Cambridge, as most of y'all probably know, is a famous university in britain, with a nice college town around it. Cambridge University is divided into 28 colleges, vaguely like the Claremont College system, but really very different. Unlike the Claremont colleges, where a college handles housing, food, classes, and almost everything else, a Cambridge college is more of a social division. Your college is responsible for your food, housing, and well being, plus your various social clubs (sounds normal) but not your classes. Huh? That's right, lectures are done by departments, which are seperate from the colleges, and the departments are subdivisions of the University. So while colleges sometimes have a bias towards a particular field of study, they have a mix of majors. Colleges have anywhere between 20 and 1000 undergraduates, and the University as a whole has about 15,000 students (grad & undergrad).

Right, on to other cambridge tidbits. Their river, the Cam (thus Cam-bridge), is rather narrow, but yet they want to do rowing despite the existence of bottlenecks where only one boat will fit at a time. So the way they race is that the boats, of which I think there are 10-12 in each set and multiple sets in each race, start in whatever order they are ranked, so the first boat is first, and so on. So you have the boats in division 1, then the boats in division 2, and so forth. They have some preset number of boat lengths between each boat. They then all start racing at once. If you can manage to catch the boat in front of you and bump its stern, both boats pull over to the side, and your ranks are exchanged for the next match. Thus its called the bumps. Sounds exciting? Yes, but thereUs more! Imagine you are rowing along, and the boat in front of you bumps the boat in front of it. They get to switch, but now they are out of the race. So you have lots of water ahead of you, which is discouraging, but after all of that water is a boat who is ranked three places ahead of you! So if you can manage to catch him, you go up more ranks. So you have occsional cases where several pairs of boats will bump out, and the boat ahead of them will be like 20 lengths ahead of the boat behind them, so they start rowing a bit sluggishly, go round a bend, and when they next see their frantic pursuers, the lead is down to 5 lengths and their pursuers have momentum and they don't. If you can manage to go up either 4 or more than 4 places (it was unclear), the boat is presented with a specially painted oar with your names on it and such.

Now the person I was visiting in Cambridge was Nicole, an old acquaintance who I hadn't seen in 4 years and had only known for a total of a few weeks, but my infinite presumption would never let that get in the way of a free room and tour guide. To be more accurate, I must add that the few weeks we knew each other was over a period of several years, and we have exchanged copious quantities of email over the years, which makes it a bit better. She is finishing up (hopefully - stop reading email and get back to work, Nicole!) her thesis for a PhD in biochem, and her boyfriend Toby, who was charming and intelligent, is there for astrophysics. More importantly than their majors is their colleges: Nicole goes to Trinity, and Toby to St. Johns (two of the most famous), which means they could take me to see all sorts of wonderful places that tourists aren't allowed to go. The University didn't seem particularly interested in tourists, regarding them as a nuisance that gets in the way of day to day life, so random visitors are barred from going past the college gates. To be fair, I was told, and later confirmed by experiment, that as long as one looks like a student, doesn't have a camera, doesn't gawk at the buildings, and looks like one knows where one is going, one can just walk around with impunity, but no amount of brashness or boldness of that sort will get one to the top of the St. Johns Chapel tower - a task rendered easy by a St. Johns College member and his associated identification card.

Although I am told that the longer one attends Cambridge, the more one gets used to being surrounded by magnificence, I found it spectacular. The University is dripping with money, I am told that at one time a couple hundred years ago, Trinity College (only one college in the university) was the third largest landowner in the country - after the Church and the Queen. Thanks to the skyrocketing value of land in Britain, that translates now to vast quantities of cold, hard cash. Anyway, I won't bother to describe the buildings - they are the sort of thing that are meant to be seen in person, not in pictures or books, and certainly not in words.

On Friday we went punting, a common student pastime. A punt is a small, shallow boat, perhaps 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. On a low platform in the rear stands the brave punter, who uses a long pole to propel the boat. A paddle is also provided, but its mostly for fending off walls and going to get dropped poles. Friday was a gorgeous day, the first reasonable weather since I got to europe, and apparently englandUs first in about three weeks, so the town and I were united in our appreciation of the golden afternoon. The river was naturally filled with punts, some of them propeled by students, others by professionals or students giving tours for money. In the punts were people of all ages, although the vast majority were of course students. A large number of the students had wine or beer with them, and the atmosphere was mellow and festive. After taking a long ride up the river, I got to punt a little on the way back. I had quite a bit of trouble at first, having foolishly taken over just before a crowded bit. A couple of other boats had messed up and gotten tangled, and as a novice I added to the trouble. After a minute or two, though, everyone had gotten faced the right direction and gone on their way. With the river clear, I began to do much better. While I could not push off straight, and had to keep steering the boat back to true (which one does by dragging the pole and using it as a rudder), I managed to avoid any major mistakes, didn't fall off the platform, and had a wonderful time.

After punting, my friends had some things to do, so I borrowed an Agatha Christie book, got a bag of ice and a couple of cans of cider, and went and sat by the river, drinking my chilled cider and reading. There were lots of students there doing the same, reading and chatting, most of them with beer or wine. There seems to be a lot of low-key alcohol consumption here, its a much more social thing, less stigmatized than it is in the states. Not that they don't go get drunk on friday nights and wander through the streets singingly football songs loudly and badly, but on the whole, moderate drinking seems to be much more a part of day to day life here, which is (in my opinion) a Good Thing. One note of interest - according to the inside cover of the book (perhaps not the most reliable source) Agatha Christie books rank third after the Bible and Shakespeare in terms of total sales for english language books.

Next, Toby proved himself invaluable as a college member as well as a host by taking Nicole and I and a couple of their friends to the top of the St. John's Chapel Tower. Let me emphasize that this is *not* something that random tourists get to do. Wow. The stairs are reached by a tiny door at the bottom, and are circular and very small, with a radius about the width of my shoulders. Because the spiral is so tight, ones shoulders are not actually positioned going across the stairs, so it wasn't an actual squeeze, but it was quite a small space. The stairs were darkish, with occasional arrow-slit type windows providing some light, as well as periodic views of the retreating earth. The tower is one of the highest points in Cambridge, and the view was amazing. Cambridge is an ancient town, full of churches and magnificent buildings, and from the tower one could see them all. We spent at least a half hour up there, looking, with Toby giving me a guided aerial tour of the area. It was awesome, and if any of you ever get the chance and know a St. John's college member, I highly recommend the climb.

After dinner and a visit to the pub, we crashed, having to get up at eight the next morning so I could get on a bus to the airport. It is now Saturday here and I am in Milan, awaiting the arrival of Treasa's flight. I have used the cellular connection at the airport in britain, and here, and it works wonderfully. While I was in england, I just used my hosts' modem, since landlines are much cheaper and I could actually look stuff up on the web and other time-intensive activities.

Another story about Cambridge: there seems to be a fairly enthusiastic climbing club, which results in some amusing pranks. Once they hung a flag or traffic cone or something from a metal pole sticking up from a high wall in a very inaccessible place. So the authorities, rather than being intelligent and asking the climbing club to remove it, began to build scaffolding. Day by day, it reached higher, coming closer and closer to the offending object. Finally, it was almost there, with only a few more hours of work needed. The next day dawned, and to the authorities chagrin, the object had moved to the next pole over, rendering the scaffolding useless. This time, they were smart, and got the club to take it down.

I should mention the World Cup. Some of you may not realize this, but the World Cup, which is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, is happening during June and July. Football is the most popular sport in the world, and unlike the US which has its Big Four of hockey, basketball, baseball, and american football, there is nothing which rivals football in popularity. Add to that the fact that the world cup happens only once every 4 years, and you end up with several continents full of hundreds of millions of raving lunatics. England, with a population of 60 million, had 17 million people tune in to watch their first game (which ended in a 2-0 victory). Standing in Brighton during the game, every time something exciting happened I would hear shouts from all the nearby pubs (which were plentiful, this being Britain). The same was true in Amsterdam, where I was during their first world cup game. There is a hilarious serious of ads in Britain parodying the situation. Each has a gorgeous woman, and the text says things like "It seems like every man around is busy watching the game. I'm so lonely.", and "My boyfriend doesn't care about anyone but [famous england footballer]", with the subtext at the bottom saying "The World Cup - your greatest opportunity ever".

Anyway, i need to find out why Treasa's connecting flight, scheduled to arrive at 4:20, is listed as not getting in till 7. It doesn't sound like it has even left england yet. Argh.

P.S. It is sunday morning, and Treasa and I are waiting for the train to Imola, where the Heinekin music festival, and hopefully Tori Amos, are.

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