The Strangest Place I Have Ever Eaten Fudge
I have a good many travel stories, having grown up with a fairly bohemian, nomadic family. On the day that this story takes place, my dear friend Jacob Moore asked me what my craziest travel story is. That day ended up being one of them.
The fall semester of my third year at Rhodes, I studied abroad in Europe. One of the most trying and wonderful times of my life. The program put us atop a mountain in Sewanee, TN for three weeks, in an Oxford College established in the 15th century for six weeks, and traveling continental Europe for six weeks. While at Oxford, we took three condensed courses divided up into two halves, the three courses being Medieval and Renaissance Art, History, and Literature. The modus operandi of the 'euro studs' is to spend a good deal of time working on classes and a great deal of time experiencing British culture and life (keep in mind that this was pre-Brexit, you know, when Britain was a part of Europe). Oxford is a beautiful, magical place, and many of Lincoln College's amenities were ours for the taking.
One afternoon, I was sitting atop a table in the Oakeshott room studying. Unimportant but anecdotal for our story's purposes, the Oakeshott room is a large wood-paneled room with a wall-and-a-half of glass looking onto one of the college's private gardens of green grass, pink roses, and classic English architecture. Jacob and I were studying for our Renaissance Art History exam taking place in a week. During a short break, Jacob found two student-priced tickets for Hamilton in London's West End for the night before our exam. Because we were hedonistic international students at the front end of our budgets, we purchased the tickets and figured we would 'work the rest out later.'
The day of the show, our schedule was tight. We went straight from our last lecture in the evening to the Oxford train station. On the way, I had a single-minded goal of reaching the train on time–until I passed the Fudge Kitchen on High Street. A dark chocolate sea salt fudge block was purchased in haste and carefully stowed in my raincoat pocket while we speed-walked over the bridge. This train took us to the London Underground where we emerged directly in front of the theatre bearing the black and yellow dazzling sign that we had been waiting so long to see. With an unexpected hour to spare, we were enticed by a tiny Italian man with an Italian-sized mustache to eat dinner in his tiny Italian restaurant. Starving intellectuals as we were, the cheap dinner and overzealous glasses of wine led to our happily inhaling the flavours of Italy before excitedly planting ourselves in the fifth row of the theatre, high on life. We were ready to bask in the glory of a hip-hop musical about the American Revolutionary War played out by an entirely British cast as a majority-British audience cackled at how an American musical-writer made fun of an English king. But I digress.
After the show was over, Jacob and I wiped our tears, genuflected to the stage briefly, and dashed out of the theatre to reach our train back to Oxford in time. Upon arrival at the Underground station, there seemed to be more people than usual. Which is an odd sensation for London. Confused and feeling profoundly expatriate, Jacob and I asked a random woman what the trouble was. Turns out that most of the lines were not running that night, and instead our best option was to take the circle line around the majority of its circle to reach Paddington station and get on our train. With no time for critical thinking and blind trust in this woman's knowledge of public transit, we took the circle line and arrived with about thirty seconds to spare on the train headed back to Oxford. It was 11:30 p.m. Jacob and I sighed with relief and high fived as we took seats separated by a few rows.
The train lurched out of the station and I thought about how we would be cutting it fairly close for enough sleep to justify such an excursion before a 9 a.m. exam in our Art History class. But I closed my eyes against the flickering fluorescent lights which often give me a headache, and figured that it was all worth it watching King George get ridiculed by an audience of Brits. We slowed at our second stop on the train's journey and a few passengers got off. After a few minutes of wondering how long Hamilton songs would be stuck in my head, I opened my eyes. And I noticed. That we had been at this stop for longer than normal. I looked around at other passengers who seemed unbothered by the whole thing and figured that it was just anxiety or neuroticism. I closed my eyes for another few minutes until I picked up a conversation that a French couple behind me was having. «C'est normal?» «Je sais pas! Suis-je Anglais?» I noticed that another few of the train passengers were beginning to metaphorically scratch their heads at this long stop. After five more minutes, people were literally scratching their heads. I glanced out the window at the platform and noticed a few more people exiting the train. It was now midnight.
It was then that my eyes caught the platform sign. One of those that gives you a couple scrolling words in succession in one line. My eyes widened as the message unfolded: Train delayed until 3:00 a.m. at the latest due to person hit by the train. The Brits have a pretty dark sense of humor, but not when it comes to public transit. I read the message a few times just to verify. It did not change. Many thoughts went through my head, including, but not limited to: How did the train hit a person? How badly did the train his a person? Did they die? How do you not die getting hit by a train? Wait oh my- what if it was suicide? Is this normal? That guy just said it's normal!! What the–
I leaned up a few rows to Jacob's blonde head and relayed the message. I learned after a few months of traveling with this man that his panic response is to state in a relatively cheery tone that he is panicking and to pace around about 20 feet away from his travel buddies. So this is where we ended up half an hour later. Some of the other passengers on the train heard me relay the message to Jacob and entered their subsequent coping mechanisms. Strangely enough, most of them seemed to involve falling asleep and/or sauntering off the train in search of a pub. The French, of course, left complaining in rapid dialogue and consulting a paper map.
I texted one of my friends back at Oxford until my phone died. Then I took a little nap. Went through the shock and denial stages of mourning any possibility of doing well on my exam. Entered the stage of anger where I decided that if the train took off without Jacob this was fine with me. We tried calling the King of European Studies, Stevens, who complained that we woke him up and pointed out that there is nothing he can physically do about this and welcome to real life kids. It was sometime after this and finding the slightly more comfortable position on a train seat that I felt something in my pocket and I remembered. My FUDGE. I do not lie when I say that I have most likely never looked more frightening; devouring a chunk of fudge on a train at 2:00 a.m. with twitching eyes, smudged mascara, and Italian food on my skirt, yelling at the window "You can just leave Jacob here, it's fine!"
Eventually, at precisely 2:15 a.m, the train grinded to a start on the way back to Oxford. I cackled in celebration and clapped my chocolate-stained hands before passing right back out in our now-empty train car. Jacob and I arrived back in Oxford around 3:00, and in true English fashion, as soon as we left the train station it starts pouring. So we walk. Two distressed theatre-goers contemplating our exam taking place in six hours. Through the wet, cobblestone streets of Oxford to Lincoln College. The Porter laughed at us (Porters sit in the gate-house of the colleges at all hours for safety, entertainment, and occasional mockery when the situation merits it). When we walked back to Grove Quad where the student rooms are, we passed the computer room where another euro stud, Emerson, was up studying. We creaked open the door, soaked wet, mascara running, splattered with red wine and smelling of death. Emerson, completely dry and studious, had nothing to say except "Was the show good at least?"
I did wake up for the exam the next morning. And our evening made for an excellent teatime story.
The fall semester of my third year at Rhodes, I studied abroad in Europe. One of the most trying and wonderful times of my life. The program put us atop a mountain in Sewanee, TN for three weeks, in an Oxford College established in the 15th century for six weeks, and traveling continental Europe for six weeks. While at Oxford, we took three condensed courses divided up into two halves, the three courses being Medieval and Renaissance Art, History, and Literature. The modus operandi of the 'euro studs' is to spend a good deal of time working on classes and a great deal of time experiencing British culture and life (keep in mind that this was pre-Brexit, you know, when Britain was a part of Europe). Oxford is a beautiful, magical place, and many of Lincoln College's amenities were ours for the taking.
One afternoon, I was sitting atop a table in the Oakeshott room studying. Unimportant but anecdotal for our story's purposes, the Oakeshott room is a large wood-paneled room with a wall-and-a-half of glass looking onto one of the college's private gardens of green grass, pink roses, and classic English architecture. Jacob and I were studying for our Renaissance Art History exam taking place in a week. During a short break, Jacob found two student-priced tickets for Hamilton in London's West End for the night before our exam. Because we were hedonistic international students at the front end of our budgets, we purchased the tickets and figured we would 'work the rest out later.'
The day of the show, our schedule was tight. We went straight from our last lecture in the evening to the Oxford train station. On the way, I had a single-minded goal of reaching the train on time–until I passed the Fudge Kitchen on High Street. A dark chocolate sea salt fudge block was purchased in haste and carefully stowed in my raincoat pocket while we speed-walked over the bridge. This train took us to the London Underground where we emerged directly in front of the theatre bearing the black and yellow dazzling sign that we had been waiting so long to see. With an unexpected hour to spare, we were enticed by a tiny Italian man with an Italian-sized mustache to eat dinner in his tiny Italian restaurant. Starving intellectuals as we were, the cheap dinner and overzealous glasses of wine led to our happily inhaling the flavours of Italy before excitedly planting ourselves in the fifth row of the theatre, high on life. We were ready to bask in the glory of a hip-hop musical about the American Revolutionary War played out by an entirely British cast as a majority-British audience cackled at how an American musical-writer made fun of an English king. But I digress.
After the show was over, Jacob and I wiped our tears, genuflected to the stage briefly, and dashed out of the theatre to reach our train back to Oxford in time. Upon arrival at the Underground station, there seemed to be more people than usual. Which is an odd sensation for London. Confused and feeling profoundly expatriate, Jacob and I asked a random woman what the trouble was. Turns out that most of the lines were not running that night, and instead our best option was to take the circle line around the majority of its circle to reach Paddington station and get on our train. With no time for critical thinking and blind trust in this woman's knowledge of public transit, we took the circle line and arrived with about thirty seconds to spare on the train headed back to Oxford. It was 11:30 p.m. Jacob and I sighed with relief and high fived as we took seats separated by a few rows.
The train lurched out of the station and I thought about how we would be cutting it fairly close for enough sleep to justify such an excursion before a 9 a.m. exam in our Art History class. But I closed my eyes against the flickering fluorescent lights which often give me a headache, and figured that it was all worth it watching King George get ridiculed by an audience of Brits. We slowed at our second stop on the train's journey and a few passengers got off. After a few minutes of wondering how long Hamilton songs would be stuck in my head, I opened my eyes. And I noticed. That we had been at this stop for longer than normal. I looked around at other passengers who seemed unbothered by the whole thing and figured that it was just anxiety or neuroticism. I closed my eyes for another few minutes until I picked up a conversation that a French couple behind me was having. «C'est normal?» «Je sais pas! Suis-je Anglais?» I noticed that another few of the train passengers were beginning to metaphorically scratch their heads at this long stop. After five more minutes, people were literally scratching their heads. I glanced out the window at the platform and noticed a few more people exiting the train. It was now midnight.
It was then that my eyes caught the platform sign. One of those that gives you a couple scrolling words in succession in one line. My eyes widened as the message unfolded: Train delayed until 3:00 a.m. at the latest due to person hit by the train. The Brits have a pretty dark sense of humor, but not when it comes to public transit. I read the message a few times just to verify. It did not change. Many thoughts went through my head, including, but not limited to: How did the train hit a person? How badly did the train his a person? Did they die? How do you not die getting hit by a train? Wait oh my- what if it was suicide? Is this normal? That guy just said it's normal!! What the–
I leaned up a few rows to Jacob's blonde head and relayed the message. I learned after a few months of traveling with this man that his panic response is to state in a relatively cheery tone that he is panicking and to pace around about 20 feet away from his travel buddies. So this is where we ended up half an hour later. Some of the other passengers on the train heard me relay the message to Jacob and entered their subsequent coping mechanisms. Strangely enough, most of them seemed to involve falling asleep and/or sauntering off the train in search of a pub. The French, of course, left complaining in rapid dialogue and consulting a paper map.
I texted one of my friends back at Oxford until my phone died. Then I took a little nap. Went through the shock and denial stages of mourning any possibility of doing well on my exam. Entered the stage of anger where I decided that if the train took off without Jacob this was fine with me. We tried calling the King of European Studies, Stevens, who complained that we woke him up and pointed out that there is nothing he can physically do about this and welcome to real life kids. It was sometime after this and finding the slightly more comfortable position on a train seat that I felt something in my pocket and I remembered. My FUDGE. I do not lie when I say that I have most likely never looked more frightening; devouring a chunk of fudge on a train at 2:00 a.m. with twitching eyes, smudged mascara, and Italian food on my skirt, yelling at the window "You can just leave Jacob here, it's fine!"
Eventually, at precisely 2:15 a.m, the train grinded to a start on the way back to Oxford. I cackled in celebration and clapped my chocolate-stained hands before passing right back out in our now-empty train car. Jacob and I arrived back in Oxford around 3:00, and in true English fashion, as soon as we left the train station it starts pouring. So we walk. Two distressed theatre-goers contemplating our exam taking place in six hours. Through the wet, cobblestone streets of Oxford to Lincoln College. The Porter laughed at us (Porters sit in the gate-house of the colleges at all hours for safety, entertainment, and occasional mockery when the situation merits it). When we walked back to Grove Quad where the student rooms are, we passed the computer room where another euro stud, Emerson, was up studying. We creaked open the door, soaked wet, mascara running, splattered with red wine and smelling of death. Emerson, completely dry and studious, had nothing to say except "Was the show good at least?"
I did wake up for the exam the next morning. And our evening made for an excellent teatime story.
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