OXFORD (dpa) – If you go to Oxford, don’t ask the way to the university. The chances are you’ve been wondering around inside it for ages, and simply failed to notice.
The town can boast 36 colleges in all, each one a university in its own right. The institution has no single campus, refectory or central focus.Yet visitors should not travel to Oxford just for the university. Lying north west of the British capital London, the “city of dreaming spires” has a wealth of stunning architecture to offer and is a fascinating melting pot of conservative tradition and modern living.The town on the Thames is a mixture of exotic restaurants and student watering holes, full of museums, markets and opportunities to go shopping. Several of the bookshops are reputed to number among the best in the world. Antique hunters are bound to find something of interest soon if they take the time to explore here.To grasp the extent of the Oxford’s academic heritage, one is best advised to stand at the centre of Radcliffe Square and simply to turn around, for the square is surrounded by colleges – Lincoln and Exeter to the west, Trinity to the north and All Souls and Queens College to the east.The southern side of the square is closed by Brasenose and Oriel. A map of the town centre bears witness to the concentration of academia – 27 colleges in an area measuring 2.5 square kilometres., mostly packed in around High Street, Broad Street and Saint Giles Street.The visitor can find the best overall view of the town by climbing the 99 steps of the Carfax Tower, perched high above one Oxford’s busiest crossroads at the corner of High Street and Cornmarket.Once atop the tower, it becomes abundantly clear how Oxford earned its alias the “city of dreaming spires”. A landscape of historical architecture stretches out in all directions, a forest of turrets and domes.If the sun is shining, the town is bathed in a soft and dreamy light. The colleges were for the most part constructed with the honey-coloured stone from the nearby Cotswolds hills and the sun lends the stone a beautiful golden sheen.Having exhausted Oxford’s architectural possibilities, the visitor can always grab a pole and a punt and let himself and his companions drift on the town’s waterways. A favourite moorage point for punters is the Magdalen Bridge.The flat-bottomed boats are four metres long and 1.5 metres wide with space for five passengers. Whoever has the best sea legs and coordination should take hold of the pole and assume a position at the prow.With varying degrees of grace and skill, the de facto captain then guides the pole into the shallow water, pushes off when it reaches the bottom and thus propels his vessel gently forwards. A passenger at the stern adjusts the course with a paddle.But beware! Should the pole stick in the mud the intrepid sailor should be sure first to let go, then to paddle back to retrieve it. The temptation to hang on to the stubborn pole tends to result in an early bath in the River Cherwell, or in the Thames, the two rivers joining at Oxford.The writer Charles Dickens, much taken by Oxford’s watery delights, once wrote how of he had sailed along “through lilies which stretch for miles and gather together on the water like a carpet in a fairy tale”.Exactly why the Thames at Oxford is known as Isis remains a mystery. The explanation that the name derives from the latin “Thamesis” is the subject of much controversy.If the tour of the town or a punt on the river have left the visitor feeling hungry, he should make the effort and walk half an hour to Cowley Road on the other side of Magdalen Bridge.Here, exotic restaurants compete for space, from the chip parlour to the five star Indian, from Chicken Jamaica to Tikka à la Bangladesh and sushi, there is something here for every palate and every pocket.Oxford English is supposedly the highest form of the Anglo-Saxon tongue and for all upwardly mobile linguists, language holiday operators offer a variety of programmes in Oxford itself.Information is available at the Oxford Information Centre, The Old School, Gloucester Green, Oxford, OX1 2DA, Great Britain.
