Advertisement
Published: October 14th 2008
Edit Blog Post
King's College
This is what you see when you walk under the arch and into the main square of King's College. My weekend with the Greeks and the Geeks is over and I’m back in London. Long story (a bit shorter), a small group of people on my floor were planning on going to Cambridge for the weekend with our friend Panos, who is from Greece. Of course, I’m the only one that followed through. So Panos and I headed to Cambridge on Friday afternoon. We stayed with his friend Eirik, who is also Greek and is at Cambridge University getting his Ph.D in the mathematic theory of blah blah blah. I wrote earlier about the lecture I sat in on. I also want to point out that this lecture was at 10am on a Saturday morning, was not mandatory, would not be tested on and it was still a packed lecture room. What geeks!
But starting from my arrival in Cambridge - very few of you know that I had an experience this summer that made me swear off bikes for good. I’m telling you this because as soon as Panos and I got off the train, Eirik asked if we were ready to get our bikes. I actually made a “HA!” noise and kind of snorted. Panos had not
informed me that biking is the main form of transportation in Cambridge. I told Eirik that I don’t/can’t ride bikes and apologized. Being a nice host, he said it was no problem and that we would just walk. It turned out to be a very long 40 minute walk, but I got to see more of the city than I would have if I was riding a bike, and most importantly, I made it to his apartment alive.
Like Oxford (the arch enemy), Cambridge is made up of many different colleges. Eirik showed us around Cambridge on Friday and the first college we visited was King’s College. Beautiful! But I could tell from the start that I wasn’t going to like everything about Cambridge. No one is allowed to walk on the grass on campus except for fellows. How snooty! And it’s not mowed - every inched is trimmed with scissors.
On Friday I saw the tree that Sir Isaac Newton is rumored to have been sitting under when the apple fell on his head, leading him to develop the Law of Gravity. I also went to the pub where Francis Crick and James Watson supposedly announced their
King's College Chapel
This is a side view of a very large chapel on campus. Eirik told me that the stained-glass windows were so beautiful and valuable to Cambridge that they were actually taken down during the war incase Cambridge should be bombed. discovery of DNA. No big deal.
We ate dinner at the dinning hall at Churchill College and then went out to a pub called “The Anchor” which is right on the Cam River. People needed bridges to get over the water, hence the name Cambridge. Clever. A third Greek met up with us at the pub. His name is Dioneses. With Panos, Eirik and Dioneses, I was feeling very cultured. I spent part of the night learning how to correctly pronounce the name of my sorority (Alpha Xi Delta) and convincing them that most sororities are not like the ones you see in the movies! Halfway through the night, they asked if I wanted to go to a party hosted by the Greek community at Cambridge. I was really nervous about going because I knew I was going to stick out like a sore thumb but then I remembered that I have a Marquette shirt promoting Greek life that says “I’m Greek!” So I went in with that attitude but the party was pretty much over. There were about a dozen Greeks there, eating ham and cheese sandwiches…boring and weird.
Eirik took us punting on Saturday. A punt
Punting
Eirik, Panos and I punting down the Cam. is a small, skinny boat that is used on rivers. It’s different from a gondola in that it is not driven with an oar. Instead the punter uses a long wooden pole and propels the boat by pushing the pole against the river bed and steers the boat by moving the pole to the left or right. We brought wine, cheese, crackers and grapes and enjoyed a little afternoon snack punting down the Cam River.
We went to a Japanese restaurant that night where I met even more Greeks. Talk about culture shock! Honestly though, it was the first experience where I felt completely out of my comfort zone. I was sitting on the floor, without shoes, eating sushi with chopsticks and listening to everyone around me speak Greek. By then the excitement of listening to my friend speak Greek had run out and I was feeling a little excluded. However, Dioneses really made an effort to keep me in the conversation by talking to his friends in English, even if they respond in Greek. It helped. After sushi, we went to a pub, where I realized again that I should really brush up on my Greek. But then
Punting
This is what the Cam looks like from the punt. The river is always crowded but it's fun to watch all of the other inexperienced punters get stuck or crash into other punts. I heard a very strong New York accent from the table next to me! There was a group of Americans who just came to Cambridge to get their Ph.Ds. The girl was from Rockford, Illinois where Anthony (one of the Marquette students here) is from. One of the guys is from Madison, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee) and the New Yorker took a road trip around the country to go to different ballparks and was in Kansas City for a Royals game at the end of the summer! So we talked about Chicago, Milwaukee, the Brewers and the Royals and my night really turned around.
Yesterday we went to lunch at the dining hall at Trinity College and it looked exactly like the dining hall in Harry Potter! I swear, I thought I was at Hogwarts - there were portraits of former professors on the walls, chandeliers and a table in front reserved for faculty only. But I later learned that the dining hall in the Harry Potter movies is supposedly an exact replica of one at Notre Dame. How disappointing!
I’m planning on actually staying in town this coming weekend because there is so much in London that I
My Attempt
This is my attempt to punt. I only lasted about 2 minutes and the punt was stuck in some over-hanging trees for most of the time. haven’t even seen. Thanks for reading!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0459s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb