The day after

The morning after to my great surprise the muscles in my legs were only slightly sore and my feet had stopped hurting, too. Only my stomach muscles and my Musculus gluteus maximus hurt a little more. I had definitely expected things to be much worse! And some hitherto unknown masochistic part of me was actually enjoying the pain as a constant reminder of yesterday's glorious achievement! Should this worry me? Looking at my medal would have had the same effect, wouldn't it?

I took the train to Oxford and checked into the MacDonald Randolph Hotel. It's a typical old-fashioned English hotel situated in the centre of the city. Quite charming, but once again I wondered why relatively pricy hotels like this one ALWAYS have tattered, mouldy looking carpets. Is that supposed to create an atmosphere?

I dropped my bags in my room and went for a walk around the city to look for Markus' book again (a university city as lots of bookshops) and to do some sightseeing.

Oxford is not very big, but it has some of the most beautiful university buildings I have ever seen. An English student once told me that they are only beautiful if you are a tourist. If you are a student and have to live and study in them, they are a nightmare. Cold in winter and stuffy in the summer.



This is the Bodleian library building. I wouldn't mind studying in there!

Where there are students, there are bikes...

and inventive ways to secure them...

The university buildings are so impressive that there is a danger to overlook other, smaller attractions:

The bookshops in Oxford didn't prove to be better stocked than the ones in London, so I gave up and headed towards the meadow behind Christ Church college.

Legend has it that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, created the story of Alice in Wonderland to entertain his niece during a boat trip on the river Isis, which runs through the meadow. He read mathematics at Christ Church college.

This is the Christ Church meadow viewed from the back of the college:

There is a path that you can walk along. It leads past some beautiful cows

down to the river

If this is the Oxford Cambridge boat race, where is Cambridge?

No water without water fowl:


Christ Church college seen from the meadow:

I walked on along the path for another 30 minutes or so:

Punting is not as easy as it looks:

Back at the college Oxford's cricket elite of the future was practising standing around:

The weather was getting worse and the drizzle started to get on my nerves, so I went back to the hotel. On the way I discovered a second hand vinyl shop and in it some The Lilac Time records. Happy bunny!

Over a year ago in March 2005 I bought a ticket for the Little Britain tour to see them at the New Theater in Oxford tonight. I don't recall having ever bought a ticket this much in advance. But all the shows in 2005 were sold out and tickets on Ebay went for about 10 times the original price. So I regarded it as an investment. I was very unsure if the show would be a success on stage. It works on the radio and TV, but how can the short sketches and the many different charakters possibly be transfered onto a theatre stage? The secret is called ... Velcro. My guess is that Mr Walliams and Mr Lukas own large shares in the Velcro company! It was amazing how they managed to change costume and make-up in a matter of minutes. The production was perfectly time and synchronised. Respect! I don't find all their jokes funny and I don't understand everything that's said, but it was a very entertaining evening.