dorm that kids lived in.

In some ways, as wonderful as Oxford is, I'm glad I don't go there. I like to have a rural campus (as much as I complain about the Warwick and UConn bubble). And I don't know how I'd feel about seeing tourists wandering around my dorm and classes day after day. The students I saw seemed used to it---they were enjoying the beautiful day on the lawn and never even glanced up at the tourists taking pictures of them. Still, I think I'd find it weird...

Still--to study at the same university as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Dorothy L. Sayers? To walk down the hallowed halls where they once walked?

I could get used to it.

Christ Church College: