Having lived in Oxford for just over a year, I would guess I have marched past hundreds of thousands of tourists. As anyone living in Oxford knows, it is rare to find a day on which the city centre is not full of them. From Magdalen Bridge to the train station and from Christ Church Meadow to the Ashmolean, the pavement is packed with families and groups that constantly stop in the most inconvenient places. And don’t get me started about the Rad Cam.
My relationship with the millions of tourists who visit Oxford every year is, however, more complicated than simple annoyance. In most cases, my feelings towards them depend on how my day is going, the weather, upcoming deadlines, and the latest news updates I read. When everything is bad, I curse the day the Oxford train station was built. I hurry past tourists standing by the Narnia door or near Baliol with quiet scorn. However, when the sky is blue and I have just done something very Oxford-y, the tourists don’t seem so bad. Suddenly, their mysterious looks and not-so-smooth picture-taking remind me of how lucky I am to study here.
To be honest, both sides of my relationship with tourists have some aspects I am embarrassed to admit. For instance, unless I am super late, I am usually pretty happy to feel like a local in a town people come from all over to see. I imagine this is how true Parisians or New Yorkers must feel when I am the tourist crowding their cities. Even worse, in my heart of hearts, I am happy to study somewhere people admire and idealise. Unlike the gift-shop industry or some colleges (ehm, Christ Church), this fame does not improve my everyday life substantially. Every once in a while, though, it is nice to ride the coattails of Oxford’s fame and be asked about my studies and experience.
It may further be true that my relationship with tourists is tainted by the lack of unique interest my college attracts and from living right outside the city centre. I cannot imagine studying at a college that accepts tourists; it would feel too intrusive. My predicament, then, of living slightly outside the tourists’ zone of interest, may bias my view in their favour.
If I am completely honest, there is also one other thing that really makes me tolerate them. Seven years ago, I was also a tourist in Oxford. At 16, during a visit to London with friends, we took a day trip from London to see the famous University of Oxford and the beautiful city that surrounds it. At the time, I did not imagine ever calling these streets my home, the library my office, and Cherwell my hobby. For several hours, we walked around, rode bikes, miserably failed at punting, and enjoyed the beautiful parks. It was a great day that did not feel consequential. I most certainly did not buy Oxford merch or “know” I would study here one day. In fact, only several years later, when I started thinking of studying at university, did Oxford return to the front of my mind. Yet that is the point of being a tourist here. You take a quick train from London and arrive in a new, old world. A world of beautiful sandstone buildings, myths and stories, brilliant people, and a distant thought echoing, “Would I be accepted were I to try?”.
So, unless I am very late to a tutorial, I try to remember this feeling. To think of the experience of seeing Oxford for the first time and committing, if only for a day, to the magic of this place. When the sky is blue (or the news especially pleasant), I offer to take a couple’s picture with the Rad Cam. And most of the time, I try to just walk past and not be too bothered.
