My Travel Adventures

Little photographic evidence exists of my second Michaelmas term at Oxford, for it was a dark time. Both my electives for the entire year took place this term, on top of which I had to complete my PhD applications. Autumn’s only saving grace was that, by a massive stroke of luck, one of my electives clashed with a course seminar that I consequently – and with sorrows overflowing – had to forego.

Ever since I bought my English Heritage pass, I have been looking for ways in which I might be able to make it pay for itself. I even created an Excel spreadsheet to see at what exact point I would break even. Thus, I was elated to find out that English Heritage pass holders receive discounts on exhibitions at the British Museum, which allowed me to add the neat little sum of £ 4.5 to my “Money Saved” column.

Since my friend only took one week off from work, we had to plan around his US work hours during the second week of his visit. Thus, on Monday, I made sure that our excursion to Windsor would not bring us home any later than five o’clock in the afternoon. The itineraries for subsequent days were even more tight.

I spent a nice three weeks at home making traditional Christmas sweets and going on walks. Since several of my friends had covid, I saw almost no one, and decided it would be safer that way considering I would have to get back to Oxford for my exams. I made it a resolution for the new term to take a walk every day, which has helped me explore a decent chunk of town around Saint Antony’s. I discovered the western end of University Parks – where I had never been before – as well as the beautiful grounds of Lady Margaret Hall, among others.

Given how busy the terms are at Oxford, both this post and the last have been backdated. I wrote them while sitting at home in the Czech Republic on the 20 th of December, occasionally dodging my memory by consulting the photographs still on my hard drive (goodness, I really need to migrate those to my external hard drives already).

It is difficult, only a week after my departure from the Czech Republic, to try to recollect the events of that day – so much has happened since then! However, one thing does stand out in my memory in a way that only unpleasant experiences do: having forgotten to fill in a passenger locator form at home, I had to make a frantic dash through the multiple pages of the form on my phone before I was allowed to check in.