England: Day Three, London & Oxford

After our not so debauched evening of barhopping we got up in the morning (shocker!) and commenced the joys of packing our bags, as we had to take the bus to Oxford that very day. I was feeling oddly crappy, as if the previous evening had been much more decadent than it had actually been, but I decided to write it off to being in the sun too much.

On a sidenote: I am a messy traveller. Okay, I can partly blame it on my bag, which is just not very good for keeping your stuff neat and separate, but it's also just me, I pull things out, throw them back in and generally make a mess of my luggage. Since my bag only had one big compartment, I also had to pile my laundry in with my fresh clothes, which I found to be sort of yukkie. With my extra purchases, closing up the bag turned into a very perilous labour.

Tim on the other hand is very neat. While my stuff was spread all over the floor and under the bed, his was always contained within the boundaries of his (very practical) bag. No matter which hostel we stayed at, I would take up an inordinate amount of space, compared to Tim's little bag, which seemed so tiny, yet managed to keep more things in tidily than my stupid sack on wheels, which was at all times ready to burst at the seams.

Conclusion: screw self-improvement and neatness, Bobster needs a brand new bag.

Anyhow, one last continental breakfast in London and we grabbed our bags and proceeded to cross Hyde Park to our busstop. This had all seemed easy in theory: cross the park, get to the stop, get onto the bus, sit back and relax. In practice it turned out a little differently. Not that we didn't KNOW Hyde Park is fricking huge, but when you're walking across it with your luggage and the sun burning in your neck, you really REALISE it's fricking huge. Having crossed the park, it turned out we still had quite a way to go (we did see the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, which I thought was rather pretty) and by this time I was already exhausted, sweating and my head was trying to explode. I think I trailed Tim by 20 meters the entire time. Not that it mattered too much, because when we got to the place, there were about 25 buses, not one of them ours, and it turned out it could be leaving anywhere along the very long road we were on. In short: we missed it and we had to to take another bus.

Luckily buses to Oxford leave almost continually and after having bought new tickets from a total bitch, we were quickly on our way, me exhausted and feeling really crappy, Tim doing well as far as I could tell :) Our driver was a very nice Santa-esque man, who was terribly helpful and witty. A delight to listen to, truly. Our busride was in any case more relaxed than our way to the bus.

Arriving in Oxford, my first thought was , well, my first thought was that I wanted a Dafalgan, maybe two, but the one right after that one was that I had imagined Oxford very differently. I thought it would look more studenty, as in a couple of really fancy college buildings, surrounded by lots of small houses, stores and neon, and all sort of gritty looking. It doesn't look anything like that. It's gorgeous building followed by impressive monument, followed by quaint house, all spread out between what seemed like a hundred amazing colleges. Basically, once you've seen Oxford, you can just stop visiting England if you're there for the views. Every monument or cathedral we saw after that, we were like 'not bad, but it ain't Oxford'.

Second realisation: Oxford is not cheaper than London, another idea I had. It's not, at all. We noticed this very quickly and I at least breathed a sigh of desperation. We checked into our hostel, a very nice place called Central Backpackers, which I misread ad Central Barebackers every single time, but that's probably just me, I know, I'm a sick man. We were checked in by a very rugged and handsome Australian who'd been travelling around by working in places like that for quite some time, and who would later on make his way through Canada and the US in the same way. Which seemed pretty cool actually.

I though our room was nicer than the one we had in London, and no birds around (we would later notice that our window came out right on the patio where all the smoking and drinking was done, which was also not ideal, but by the time this presented a problem, I was too far gone to care much either way.) so that all looked good. We only had one roommate, who I actually didn't talk to at all, but Tim did, about Discworld as I recall, but I was already in the thrall of fever then and slipping in and out of sleep. But that's for a little later on.

We got right out of there and headed to the mall to get us another pic-nic and then we went to the Head of the River, through a park which belonged to Christ Church College, the biggest Oxford college and the one with the richest history. It also had a long stretch of grass right by the Thames where we had our pic-nic. I was feeling really bad by now and fell asleep for a while after our pic-nic, which Tim took shameless advantage of to shoot this picture.

After that we walked across the path, observing the locals, and admiring the college buildings, and I also fed some geese, which was great fun until they sort of ganged up on me and I became a little nervous. Luckily, we got away unharmed.

Oxford offered other interesting views other than stunning buildings and a rich cultural history. It had some of the freakiest people we came across until then (Manchester was still to come), such as a girl who looked like Pipi Longstockings after an especially tough adolescence. Words could not possibly describe her, she had to be seen to be believed.

We honestly didn't do that much more the rest of the day, at least I don't think we did, it was all a bit of a haze to me. We saw a lot of colleges, but then again, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a college. We visited a pub called the Bear, where the walls were decorated with pieces of tie, which had once belonged to notable or famous people, but the most recent one I could discover was from 1974 and none of the names meant anything to me.

Later on in the evening we went to a cocktail bar, which boasted a plaque saying that it had the second best cocktail menu in the world, according to some organisation. I could sure believe it, the menu was endless, with originally created cocktails and it took quite some time deciding. Tim didn't even attempt to decide and allowed the waiter to just throw something together. I don't remember what I had exactly, but it was very tasty.

We decided to end our day with that and I was glad to, as I was seriously feeling ill by then, so we returned to the hostel. When I walked onto the patio I was immediately accosted by a drunk, blond and unbelievably stunning English bloke. He had actually mistaken me for someone from his own group, but we got to talking after that (though not an easy task, as he'd had quite a few too many). Basically he had just started a new job working as a collector for a charity and they were there for a teambuilding. Tim came out onto the patio after that as well and naturally he also took an interest in the conversation. We told him we would also be going to Manchester and he became rather excited, saying that Manchester was wicked awesome and a great party. We asked him if he could recommend anything and he got a sort of mischievous smile on his face. What followed is sort of hard to write down, but it was hilarious if you were there. It went something like this:

Hot Blond Drunk: well, first off, you two, are you... like... are you? You know (making certain handmotions)

Me: (grinning) No, we're not. But we are... uh... separately.

HBD: (confused) So you guy aren't?

Me: Well, we are, but we're not together.

After finally having gotten the fact that gays can share a room without eating each other's arse, he proceeded to gush about Manchester and how great Canal Street is and how there was one bar which was really awesome and how a guy had bought him a drink and had tried to kiss him and he'd been like Woooaw, I'm not gay and so on and so on. After that he went back to asking whether Tim and me had never (So you two... like... you never?) been together, and even after firm denials he didn't quite believe it (Like, not even once?).

The amazing thing is that we had an entire conversation that was basically about gay sex without the words gay or sex being mentioned once. I honestly don't think he actually finished an entire sentence, it was very much a matter of reading in between the lines and in between those lines there was Tim, me and a lot of gay sex apparantly. I suppose we were confronted with that cliché that gay men can't be friends without anything more. I found it all very amusing and on top of that he was more than easy on the eyes, so the entire exchange entertained me greatly, but I decided to go to bed anyway.

And that's about it for me for day three. Next time: Day Four, Oxford & Birmingham.