European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 14, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                English tradition i a a w i a athe Raddiff camera slut a a is one of fhe most photographed buildings at Oxford University. Tips la times How to get to Oxford England and where to stay and eat a a getting there Oxford lies 55 Miles Northwest of London an hour s drive on the m40 Highway. Cit link and Oxford tube buses shuttle Between the cities All Day and evening and a train line runs from London s Paddington station to Oxford As Welt. Every Mode of transportation takes about an hour. Similarly Cit link buses run hourly to Oxford from Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The bus from Heathrow costs about $12. A where to stay heavily trafficked by Day trippers Oxford has fewer hotels than a traveler might expect. The most striking and Best located of them is the Randolph Beaumont Street phone 011 -44-865247481, fax 791678a four Story 109-unit, 1864 building that faces the revered ashmolean museum and charges about $250 nightly for double rooms. Substantial discounts Are available for bookings Well in Advance and multiple night stays that include a saturday. Less costly accommodations Are available at the Bath place hotel 4&5 Bath place phone 791812, fax 791834a 10-unit Cluster of 17th-Century rooms just Down Down the Alley from the popular turf tavern. Double rooms run about $160-$240. 14 stripes Magazine january 14, 1993 cheaper lodging Are available and can be arranged through the City of Oxford information Center see below. A Whereto eat Oxford is restaurant Rich with ethnic spots ranging from Bilash Tandoori to the Blue Coyote. The three mentioned Here Are Only a sampling of middie Range possibilities. Browns 5h1 Woodstock re. Phone 511995 draws students tourists and townies alike with moderate prices and a Wood and greenery atmosphere. Main dishes run $11-$18, the crypt Frewin court phone 251000despite its off putting name is an agreeable restaurant and wine bar set in a Brick basement. Main dishes $t0-$20. The nose bag 6-8 St. Michael s St. 721033about whose name i will say nothing is an option for vegetarians. It s informal upstairs and smallish with Buffet style main courses running $10-$12. The cheaper soups and salads Are popular among diners on the run. A for More information Contact the City of Oxford information Center St. A Date s St. Near Carfax from inside England phone 0865-252-664 or 0865-726-871. A los Angeles times strollers Admire the architecture of Oxford. La times la times a centuries old pub near Oxford University dram Lourals and locals to the Banks of the Char will River. By Christopher Reynolds los Angeles times Oxford England has a Skyline to keep you Humble it rises from a smooth Plain an hour outside of London and bristles with More than 600 buildings protected As National treasures. At Sunset they hurl epic shadows Down on the undergraduates along High Street by Day while Church Bells toll ancient Gates scrape and beloved fountains burble they endure the Rusty leanings of 30,000 bicycles. And when exams draw near at the 36 colleges that make up Oxford University and dominate the City i can imagine these old Walls summoning genuine horror. Fall behind in metaphysical poetry arid the 14th-Century spire of St Mary the Virgin will Pierce your dreams. Overlook a subtlety of molecular biology and he Bells of the 17th-Century Tom Tower at Christ Church College will toll for thee. Nearly a millennium of architectural ideas is wedged into the single Square Milt that holds the City s Core and most of the University. It s a wonder anyone graduates. But if Oxford were just a matter of architecture the place would t draw daunt and seduce strangers the Way it does Oxford has tenure. Behind it stretches the longest lineage of College scholarship in the English speaking world spanning More than eight centuries. Row in its Waters and you risk drowning by tradition and anecdote. Here studied . Auden Binazir Bhutto sir Richard Burton John Donne . Eliot Indira Gandhi Paul Getty Graham Greene Joseph Heller the. Lawrence John Locke Dudley Moore Rupert Murdoch sir Walter Raleigh John Ruskin Leopold Stokowski Margaret , Tolkien John Wesley Oscar Wilde and Christopher Wren among others. Here an institution founded in 1379 still carries the nickname of new College. Here from the observation level of St. Mary the Virgin a visitor May spy half a dozen languorous students in a cloistered quadrangle not tanning not its magic is architecture and much much More Reading not guitar playing but adjusting wickets for Roquet. Here on Walton Street the Oxford University press publishes volumes on such Small subjects As identity consciousness and value and human morality two rom the 92 Catalo while a few blocks away the compilers of the 20-volume Oxford English dictionary ibor to update the world s primary reference work on Bis language. A Here at University College Percy Bysshe Shelley was jolted after writing a paper on the necessity of theism but Bill Clinton lasted the full two years of his diodes scholarship. Moral for undergraduates Trust in Bod and Don t inhale Here time is told by the Dock atop the 14th-Century ones of Carfax Tower. Under noon Sun watch the privileged schoolboys Imper alongside the Chedwel in their Whites pausing it chirp Quot cheers Quot As they pass then arranging it selves on the Green for Cricket sit above the brass Section and listen As the City of word orchestra sends Schubert resounding through b 123-year-old Sheldon an theater on High Street he music is Good and the setting is better a a domed cry acoustically intimate room that was the first it building designed by famed architect Christopher Wren. Walking on High Street near the University s examination schools encounter an Ashen faced Young 1 As he Steps from a 19th-Century doorway. His laudatory formal Wear sub fuse in the local language is punched and rumpled from neck to Knees. He is a Law i Orient and he has just performed dreadfully on the of Al paper of the term Fth it he is an englishman at Oxford. He neither it it it Muldins nor explains but fires up a cigarette and shut ties away abject unkempt and yet somehow Noble. Offering such spectacles Oxford does not go unappreciated. The City s annual visitors now outnumber residents 1.5 million to 100,000. The storefronts include shops like the Oxford Story which does nothing but Trade on the place s past. Dueling double Decker bus tour companies do Battle in streets where once horse drawn carriages commanded right of Way. Both charge 5 pounds but the Green and Cream guide Friday bus uses live guides instead of tapes some visitors browse Blackwells an Enterprise that began in 1879 As a 12-foot-Square room on Broad Street and has grown to claim nine Sites around town and a reputation As England s Premier bookseller. Others appraise the considerable collection of Art and artefacts in the ashmolean museum England s first Public museum founded in 1683. Also on exhibit last summer was a Fine example of circuitous English logic Quot two pounds from each visitor would keep the museum open and free Quot suggested a sign at the Entrance. Open perhaps but not free still other visitors line up for views from on High seeking out St. Mary the Virgin Carfax Tower or the Char chef St. Michael at the North Cate in Luly and August when the place is empty of undergraduates the tourist population peaks and hundreds of americans and others take up residence in College facilities to study with widely varying intensities in myriad summertime programs. But in other months the visitor shares hallowed Halls with the Robed dons Bowler hatted Campus police and the 14,000 students who link Oxford past to Oxford present. And while the building do cast a spell it s the students who keep the place alive. Several years ago on my first visit to Oxford i was assigned to interview an american graduate student there. Her name was Bonnie St John and she was an j International relations graduate of Harvard. She was also a Champion skier despite the amputation of one leg above the knee and an african american. Since she was a Rhodes scholar her fees were being paid from the Fortune left by the most famous of Africa s White colonizers Oxford alumnus Cecil Rhodes. Quot sometimes Quot she said Quot i Stop in Awe and just think where am if i live in this town with these storybook buildings and i walk Down the streets with the wind howling and see gargoyles and stained Glass. It s incredible Quot j then she showed me the ancient oath she swore to get Reading rights at the 390-year-old bodleian Library led me past the dangling dead rabbits of the covered Market r own town and slipped an alcoholic gratuity to the Porter at the Gate of her 440-year-old Campus. Nobody s 12th Century plans for this University had included her hut Here she was making the place her own. Sooner or later you will have to leave. Before you do take another swing through town walk High Street on Friday evening and watch then Odd bins wine shop sprout a queue of bottle bearing customers in College ties. While they wait tardy undergraduates flee past on their bicycles formal roles inflated by the Breeze. When the pubs close at 11, the students will appear again shirts Limp gowns Askew. Or stake out the Sheldon an theater. If the month is june a graduation ceremony May spill graduates and beaming families into the Stone walled courtyard. A Young woman will adjust her mortar Board while a. Young Man throws an Arm around his father for a photograph. Or wander South along the Cherwell on the water two Young women balance their Flat bottomed punt slug Down Budweiser draw slowly on their cigarettes and ease past the Cricket players. In the Meadow beyond Merton College two shirtless Young men in boxing gloves spar lightly. If this scene were on a screen the chariots of tire theme would now swell. Instead the sounds Are Bir Calls Distant shouts slowly moving water and the faint echoes from that humbling Skyline. January 14, 1994 stripes Magazine