The MCR organized a day trip to Cambridge, a spin-off of Oxford University that offers higherish education. This trip served also to say farewell to our former MCR President, Mike Clements. Whenever a President’s term comes to its end, we take him to Cambridge to dispose of him. That is where we send our weak and sick too, but the President gets a escort.
We had lunch in The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick announced in 1953 the discovery of the DNA structure. That’s all very well but I wonder what was the contribution of the pub to Watson and Crick’s research that makes the lasagne worth £6.50.
King’s College (below) dwarves even Christ Church, not to talk about Oriel. There are funny stories about students who climb to the roof of the Chapel to hang stuff from the spires. Worth mentioning is the student who assembled a loo on the top.
Gonville & Caius College has 3 gates named Humility, Virtue and Honour. Of course in a College environment the matters of humility, virtue and honour remain strictly academic.
The city is crossed by the River Cam, hence the name of Cambridge.
The entrace of Trinity College boasts a statue of Henry VIIIth, who is royally grasping a chair leg instead of his golden sceptre. This is yet another student prank.
Tourists are told that the apple tree outside the college is the same that Newton enjoyed. Sharp tourists quickly notice that a 300+ year-old tree would probably look older and bigger, though. In fact, this tree was planted some 50 years ago from a seed of the real tree, that is in Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. For the devastated, there is a statue of Newton in the chapel.
Our Cambridge guide, Eva, told us an amusing story about a student prank in Trinity, that may or may not be apocryphal. One student dressed up as a porter, while another one dressed up as a tourist. Both walked in Trinity’s Grand Court, and the “tourist” stepped on the lawn. The “porter” then approached him, produced a gun loaded with blanks and shot him “dead”. Panic ensued in the quad, and both students were sent down.
Punting is a popular activity in the sunny days of Spring and Summer (there are 2 every year). And there’s a story attached to this bridge. Apparently a punt full of Japanese tourists was sweetly gliding towards the bridge. Two students had spray-painted a large block of styrofoam in dark gray as to resemble a rock. As the punt approached they “painstakingly” hosited the rock onto the railings. When the punt was near, they pushed and all the tourists freaked out and jumped into the water, fully dressed and with all of their cameras and bags.
St John’s is another massive College. It has a replica of the Bridge of Sighs of Oxford, which in turn is a replica of the Bridge of Sighs of Venice.
After that we just had time to rush to Queen’s College, have a quick look…
and run back to Clare College (Oriel’s sister college) for the 2nd leg of our exchange dinner.
We played penny, and merry as we were we run to Queen’s to crash a nonexistent party. In the end, a tequila toast to Cambridge!
