An Erasmus+ course in Oxford – a completely personal view

How should I describe the experience I got during this Erasmus+ course? I think, maybe, as overwhelming. Because that's what it is; you are completely submerged in the waters of a different culture, let alone language, reinforced with the lessons on the same culture and the language, which serve as a force that push you even deeper into these waters.

Sorry, I got poetic. But that's what you get, too, if you stay in Oxford for two weeks, you become at least a tiny little bit poetic. You can't escape that, being surrounded by the architecture and the context and the stories. You visit Tolkien's grave, a very modest slab of greyish stone, for example, in the verdant cemetery of Wolvercote in Northern Oxford. You don't even want to go there, really, because, though you like his books and the world he created, you're not any kind of fanlike creature, but you follow a colleague from Spain who is, and you find yourself there, in this abundance of flowers and bird twitter and chirp and the peace and the melancholy of a graveyard and you stare with watery eyes at these names that he gave himself and his beloved wife and there you are, thanking him for all the joy that he created in his readers.

And then you go to Cotswolds and spend an afternoon walking the paths and streets of Burford, with every single scenery that you see worth being photographed and put on a postcard and the scent, oh, the scent of those hyacinths and tulips in another ancient graveyard around a 1000-year-old church.

And you get to walk in college halls and cloisters and you see the oh-so-familiar places from Harry Potter films and you get this faint feeling of being in real Hogwarts. And, if you're lucky, you wander the grounds of a college completely alone, admiring the trees and the flowers and the emerald lawns and soaking in the scents and the visions of the world so distinctly secluded from the busy streets with too many buses and tourists.

And you go to the museums, of course, and you are bewildered by the clutter of what appeared to you as one of the best museums you've ever been to, at Pitt Rivers.

And you get to go to the concert of The King's Singers at the Sheldonian Theatre and the sound is magnificent and you go to The Mousetrap at New Theatre and you do understand why it's been playing for so long at the stages around the world.

Of course, you live in a family, a proper English one, and you don't know how to unlock the front door, because the lock is something incomprehensible to a Balkan girl, and you learn, oh, you learn so much about the upbringing and the utter respect they have for their children, however small. And you understand  why they're so relaxed and yet so distanced from the world, because you get to feel their British pride… and how it's changing, due to all the embarrassment and the turmoil of Brexit – no Brexit situation and that they get to experience the fact that their great nation is not THE factor in the contemporary world and that the old song of Britannia who rules the world doesn't stand any more.

And you get to know all those wonderful people from all around Europe and you do try to stay in touch afterwards, because you really, really want to do something together with them. And you do and you bring pieces of precious knowledge to your kids at school back home. Along with the books that you buy at that wonderful proof of English care for community, charity shops. You might even need a separate suitcase just for those books and you pray to God it doesn't weigh too much on those scales at the airport.

You go to those classes, of course, and you learn a lot. So much that you get the notion of how much more there is and you'll never be able to say that you truly speak any language. And if you're lucky, your teachers are so impregnated with British humour and wit that you rejoice at their appearance.

You get to eat/drink cream tea. Mmmm…

And then you walk again, you constantly walk around, wondering at the fact that you're there.

And then you just sit in a deep armchair at Blackwell's with a book on your lap for hours, leafing through it, watching people leafing through their choices. You rest, you breathe in England.

Jelena Magoš Kuten