Last summer, after sojourns in Amsterdam and a few cities in the north of Belgium (or Flanders), I wrote some idiosyncratic observations and called it How to Travel. This week, I’m at it again.
I’m now three-fourths of the way through a longer sojourn in England, spending most of my days in Oxford with forays to Cambridge, Lancaster, and London. It’s a different sort of trip in another sense: I’m lecturing and writing, not holidaying.
Well, most of the time. “Ease and relaxation are profitable to all studies,” as Ben Jonson wisely said. “The mind is like a bow, the stronger by being unbent.”
Herewith, then, another issue of Michael’s Unsolicited Advice Based on His Recent Travels:
- Choose one place, and stay there. I’m in Oxford on a fellowship, so the beauty of this city made that easy. But all month I’ve resisted my innate temptation to travel around England, visiting friends or seeing performances. (The RSC’s performing King John at Stratford-upon-Avon right now, and resisting that has been the hardest.) Trouble is, if I followed every whim then I wouldn’t enjoy being immersed in this city, with its organ recitals and museums and 13th-century pubs. And I pray that never again must I ride the dreadful Cambridge-Oxford bus, lurching through roundabouts for four hours.
- Live like a local. I stayed in a friend’s house in east Oxford, a real neighbourhood where the commute into town and the Tesco supermarket £3-meal-deal made daily life more authentic. I rented a bike, because only tourists walk in Oxford. I got a haircut, because I was overdue.
- Try out some new habits. Channel Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” I went to yoga 19 times in 20 days; thank you, unlimited new-joiner pass! (It feels amazing, by the way.) I was 90ish-percent vegetarian. I ignored all the Donald Trump news. (Is he still a thing? Never mind, don’t tell me.)
- Form lasting friendships. Strike up conversations with strangers. Go to coffee and pubs with friendly locals. Find out what books they’re reading, and then go buy yourself a copy. Or better, shop at Blackwell’s bookshop with them and get them to inscribe your copies.
- Set your intentions from the outset: not for the concrete particular things you intend to do or avoid, but for the way you want to feel each day, and at the end of your trip. I got a huge project off my desk, so I feel like my days writing in the libraries were well spent. I feel healthier for all the yoga.
Settling in Oxford for a month was my chance to try a different pace of life — and to see how the donnish other half lives, eating meals at high table and drinking americanos in the Senior Common Room. (Turns out it’s pretty great.) It changed things about my daily habits, and taught me things about how I want to live.
