Cambridge Day Out

Cambridge. The farthest I have ever been from London so far! Our usual trio (Anil, Charles and self) went there during the Christmas holidays this year. For those of you who are interested, let me tell you now that Cambridge visiting season is summer, or late summer preferably. And that is true for almost anything to see in England. But winters here are boring and you need something to do.

Hence Cambridge. The best and cheapest way from London is via the National Express Rail and it takes you about an hour at the most to cover the 52 miles between the King’s Cross and Cambridge. You should pre-book your tickets to avail of any discounts or offers that are running around. Usually there is always something to be found if you look hard enough!
Cambridge is a day’s trip. We left the King’s Cross at 10:15am on the 27th of December 2010. And within an hour we were standing in front of the Cambridge station. It was quite chilly but luckily there was no hard wind. They always make matters worse. So we were standing in front of the station not knowing what to do and then we bought a guide map from the guide-map-vending machine. Cost us a pound. We figured out our north from our south next and headed out into the city.


Cambridge is not a big city. And you can manage by walking. We did. The tourist bus rides may sound tempting but they are costly for those who are not plush. The station is at the south-east corner of the city and all universities or major sight-seeing fall on the north-north-western side. We first went to the city centre with big malls and shopping complexes. Sale was on and the place was throbbing. We judged that we were cold (and the walk from the station had made us pretty uncomfortable) and needed something hot inside. We had our lunch at wagamama, tried Japanese wine ‘sake’. And so full we set out once again.


Punting in Cambridge is a must. And we were so very glad that is was still open in winter. Graduate students from the university give you a boat ride in the Cambridge river, locally known as the college river, and give you the facts and fictions that surround the great halls of this old and rich place. Our punter was a young graduate from York who’d come to Cambridge during holidays to earn some extra cash. We, a group of about 10 people, were made cosy in the small boat with quilts and hot-water bags. We sat at the head of the boat. Facing us was a really cute Taiwanese couple (I have been guilty of taking snaps of the girl more than once, but in my defence, the chill made her nose red and she was quite a sight :)). And further down were a Korean and a German family.


The punter hit us with little stories of the different halls on the Cambridge grounds; starting from the splendour of the King’s and Queen’s College to the not-so-cute Pembroke College and the bitter rivalry between Trinity and St. John’s Colleges, the history of the bridges on the river, their perfections (mathematical bridge) and imperfections (missing-a-section Clare Bridge), the tragic story of beautiful Elizabeth-de-Clare, who had three husbands, all of whom died soon after their marriage to her, and that the black widow derives its name from her, of present day not-so-smart graduates who'd crawl the roofs of King's College (the tallest structure within Cambridge bounds) and place souvenirs on the tower-heads.

All this was a pretty heavy dose of history and the graduate knew his audience well. We finally disembarked near the Anchor pub, which is rumoured to have had Pink Floyd artist Syd Barrett as a frequenter in the late 60’s and serves the best ale in the city. We then continued our journey on foot and visited the St. John’s and Trinity College grounds. While at Queen’s college on the Bridge of Sighs we witnessed something wonderful. A couple were marrying on a boat mid-stream.

It then became late and as it was getting dark we made for the station. We had a train to catch at 5:15pm. We were exhausted by the time we got home and I had a sound sleep.

A fortunate misfortune

Flight EK005 took off from Dubai International Airport at 4:30 pm (local time), a 300plus passenger boeing-777 flight, with all intentions of making it to LHR by nightfall. But someone somewhere must have had other plans. And so when the plane touched down in Hamburg at 8:00 pm in the middle of all that snow and an outside temperature of -9oC I cursed my fate for letting me being caught up in all this. They speak of it as the worst snow in a hundred years. And I did not, from the moment I came down the aircraft, feel that it was going to be amusing. The Germans were hospitable enough to take us in but we still had to go through a very rigorous administration process that took up 4 hours. They initiated some kind of paper visa with 48hr validity. Then there was talk of us being put up in the Marriott for the night. This brightened people up a bit. The next flight would be for 3:45pm the next day. Sad as it is the person in front of me in the queue was the last to be booked into Marriott. I and all who followed were put up in a smaller but neat motel. Once there I had a hot bath and fell asleep.


In the morning when we were having breakfast news spread that snow had made it impossible for Heathrow to operate and that the flight would have to be further delayed. As if things were not already bad! I refused to be stuck in the motel with German TV and no laptop charge. The motel lobby had some 30 people gathered for breakfast. Soon people began clustering into groups, based on colour and culture. After lunch our little group moved out in a cab to see the city. The cab driver was an Iranian and luckily one of us spoke Parsi and we convinced him to take as around the city for 10€ per person. It was a nice little trip in the glum streets of west Germany. The large bare iron and burnt brick structures seemed to bear visages of the past, from the time of the World Wars. I had never seen so much snow and it was delightful. We stopped by the neat little houses and took snaps.



Then we drove down a once-lush-now-bare-and-white boulevard to a lake that had been completely frozen. The famous Alster was now like a huge ice rink and little Christmas carnivals had sprung up on its banks. There was this huge Christmas tree that stood in the middle of the lake, sparkling in all its glory. We drove round the big lake and saw the monstrous train stations of Hamburg. These structures seemed so solid that nothing but nukes would dent them. German engineering!


Thrilled and shivering we came back to our hotel in the evening. The night buffet was more tempting than the lunch had been. We had a small chat after dinner and then we slept. Good news was in store as we woke up the next morning and we left Hamburg airport at 11:30am bound for Birmingham. Yes, Heathrow was still closed. We had coaches that took us from Birmingham to LHR and finally when I got to my apartment it was 7:00pm Monday. I had left home on Saturday 7:00am from Kolkata and that made it a total of 2 days and 18 hrs of flight time! But I am glad that all this happened. Made some great friends and saw a city that would normally be out of my itinerary.
After all,
“Whatever is, is best!”
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

And the longest break that I've ever taken since I got working ends today. I cannot say how the two weeks went by before I could actually take any initiative to begin enjoying them! Much like me (smile).