A day in Cambridge
I am here in the UK on business. Arrived the morning of 17th. So are three colleagues of mine - the DBA, the Punjabi and the Naxal.
On insistence of the Punjabi, yesterday, on the 24th of November 2019, we visited Cambridge - the university town. The Naxal had personal business and couldn't join.
It was quite a visit and I learnt a lot about that place. It was fun - though most of the time towards the evening it was me insisting to return - much to the annoyance of the other two.
The initial plan was for me to join the Punjabi at Finsbury Park and then hop on the train coming from Brighton. The DBA would get on the train at Hatfield and join us at Stevenage.
It didn't work as planned because I was late.
Chapter 1 - The Journey to Cambridge
To get to Finsbury Park from 3 St Peters Mews, St Albans where I'm staying, one needs to walk down to the St. Albans City Station and get to King's Cross first. Then a Thameslink or tube will bring you to Finsbury Park Station.
It takes about an hour in total. Instead, I decided to take an AAA cab down to Hatfield Herts station and join the DBA there.
When I got out of my apartment, it was cloudy and the temperature was around 4 degrees. For a while it looked like it would rain, but I decided against carrying an umbrella.
I reached there around 8:35 AM, there was a train onwards to Cambridge via Stevenage at 8:42. Grabbed an anytime return ticket to and from Cambridge for 12.95 pounds and ran across the foot-over-bridge just to reach platform 3 on time.
The DBA was already inside.
The Punjabi reached Stevenage at 9:02 AM despite not having even crossed Potter's Bar when we started from Hatfield - her train was really fast and wouldn't stop at Hatfield.
She joined us around 9:09 AM in the train.
The DBA apparently had taken the wrong tickets - he took the day travelcard for London Zone 1-6 + Hatfield for 14.5 pounds hoping that would take him to Cambridge and back.
We were praying nobody comes to check the tickets while getting mentally ready to plead lack of knowledge if someone does.
Reached Cambridge station around 10 AM. The platform had map vending machines for pound 1 - inserted the 1 pound coin and no map came out.
Having lost the pound and mentally calculating the number of rupees I just lost, I walked with the other two to the exit.
The gate had a slot for the ticket to be inserted. The Punjabi inserted and the ticket didn't come out. Apparently that is the way for one way tickets.
She asked the lady staff manning (or wo-manning ?) the gate for it but she was unrelenting - "You should have asked me beforehand. Now I don't have the time to take it out." said she in an Eastern European accent.
The Punjabi was unrelenting too - "I need it to submit to my office". The lady relented after a few minutes.
She opened the gates and let us all pass. This commotion helped the DBA escape trouble for the wrong tickets.
Chapter 2 - The Botanical Garden
While we were walking, a map seller posing as a helpful bystander started "providing directions".
Being from a tourist place myself and having travelled quite a bit, I knew that guy was selling something and I walked some distance and waited for the Punjabi and DBA.
The two - quite interested in the guy's "directions", invited me.
He was selling a tourist guide booklet with a useless map - you can find it all on Google maps - and some coupons for Punting and restaurants around.
Quite bored by the guy's nonsense and not realizing that I was spending ~ 1000 bucks in Indian currency bought that booklet for 10 pounds.
The Punjabi would hound me for the rest of the day for spending "1000 rupees" on a useless artefact - partially fueled by her guilt for having invited me to talk with that guy in the first place.
The reason Punjabi had come to Cambridge was because she wanted to go punting on the Cam river. I was casually interested in the activity by itself but more in the city's heritage that you'd get to see. The DBA didn't want to waste a precious weekend staying at home.
We walked down the street and turned right onto the wrong road which we realized after some walking. Back on the main road, turning onto the right, we reached an entrance to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
After having walked past it, we decided to go inside and see. Meanwhile the Punjabi had to take pictures under the nearby tree.
Taking pictures every few minutes was a necessary ritual for us. All through the day, I couldn't help but think of ourselves as the Bengali tourist who comes to Darjeeling and exclaims "ki sundor !" and takes a picture every other minute.
We took the 6 pound ticket and entered the garden.
There were a lot of Asians inside ( I think students ) - I think Chinese from the language - but Korean from their sense of fashion.
The garden was quite bit and housed a lot of plants. To my delight, I found things like tree tomatoes and sim rayo which we eat back home in Darjeeling but impossible to find in Pune. Then there were different varieties of carnivorous plants.
The greenhouses housed a rich collection of plants from different climactic regions ranging from the tundra to the cacti. There was one for Tropical Evergreen Forests which contained a lot of familiar plants inside.
Each greenhouse had it's temperature, humidity etc adjusted to the corresponding region for the plants inside to thrive. After walking across the beautiful park and a profuse amount of picture clicking, we arrived at an exit gate.
The Punjabi and DBA would then get inside the shop to buy somethings for their nephew and daughter respectively. The DBA has a 2 month old baby - it was a hopeless quest to find something for her in a botanical garden's artifact shop but the Punjabi found a cap for her nephew.
Chapter 3 - Punting up the Cam
We were at odds all day - I wanted to hitch-hike while the Punjabi wanted to take a taxi. I - quite obviously - had to relent.
We called a cab - a BMW car - based on a telephone number clicked from the back of another moving cab which took us to the punting station on Bridge road.
The cab driver was in all likelihood a Desi from somewhere in the subcontinent but chose to speak in English with a forced Arabic accent.
There were people selling Punting tickets. We bought them from a guy with a south asian face and a British accent. With some bargaining, he gave us a 20% off on 22 pound tickets for punting.
It was about 12:40 PM. The boarding was at 1:20 pm. We had at least 30 minutes so we took a walk down the street on the other side of the Cam Bridge while entering shops and coming out exclaiming at the price tags and their INR equivalent.
While that took hardly 15 minutes, we took some more pictures and walked up this side of the bridge.
We got on to the boat right on time. It was a long wooden boa with 2 rows of seats. Each row had two seat-benches facing each other. Each bench had place for 3 people. Therefore, 18 people could be on the boat not including the boat-woman.
There was a place to stand and row the boat from it's rear. The boat-woman - a girl called Bethany - later explained that Cambridge and Oxford, both with punting rivers, and both thinking themselves as the best have an opinion on where to punt the boat from.
It turns out that the ones from Oxford punt it from the front. Bethany was interesting and kept us engaged all along with the tales of the colleges we saw along the way.
There was the famed Trinity College - which apparently is so rich that you can travel from Oxford to Cambridge on land owned by it.
Then there was the iconic King's College with the cathedral that took 100 years to build. Bethany talked about a secret society in Cambridge - notorious for climbing buildings - which once took a traffic cone and placed it atop one of the church towers. The caretakers, quite unimpressed, employed someone to climb up and remove it.
To remove it, the worker had to place ladders to reach the top. Until evening he had not quite reached the top so he put work off until the next day. That night, the members of the secret society came again and removed the cone and placed it on the opposite tower !
There was the student's residence where Alan Turing had stayed and perhaps the gardens where Isaac Newton had one strolled.
There were Japanese banana trees wrapped up to protect them from cold - apparently - they gave fruit only once in many many years - a tiny banana which was sent to the queen. The banana turned out to be quite toxic and with a lot of Potassium and almost poisoned the queen.
Among the beautiful bridges on the river there was one which the students call the Orgasm bridge. The arch is quite steep and you let a sigh of relief once you reach the top.
Bethany also told stories of rivalry between the colleges - specifically between St John's and Trinity. Henry the VIII had founded Trinity after having ordered the execution of St John Fisher would had ensured the foundation of St Johns. The eagle sculpture atop the entrance of St. John's New Court looks away from Trinity.
The King's college quite resembled the White House and is said to be the inspiration behind the older White House.
Chapter 4 - the city
Though it was quite cold, punting up and down the river was an excellent experience.
Having gotten down the boat, we walked down the river to the next punting point and then walked up the lanes up to the main street. There was a small handicraft bazaar and we went inside. While the DBA and I had some coffee and Tea, the Punjabi went around shopping.
While taking some more pictures, we walked up to what I think is the Town Centre. There were a shops of all hues selling everything from local and exotic streetfood to vegetables to clothes and gifts.
Being a vegetarian - my brain is trained to find any anything with vegetarian written on it. There was this Spanish / Latino selling "vegetarian" Spanish sandwiches.
He was telling me it contains no butter, no cheese - only vegetarian. Quite hopeful, I asked - "Does it have egg sir ?" "Egg ? Yes, yes. It does"
There ended my hope for getting a taste of street food in Cambridge - or at least what I thought then. But I convinced the DBA and the Punjabi to get a taste of it. They agreed to buy 1 sandwich and eat a half each.
We explored each lane - some selling Chinese, some local and some Eastern Europian food.
By then it was about dark and we decided to start walking towards the rail station. On the way we entered supermarkets - the Punjabi was buying quite a lot - while the DBA wasn't intent on buying anything.
I was indifferent.
That is when I saw another shop selling vegetarian wraps - and ignored - disappointed at the earlier experience. The Punjabi was however unrelenting and convinced me to go an ask. "Does it have egg, sir?" once again.
"No, nothing here contains egg" he replied. And that is when I bought some wrap labeled "fiery" - which wasn't fiery at all - which I had guessed and discounted for.
But it was quite good and big. It made me feel full and was enough for me until I got home.
Chapter 5 - Back Home
Down on Sidney Street, in front of Lloyd's Bank, we called the same Taxi company - Panther and got a cab in about 5 minutes. A desi looking driver drove us to the station.
The Punjabi wanted me to come with her to London to see Sea Life nearby London Eye. For that, I did not yet have a pass for London, and in all honesty, all I wanted was to get home. Nevertheless, I obliged. After all, this is a different country and you get to visit only so many times.
There was a train going directly to King's Cross in 5 minutes. While the DBA and the Punjabi went to the platform, I rushed to get the ticket - which I could not get in time - so I did not get it at all.
I let the two go. It was around 4:50 PM in the evening and the wind was cold. I decided to wait until 5:27 when the train towards London King's Cross via Hatfield would start.
I bought a regular size Latte for 2.8 pounds (which by my standards is XXL size) and hopped on the train around 5:20. Finding an empty seat and sipped the coffee while the train started it's journey towards London.
There were a few girls in the opposite seats who gossiped all along until they got down a few stops up. A Spanish / Latino mom and son ( I didn't learn enough Spanish to be able to distinguish between the two) with a friend joined me in the seat somewhere along the route.
They got down at Letworth Garden City. It must have been around 6:30 when I got down at Hatfield and booked an AAA to St Albans.
The cab left me on the roundabout on St Peters Street opposite to Bensons for Beds. I was out of grocery and a visit to Tescos was necessary if I wasn't going to sleep hungry.
I bought some "Guatamalan beans". They looked as much "Kalimpong beans" for all my eyes could tell as opposed to the bland "British potatoes" which were whiter than the typical "white potatoes" of "madhes" and compared to the red tasty potatoes we have in the hills.
Had been without cooking oil - managing with Sainsbury butter all the while.
After picking up items, to my utter horror, the counters were empty. A minute or two of observing led me to conclude that people checkout stuff by themselves.
I checked out, paid with my American Express corporate credit card and headed home. A long and interesting Saturday had come to an end.
On insistence of the Punjabi, yesterday, on the 24th of November 2019, we visited Cambridge - the university town. The Naxal had personal business and couldn't join.
It was quite a visit and I learnt a lot about that place. It was fun - though most of the time towards the evening it was me insisting to return - much to the annoyance of the other two.
The initial plan was for me to join the Punjabi at Finsbury Park and then hop on the train coming from Brighton. The DBA would get on the train at Hatfield and join us at Stevenage.
It didn't work as planned because I was late.
Chapter 1 - The Journey to Cambridge
To get to Finsbury Park from 3 St Peters Mews, St Albans where I'm staying, one needs to walk down to the St. Albans City Station and get to King's Cross first. Then a Thameslink or tube will bring you to Finsbury Park Station.
It takes about an hour in total. Instead, I decided to take an AAA cab down to Hatfield Herts station and join the DBA there.
When I got out of my apartment, it was cloudy and the temperature was around 4 degrees. For a while it looked like it would rain, but I decided against carrying an umbrella.
I reached there around 8:35 AM, there was a train onwards to Cambridge via Stevenage at 8:42. Grabbed an anytime return ticket to and from Cambridge for 12.95 pounds and ran across the foot-over-bridge just to reach platform 3 on time.
The DBA was already inside.
The Punjabi reached Stevenage at 9:02 AM despite not having even crossed Potter's Bar when we started from Hatfield - her train was really fast and wouldn't stop at Hatfield.
She joined us around 9:09 AM in the train.
The DBA apparently had taken the wrong tickets - he took the day travelcard for London Zone 1-6 + Hatfield for 14.5 pounds hoping that would take him to Cambridge and back.
We were praying nobody comes to check the tickets while getting mentally ready to plead lack of knowledge if someone does.
Reached Cambridge station around 10 AM. The platform had map vending machines for pound 1 - inserted the 1 pound coin and no map came out.
Having lost the pound and mentally calculating the number of rupees I just lost, I walked with the other two to the exit.
The gate had a slot for the ticket to be inserted. The Punjabi inserted and the ticket didn't come out. Apparently that is the way for one way tickets.
She asked the lady staff manning (or wo-manning ?) the gate for it but she was unrelenting - "You should have asked me beforehand. Now I don't have the time to take it out." said she in an Eastern European accent.
The Punjabi was unrelenting too - "I need it to submit to my office". The lady relented after a few minutes.
She opened the gates and let us all pass. This commotion helped the DBA escape trouble for the wrong tickets.
Chapter 2 - The Botanical Garden
While we were walking, a map seller posing as a helpful bystander started "providing directions".
Being from a tourist place myself and having travelled quite a bit, I knew that guy was selling something and I walked some distance and waited for the Punjabi and DBA.
The two - quite interested in the guy's "directions", invited me.
He was selling a tourist guide booklet with a useless map - you can find it all on Google maps - and some coupons for Punting and restaurants around.
Quite bored by the guy's nonsense and not realizing that I was spending ~ 1000 bucks in Indian currency bought that booklet for 10 pounds.
The Punjabi would hound me for the rest of the day for spending "1000 rupees" on a useless artefact - partially fueled by her guilt for having invited me to talk with that guy in the first place.
The reason Punjabi had come to Cambridge was because she wanted to go punting on the Cam river. I was casually interested in the activity by itself but more in the city's heritage that you'd get to see. The DBA didn't want to waste a precious weekend staying at home.
We walked down the street and turned right onto the wrong road which we realized after some walking. Back on the main road, turning onto the right, we reached an entrance to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
After having walked past it, we decided to go inside and see. Meanwhile the Punjabi had to take pictures under the nearby tree.
Taking pictures every few minutes was a necessary ritual for us. All through the day, I couldn't help but think of ourselves as the Bengali tourist who comes to Darjeeling and exclaims "ki sundor !" and takes a picture every other minute.
We took the 6 pound ticket and entered the garden.
There were a lot of Asians inside ( I think students ) - I think Chinese from the language - but Korean from their sense of fashion.
The garden was quite bit and housed a lot of plants. To my delight, I found things like tree tomatoes and sim rayo which we eat back home in Darjeeling but impossible to find in Pune. Then there were different varieties of carnivorous plants.
The greenhouses housed a rich collection of plants from different climactic regions ranging from the tundra to the cacti. There was one for Tropical Evergreen Forests which contained a lot of familiar plants inside.
Each greenhouse had it's temperature, humidity etc adjusted to the corresponding region for the plants inside to thrive. After walking across the beautiful park and a profuse amount of picture clicking, we arrived at an exit gate.
The Punjabi and DBA would then get inside the shop to buy somethings for their nephew and daughter respectively. The DBA has a 2 month old baby - it was a hopeless quest to find something for her in a botanical garden's artifact shop but the Punjabi found a cap for her nephew.
Chapter 3 - Punting up the Cam
We were at odds all day - I wanted to hitch-hike while the Punjabi wanted to take a taxi. I - quite obviously - had to relent.
We called a cab - a BMW car - based on a telephone number clicked from the back of another moving cab which took us to the punting station on Bridge road.
The cab driver was in all likelihood a Desi from somewhere in the subcontinent but chose to speak in English with a forced Arabic accent.
There were people selling Punting tickets. We bought them from a guy with a south asian face and a British accent. With some bargaining, he gave us a 20% off on 22 pound tickets for punting.
It was about 12:40 PM. The boarding was at 1:20 pm. We had at least 30 minutes so we took a walk down the street on the other side of the Cam Bridge while entering shops and coming out exclaiming at the price tags and their INR equivalent.
While that took hardly 15 minutes, we took some more pictures and walked up this side of the bridge.
We got on to the boat right on time. It was a long wooden boa with 2 rows of seats. Each row had two seat-benches facing each other. Each bench had place for 3 people. Therefore, 18 people could be on the boat not including the boat-woman.
There was a place to stand and row the boat from it's rear. The boat-woman - a girl called Bethany - later explained that Cambridge and Oxford, both with punting rivers, and both thinking themselves as the best have an opinion on where to punt the boat from.
It turns out that the ones from Oxford punt it from the front. Bethany was interesting and kept us engaged all along with the tales of the colleges we saw along the way.
There was the famed Trinity College - which apparently is so rich that you can travel from Oxford to Cambridge on land owned by it.
Then there was the iconic King's College with the cathedral that took 100 years to build. Bethany talked about a secret society in Cambridge - notorious for climbing buildings - which once took a traffic cone and placed it atop one of the church towers. The caretakers, quite unimpressed, employed someone to climb up and remove it.
To remove it, the worker had to place ladders to reach the top. Until evening he had not quite reached the top so he put work off until the next day. That night, the members of the secret society came again and removed the cone and placed it on the opposite tower !
There was the student's residence where Alan Turing had stayed and perhaps the gardens where Isaac Newton had one strolled.
There were Japanese banana trees wrapped up to protect them from cold - apparently - they gave fruit only once in many many years - a tiny banana which was sent to the queen. The banana turned out to be quite toxic and with a lot of Potassium and almost poisoned the queen.
Among the beautiful bridges on the river there was one which the students call the Orgasm bridge. The arch is quite steep and you let a sigh of relief once you reach the top.
Bethany also told stories of rivalry between the colleges - specifically between St John's and Trinity. Henry the VIII had founded Trinity after having ordered the execution of St John Fisher would had ensured the foundation of St Johns. The eagle sculpture atop the entrance of St. John's New Court looks away from Trinity.
The King's college quite resembled the White House and is said to be the inspiration behind the older White House.
Chapter 4 - the city
Though it was quite cold, punting up and down the river was an excellent experience.
Having gotten down the boat, we walked down the river to the next punting point and then walked up the lanes up to the main street. There was a small handicraft bazaar and we went inside. While the DBA and I had some coffee and Tea, the Punjabi went around shopping.
While taking some more pictures, we walked up to what I think is the Town Centre. There were a shops of all hues selling everything from local and exotic streetfood to vegetables to clothes and gifts.
Being a vegetarian - my brain is trained to find any anything with vegetarian written on it. There was this Spanish / Latino selling "vegetarian" Spanish sandwiches.
He was telling me it contains no butter, no cheese - only vegetarian. Quite hopeful, I asked - "Does it have egg sir ?" "Egg ? Yes, yes. It does"
There ended my hope for getting a taste of street food in Cambridge - or at least what I thought then. But I convinced the DBA and the Punjabi to get a taste of it. They agreed to buy 1 sandwich and eat a half each.
We explored each lane - some selling Chinese, some local and some Eastern Europian food.
By then it was about dark and we decided to start walking towards the rail station. On the way we entered supermarkets - the Punjabi was buying quite a lot - while the DBA wasn't intent on buying anything.
I was indifferent.
That is when I saw another shop selling vegetarian wraps - and ignored - disappointed at the earlier experience. The Punjabi was however unrelenting and convinced me to go an ask. "Does it have egg, sir?" once again.
"No, nothing here contains egg" he replied. And that is when I bought some wrap labeled "fiery" - which wasn't fiery at all - which I had guessed and discounted for.
But it was quite good and big. It made me feel full and was enough for me until I got home.
Chapter 5 - Back Home
Down on Sidney Street, in front of Lloyd's Bank, we called the same Taxi company - Panther and got a cab in about 5 minutes. A desi looking driver drove us to the station.
The Punjabi wanted me to come with her to London to see Sea Life nearby London Eye. For that, I did not yet have a pass for London, and in all honesty, all I wanted was to get home. Nevertheless, I obliged. After all, this is a different country and you get to visit only so many times.
There was a train going directly to King's Cross in 5 minutes. While the DBA and the Punjabi went to the platform, I rushed to get the ticket - which I could not get in time - so I did not get it at all.
I let the two go. It was around 4:50 PM in the evening and the wind was cold. I decided to wait until 5:27 when the train towards London King's Cross via Hatfield would start.
I bought a regular size Latte for 2.8 pounds (which by my standards is XXL size) and hopped on the train around 5:20. Finding an empty seat and sipped the coffee while the train started it's journey towards London.
There were a few girls in the opposite seats who gossiped all along until they got down a few stops up. A Spanish / Latino mom and son ( I didn't learn enough Spanish to be able to distinguish between the two) with a friend joined me in the seat somewhere along the route.
They got down at Letworth Garden City. It must have been around 6:30 when I got down at Hatfield and booked an AAA to St Albans.
The cab left me on the roundabout on St Peters Street opposite to Bensons for Beds. I was out of grocery and a visit to Tescos was necessary if I wasn't going to sleep hungry.
I bought some "Guatamalan beans". They looked as much "Kalimpong beans" for all my eyes could tell as opposed to the bland "British potatoes" which were whiter than the typical "white potatoes" of "madhes" and compared to the red tasty potatoes we have in the hills.
Had been without cooking oil - managing with Sainsbury butter all the while.
After picking up items, to my utter horror, the counters were empty. A minute or two of observing led me to conclude that people checkout stuff by themselves.
I checked out, paid with my American Express corporate credit card and headed home. A long and interesting Saturday had come to an end.
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