Oxford, The City of Dreaming Spires.

Life is a long journey to one`s destiny but I guess it comes in stages. It has been slightly over a month since I returned from home. I`ve settled in nicely into my new house and started working on my PhD. I ve found new friends and I like to believe that a new chapter of my life has begun well. Although the difficult times in the past will remain somewhere deep inside , the lessons have been learnt, and its time to move on.
Talking about moving, I was recently on the move ..I mean literally....on a tour from the university to the town of Oxford. When I say the name, I bet what immediately comes into my mind is the same as on your mind - Oxford Univerity - The oldest university in the english world! Oxford as a uni has always been high in my esteem , and in the 24 years I spent in India, not once did I dream that I would one day walk the streets of Oxford.

Also called as the city of spires, Oxford is said to have been founded in the 8th century and has had a lot of say in the history of England. Originally the home to many a church, Oxford was given the same privileges as the capital, London by King Henry the second. Oxford even held sessions of the parliament until things got a bit complicated between the townspeople and the upcoming university..ha..more of that to come.

What is most attractive about the city is its architecture...the city is surrounded with amazing buildings and unlike most of the cities in England, this one was very much unplanned. Buildings just cropped up over the ages, when some donor wanted to build it (and name it after himself)and each reflects the influence of its time. Thereby the buildings range from the gothic to the classic all standing beside each other. Yet everything seemed to blend in to a harmony to make Oxford what it is today.

Oxford university in itself is not just a single building as our imaginations led us to believe (or atleast mine) , but a number of colleges in an assemblage of buildings throughout the city. Infact it is made out of 39 Colleges and 7 religious Permanent Private Halls. Also just for your information (and mine), Oxford is currently ranked as the third best university in the world.

After a two hour ride by a chartered bus, we were let loose to roam the streets of Oxford . Although it did look a bit daunting finding ones way in a new city, the company of friends, who doubled up as navigators eased the pain. Oh yeah ..these are some of my friends in the picture above. First of all theres Morgane, who`s from France and is also my office mate ( she has to put up with me all throughout the day..pity her!) ... and her friend Max who was visiting from France, Josiane who`s from Cameroon, and Eliana whos from Singapore. (Morgane , Josiane and Eliana are also starting their PhD`s along with me.)

Anyhow, we managed to find our way about and checked out the market where there were some interesting stuff like a headless deer and a bodyless shark!...and also various buildings, about which we had no clue until later in the day.

A typical college (0ne out of 39) consists of the following : a great hall for dining, a chapel, a library, a college bar, senior, middle (postgraduate) and junior common rooms, rooms for 200-400 undergraduates as well as lodgings for the head of the college and other staff. Not much of it can be seen from the streets as the colleges appeared to be fortified..complete with massive wooden gates and a gatehouse overlooking it ! It was only later that we came to know why.

Our tour guide, Brian (oh yes we had a guided tour later in the day) explained that in mediveal times the students who came to study at Oxford were usually wealthy and young, while the general population outside in the streets were poor . This apart from other reasons like the growing power and autonomy of universities and a difference in dialects and language set up a social gap between the town and the gown (students). This led to rioting and trouble between the two groups and as a result colleges were fortified to keep the students in and the townsfolk out! Infact the rioting in Oxford got so bad that a few students and staff got fed up left Oxford to set up a new univeristy elsewhere..which is now called Cambridge!!

The rioting was not the only infamous act that occured in Oxford. The city has always been a active part of Britain`s changing relegious ideology and has had to pay the price for it. Apparently more than one Bishop, cardinal or priest was dragged out onto the street and burnt alive during the turbulent reformation that occured in britain. ( all that catholic - protestant stuff! )

We were lucky to be able to go inside and view one or two chapels and halls of the colleges. Infact, Hidden inside the chapels are some of the best stain glass windows in the whole of England!

I wont bother boring you all with too much detail..after all this is no history class...but just to provide some interesting titbits and snaps...

This is the Radcliffe camera (camera = room in latin) one of the most distinctive buildings in Oxford,and is a reading room.

The Bridge of sighs ..reminiscent of a similar bridge in Venice.

The Sheldonian theatre - used as the university`s hall for concerts and public lectures.

The univeristy church of St Mary the virgin , the oldest university building in the world.

The world famous Bodlein Library - the main research library of the university.

And of course the All souls college..in which one cannot apply to study...you can get in only if they invite you to study there ...and for that you have to be truly among the best of the best in the world! (so then I wonder what you would study!)

To sum up....about oxford....and its impact on the world ..i quote this paragraph from else where:

Oxford has had a role in educating four British, and at least eight foreign kings, 47 Nobel prize-winners, three Fields medallists, 25 British Prime Ministers, 28 foreign presidents and prime ministers, seven saints, 86 archbishops, 18 cardinals, and one pope. Seven of the last eleven British Prime Ministers have been Oxford graduates. Amongst the University's old members are many widely influential scientists, artists and other prominent figures. Contemporary scientists include Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Nobel prize-winner Anthony James Leggett, and Tim Berners Lee, co-inventor of the world wide web. Actors Hugh Grant, Kate Beckinsale, Dudley Moore, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Richard Burton studied at the University, as did film-maker Ken Loach. Amongst the long list of writers associated with Oxford are Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Pullman and Vikram Seth, the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Donne, A. E. Housman, W. H. Auden, and Philip Larkin, and Poets Laureate Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, Robert Bridges, Cecil Day-Lewis, Sir John Betjeman, and Andrew Motion. Lawrence of Arabia was both a student and a don at Oxford, while other illustrious members have ranged from the explorer, courtier, and man of letters Sir Walter Raleigh to the media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

- Wiki

Wow....I feel honoured to have walked the same streets as such illustrious people. Perhaps one day I will make it big too and someone will say.."Thomas Vattakaven..the great ...(blah blah) once walked this streets with jaws wide open drooling at these beautiful buildings and lost in fantasy about the history it conceals!