DB Lenck's Mutinous Musings: Can you tell me where the university is?

The heart of Oxford University

Doggone tourists been irritating me again! That's the trouble with living in Oxford, the place is impossibly crowded by tourists who stop you every few minutes to ask some BB-brained question. Now I wouldn't mind if they were actually interested in Oxford - indeed, in the olden days, when I was a student, I sometimes showed them around, and entertained them with insider tales, and in return they would take me to tea at the Randolph.

What I mind is the sort of tourists who don't have a clue of what makes Oxford special and just come by to tick it off their list - the London / Oxford / Stratford (as in Shakespeare) tour is distressingly popular among the pseudo-educated mass tourists.

When I go to play tourist anywhere, I make myself knowledgeable - at the minimum I read the Wikipedia entry. That would be enough to ensure that any questions I venture to ask - which is rare, since I am the sort of person who rather gets lost for hours than to ask for directions - is not completely ignorant.

Sadly, your regular Oxford tourist comes completely unprepared, and relies instead on the natives to direct them to whatever attraction they seek to visit. This is ill advised for several reasons. Firstly, good luck with finding a native in the tourist season! They are all hiding elsewhere. Secondly, even if said tourist finds a native, chances are that this is the seventh tourist who has stopped the native during just that one hour, and by now they are in a foul mood, and extremely likely to be actively unhelpful.

If the natives just growl at the tourists and push them away the tourists are lucky! Often tourists are actually pointed in the wrong direction, or told outright lies. My favourite one is that the Martyrs' Memorial outside of the Randolph is actually the spire of a cathedral, which sinks several inches deeper into the ground every year, so that it is now completely under ground except for its spire.

I once overheard two elderly ladies complain that a student had told them that the entrance to that cathedral was on the lower ground level of the Randolph Hotel, and when they demanded access to the cathedral they were sent away with a flea in their ear by the receptionist....

Since I have lived (and often worked) in Oxford for over three decades I have had more than my fair share of such touristic importuning. Tourists just can't understand that natives have their own lives to lead and neither the time nor inclination to continuously interrupt their walk or shopping or whatever else they are doing to help a tourist who got lost or didn't bother to buy a tourist guide.

My least favourite question is, "Can you tell me where the university is?" Am I supposed to spend half an hour explaining to the tourist that "The University" is composed of dozens of independent colleges and departments, scattered around Oxford, and that "The University" is more a concept than a location?

No. Instead I send them to Wellington Square - arguably "The University", in the sense that it houses many of the the central services of Oxford University. It is an ugly, concrete carbuncle on the face of the city, and probably the opposite of what a tourist hopes to see when asking about Oxford University. Tough luck! Next time they should do a bit of research before asking uninformed questions of busy natives. Deal with it. Daahhhh.

Did I ever blog about my idea of re-building the city wall and charging entrance fees to keep tourist numbers within manageable bounds? The money thus raised would enable the council to abolish local taxes, and in return the natives would be nice to tourists, and everyone would be happy.

Brilliant or what?