A week in Cambridge

Cambridge from the river

I've been to Cambridge a couple of times and always wondered how fun it would be to study in a student town as pretty as Cambridge. Where there are people in the same stage of life all around, student related activities around the year and everything is geared to making the life of a student fun and comfortable. Its something I would love to experience this as my studying experience was different and I studied in much smaller campuses. I never got a chance to do it till now but this summer I was in Cambridge for a week on a work training. And I think I can say that it kind off did fulfil part of my wish;-).

While in Cambridge I stayed in Downing College which is located close to the city centre. All our sessions during the week were in their auditorium and we spent a lot of time in their grounds. It seemed like a pretty college with lot of green grounds and space to move around. It also had an interesting history of how it came into existence after tens of years of negotiations between the benefactor 's will and his wife's relatives:). But so do most of the colleges around:).

I have written about this earlier also that work travel isn't always the perfect way to explore a place and I felt the same even now. We spent full days in trainings with further events planned in the evenings. So we did not get any spare time to ourselves and I don't feel that I know Cambridge fully.

All our events were around the central area, in the Kings College, the Guildhall and nearby places. We spent all our time in this area but I did get out of the planned stuff a couple of evenings and spent time walking around which I really enjoyed. Of the 3 evenings I was there, I went out punting two of the evenings and walked around the colleges on the third. I wish the weather had been better but then its the UK and you can never expect too much:).

Punting in the river

Punting is something very specific to Cambridge - it is essentially boating on a wooden raft using a long punt instead of an oar. The punt is a huge long rod which is used to push the ground behind the boat and hence it is much slower and tougher than using an oar. Learning how to punt takes longer as you need to learn to efficiently maneuver the raft just by pushing it!! Also therefore punting can be done only in places with a shallow river.

It was all very very idyllic, the whole punting experience. With you drifting away between the colleges on both sides while the punter is telling you stories of a different era. And if the weather is great, this is an ideal way to relax and explore Cambridge.

The punt ride was for about 45 mins along the river Cam (that's where the name Cambridge came from!!) and the punters (is that what they are called?) give the tourists a history lesson on Cambridge. On both the punt rides we did, the stories were different, though not really inconsistent:-). The punters mostly told us about the history of the four main colleges on either side of the river - Kings College, Clare College, Trinity Hall and St Johns.

Cambridge was setup in the 1800s after a riot erupted in Oxford between the scholars and the local villagers. The Oxford scholars then came to Cambridge which was then a centre of religious studies and started the Cambridge university. Given their past history, they setup the university on the other side of the river Cam to protect them from the villagers:) in case more riots erupted in the future;-).

Stephen Hawking's office

There are some 30-40 Colleges in the University and all of them have a long and interesting history. They are all huge, with their own chapels, huge dining rooms, college grounds, student accommodation etc.. In fact, a lot of these colleges were used as sets for shooting the Harry Potter movies. Students get admitted to the University of Cambridge and then apply to stay in one of its many colleges. The Colleges are prestigious in their own rights as they have their own tutors who teach the students personally and are responsible for them doing well. No wonder, of the 90 Nobel prize winners from the UK, Cambridge produced 32 of them!

The punters shared loads of stories with us, some true and some not that much:). I will just mention the ones I found interesting.

Kings College: The Kings College is the prettiest of the colleges on the river and the most photographed one too. Its chapel and neighbouring buildings are typically used as the symbol of Cambridge. It has historically been where all the rich students used to study as its quite expensive. For a long time, it was a finishing College for the rich (especially students from Eton) but now has started admitting up to 60% students from public schools (Given that the national average for public schools is at 93%, it is still a rich man's college). We had our first day's welcome drinks in the open grounds of the College as well as our welcome dinner. It was the perfect introduction to Cambridge, starting at such a picturesque location.

Kings College

The Kings College also has an interesting part to play in some of the wars - it became the centre of the Civil War when Lord Cornwall used the cathedral for housing his horses and soldiers. And then during the World War, it faced a lot of bombing and therefore its stained glass windows were taken down and stored safely to keep them safe till after the war!

Trinity Hall: Apparently it is the richest college in Cambridge and owns lands across the world including in Wall Street. It was setup by the King Henry VIII of England when he decided to setup the Church of England. He wanted it to be a non-religious place of study and made it the biggest and richest in Cambridge. He even took aways lands from the Catholic schools to make it so. And that's the reasons that it till date has a deep rivalry with St Johns College which was catholic till a long time later.

Trinity Hall

Trinity Hall has one of the most impressive alumni list. Newton studied here as did Stephen Hawking,  Tennyson, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi. Or for that matter, even Prince Charles. Though he came in with a letter from his mother to admit him to the College! Its said he was an average student and his bodyguards who also had to take the exam to be with him in the examination room got better grades that him;-).

We walked around inside the college too and it was grand and majestic from inside. When you enter, you see the grounds and all around the various halls and chapel - what a tranquil place it would be to study and think! Trinity Hall is also famous for its Wren library which houses Newton's first book, the first English published Bible as well as Shakespeare's hand-written books among a host of other rare books. We did not get a chance to see it but would be nice to see them. The British Library in London also houses some such rare manuscripts and would be nice to have a look at them too sometime!

St Johns College: Just opposite Trinity Hall is the St Johns College which I found the prettiest of them all. The College is grand from the outside almost looking like a wedding cake:). We walked in the grounds outside and found it very majestic. What fun it must be to study in a location like this:). The backside of the building is quite ugly though, made of bricks unlike the stone in the front as this was the part where all the servants used to stay. The College has now grown Virginia creepers all over the walls to cover the ugly backside.

St Johns

The College is also famous for its 'bridge of sighs' across the river Cam which students would cross to get their marksheets and hence the sighs. The bridge of sigh is present in multiple locations around the world like the original in Venice and copies each in Oxford, Venetian in Las Vegas and a prison in Pennsylvania. Also just behind the College is an addition to the college, a building which was designed by a computer and therefore so terrible, that its known as the Carpark building! The difference between the two is so stark, its not funny at all!

St John remained a Christian College and was the seat of religious learning for a long time. But then Trinity Hall took over some of the sheen from it;-). St Johns and Trinity since then have a lot of rivalry between them. In fact, in a sporting competition, the St Johns rowing team hit the Trinity Hall rowing boat with a spike to destroy them and have not been allowed to compete in sports since then. The punter also told some story on how something related to St Johns was the inspiration for the 007 books but I have forgotten what the logic was. Lastly a famous alumni of the school is Manmohan Singh, the ex Prime Minister of India (just felt like mentioning this random fact!).

Clare College: Next to Kings College is Clare's College. It was founded by a famous lady of the 17th century, xxx who was the richest woman in all Europe at that time. She had married three times to wealthy husbands and they all mysteriously died. So as they said, 'she bought her way into heaven after committing crimes in her life on Earth':). The College is again very pretty and its famous for its garden which has plants from across the world - including a banana tree - the only one in Europe and which has grown a banana only once (in 2008!).

Clare College gardens

On the River Cam is located a Mathematical bridge which apparently was built by Newton without using any nuts and bolts! And when others tried to take it apart and put it back together, they were not able to do it without bolts. Though the truth is that it was built by Newton's students many years after he was gone and the bolts were of such a colour that they were not visible because of which the story came about. And so its not true!

We also learnt two other random facts on the punt ride - Cambridge professors are the only ones in UK who can legally eat swans from the river other than the queen herself. Also the University library is quite huge and apparently holds every book published in UK ever! There were loads of many such random stories about Cambridge which the punters told us. To hear about them, you should try punting yourself some day:).

Anyways, for me the rest of the week was spent attending all the work events. We had dinners in the University Grounds, ate at Revolution Bar, Don Pasquale, All Bar One and where all, walked around the market square which offers good shopping and generally had a great time relaxing around. There were Shakespeare plays being enacted at a lot of places, lot of Churches around and so much peace and silence around - as I said, would love to study here sometime!