Louise goes down the rabbit hole

I arrived in Oxford exhausted but with almost no stress. Once again I marveled at the efficiency and user-friendliness of Great Britain's mass transit, even though they complain about it. I was able to catch a coach (coaches drive between cities, while busses drive within cities) to Oxford from Gatwick Airport as soon as I get through customs. The cost -- £11 (about $15) for the 70-mile trip. I walked from the Oxford coach station at Gloucester Green to Wycliffe Hall in about 10 minutes. It's a life without cars!

The I've written extensively before about Oxford and Continental Europe in my 2009 Eurospring blog. Some of you may have read it at that time, so I will try to use all new material in this trip. I'm here for four weeks as the assistant academic director for Eurospring, Bemidji State University's study-abroad program. My colleague and director, Janet Prater, and our 27 students, have already been here for four weeks. We leave for a three-week tour of the European Continent next Wednesday, April 20. That gives me four full days to experience this city I've grown to love after visiting four times previous during the past 10 years.

I always feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole when I arrive here. It's a city fighting hard to keep its medieval and Victorian layers a real part of daily life, despite the changes wrought by modernity: immigration, wars, the euro and the EU, technology, population growth, to mention a few. Prof. Allan Chapman, our head lecturer who's been with our Eurospring program since its inception in 1980, is emblematic of the struggle. It was my husband, Kent, who first compared him to the white rabbit in Wonderland, and the comparison is apt. He does wear a pocket watch, a bow-tie and a waistcoat, and he's always saying, "Oh dear!" We were all quite concerned about him this past year because he had a nasty bout of some kind of cancer of the jaw, but his spirits are as high as ever and he jokes about the surgical realities of a new palate and teeth (which he has yet to have installed).

Janet and I visited my favorite restaurant (which has now become hers) -- Wagamama. It features such fresh ingredients that dishes are served as they are cooked and not held back so that everyone at the same table can eat at once. Then I had to make visit my favorite museum of all time, the Pitt Rivers, named after the eccentric Victorian who left his wife and children and roamed the globe in search of exotic treasures, including Ojibwe Indian artifacts from northern Minnesota. Lastly, I performed my absolute favorite activity in every city I visit -- walking for miles just to look around at how people live.

Now we're in Paris after a stressful day of learning how to matriculate through the Eurostar system, better known to American as "the chunnel." It took us 2 hours 20 minutes to travel from London to Paris at a cost of $65 each. The train travels up to speeds of 185 mph. Pretty amazing.