Two weeks after returning from Christmas break, I was greeted by another week off. Well, the university has been calling it a “reading week,” but the students know better than that.

I spent the first half of the week trying to get a hold of a friend who lives in London.

The phone service the university provides me with is very poor. There are something like seven lines in or out of this building that houses some 300 people. Bad form if you ask me. It’s impossible to get a line out at a reasonable hour of the day, but I digress.

Having finally contacted Fran to set up a time to meet next week, I turned to finding something interesting to do with the rest of my “reading week.”

Despite my intentions, I did get a enough reading in to get me through the first couple weeks of the semester without much hassle. I also decided to make a day trip to Bath.

Bath is about 90 minutes away by train and something in the neighborhood of four hours by bus. I spent the extra œ5 and got a train ticket. This was my first time on a train since I arrived in here in September. I was too jet-lagged to fully enjoy my experience this fall but came away from my trip to Bath pretty certain that the railway is the only way to go if you’ve got the extra cash to spend.

The view of the countryside along train tracks seems less obstructed than on the major highways between Exeter and London. Passengers are also given more space on trains, with a table to put stuff on and room to move about. There’s even a little cafe/bar where you can go grab some tea. I was pretty impressed.

I arrived in Bath at 9:00 a.m. and headed toward the Roman bath from which the town got its name. None of the sights opened until 10:00 a.m., so I wandered the streets a bit. From what I read the night before, Bath is known for its Georgian architecture. I really had no clue what that meant, and I am still unsure. The blocks of houses are very symmetrical and easy to get lost in. The differences from one block to another are subtle and usually escaped my detection.

They reminded me of the scene in Edward Scissorhands where all the husbands in suburbia leave their identical houses and go to work at the exact same time. I could just picture all the men of Bath, decked out like Charlie Chaplain, leaving home and walking en masse to work. Or maybe getting on those bicycles with the one tiny wheel and the one huge one. I don’t know if that’s a good way to describe Georgian architecture, but it’s what I thought of while walking through Bath.

I walked back to the city centre and went to the Roman bath museum. The Roman ruins in Bath stand out from those in other parts of Britain, including here in Exeter, because the natural hot spring water was unique and considered to be holy. The Romans decided that the Goddess Minerva must live there and built a temple in her honor. Pilgrims from all reaches of the empire came to bathe in the healing waters of Bath.

Upon hearing this, I decided to make it my mission to have Minerva take a look at my bad thumb. I jammed it tossing around a football with my roommate. It would be awhile before I could get my hand into the soothing waters though, so I walked around and gawked at all of the history.

It’s hard to explain what you feel while standing on the same stones tread upon by legionnaires nearly 2000 years ago. It’s like a surreal A&E theme park. Any minute, I expected to see a promo for next week’s “Biography,” but it never came. It was just me, some random tourists and walls that saw their share of Roman debauchery.

After a very interesting two-hour, self-guided tour, I entered the actual bath room. There were two other guys walking around. We were all trying to dodge the museum employees so we could play in the water a bit. They asked us to refrain from doing so for our own safety.

Right. I’ve got a bruised thumb to heal here. I hadn’t come all this way for nothing. A few minutes later, a group of school kids came crashing through the doors. The attendants turned their attention to keeping the young ones from the water in a vain effort to protect them from whatever evils must be lurking below the surface.

Sensing our chance, the three of us knelt at the side and plunged our hands into the water. It was warm and full of yellow and green algae.

I didn’t have much time to contemplate its properties though, because the school children were all pointing at us and saying, “Heyyyyyy …” in that jealous tone of slighted youth. I decided it would be best to go.

Anyway, my bruise is gone now. It’s still a little sore, though. Bath is a cool place.

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Chris Crouch is a sophomore in political science from Rapid City, Ill.