The Sinking City

Gondolieri, both skillful and wary

The dedication of Venetian shopkeepers

Well this post has taken a long time. That's because we were in Venice for about 8 days, and there's a lot to see there. The short version of this is that I needed to go to Venice for 'research' purposes, and my supervisor happened to have a flat in the city, about 2 blocks (however you define a block in Venice) from St. Mark's square. So we decided to stay awhile.

The view from the Rialto bridge

Venice, in case you haven't heard of it, is an ancient city/city-state/sea-based republic on a series of islands in the northeast of Italy in the Adriatic Sea. It's about 1600 years old, and the history of that time takes more space than I have here. But I'll hit some high points:

Jumping in Piazza San Marco

St. Theodore had been Venice's patron saint for centuries, but in 828 Venice decided to upgrade patron saints to St. Mark (extra points for gospel writers). The only hitch in this plan was that they wanted St. Mark's bodily remains, which were in Alexandria. So after a series of failed attempts to steal the remains, a couple of Venetian merchants pulled a switcheroo and replaced it with some other body they had acquired. But since the Muslim Alexandrians were wise to previous such attempts by Venetians, they vigorously searched everyone leaving the city. To prevent the remains being confiscated, the merchants stored the body in a jar and covered it with pork. When the Muslims saw the pork, they let it go by since they weren't allowed to touch it. If the story isn't enough for you, there are frame-by-frame mosaics in the front of the Basilica San Marco (above) portraying all the slimy details.

The baroque grandeur of the Salute

Venice's unique development meant that it never had much need for roads of the usual kind (Mark Twain remarked when he visited it that most of the people living there had never seen a horse). Today, a highway and rail bridge go to the edge of Venice, but not much into the city itself. Thus its transportation has historically been based on the many canals that wind throughout the city. The original way to get around was to hire a gondolier, the stereotypically mustachioed and striped skipper of a gondola, which is basically a one-oared canoe. Lord Byron found that since most of Europe in his day was not wheelchair-accessible, Venice was the best city for getting around (if you're rich). Today, most of people get around on the public transportation boats, which go around the main island, through the Grand Canal, and to the various outlying islands.

The sun sets on the white facade of San Michelle en Isola

Speaking of which, if you're visiting Venice for any length of time, I highly recommend taking a day or two to check out the surrounding islands. San Giorgio and Giudecca to the south contain two of Palladio's masterpieces, the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore. If you go all the way to the southern end of Giudecca, you can find a public park with real grass that looks out on the sea (green space is hard to find in Venice). The island of San Michelle, directly north of the city, contains not only the first Renaissance church in Venice, but also the Venetian cemetery, where you can find the graves of Igor Stravinsky and Ezra Pound.

The many different shades of Burano

The islands further afield were my personal favorites - Murano is well known as the seat of the Venetian glass-blowing industry (they were hedging their bets in case of fire). Honestly, the tourism-saturation of Venice has spread to Murano; the canals are now lined with shops selling glass that's mostly made in China anyway. Burano, a little farther out, is known for its lacework: it has a more residential, less theme-parked atmosphere than Venice or Murano. Even farther out, Mazzorbo gives you a feel for what it would be like to live a real life on these charming islands: taking a boat to school in the morning, running laps around your small piece of land, and being annoyed at a lawnmower running on a neighboring island.

Eerie moonlight falls on the Doge's Palace and the Acqua Alta

But the coolest thing about this already other-worldly city is the Acqua Alta. This doesn't apply if you're one of the gazillion visitors who have the misfortune of visiting on the same muggy day in August. But if you venture out in the wintry off-season, you'll be treated to the nearly-nightly pleasure of watching the destruction of Venice in real time, as the water of Adriatic slowly seeps over the island, only to recede by the next morning. The long-term effects of this are not good for the city, and they're working very hard to stop it. However, the short-term effects are similar to that of when you go to sleep in a small midwestern town and wake to find 12 inches of snow on the ground: you have been transported to another world.

Jumping on what little land remains in the Piazza San Marco

Since not many tourists stay on the island itself overnight, we shared this strange dream with only a few others. It made not only for excellent photo ops, but also for lots of contemplation whilst tramping around in waterproof Wellington boots. One visitor had a remote-controlled toy motorboat that he wildly steered through the pool that had been St. Mark's Square. Each night a single cafe off the Piazza stayed open until midnight, and a small jazz combo played American standards from the 1930s as we watched the water climb out of the canals and into the windows of hotel lobbies. It felt a bit like being a passenger on the Titanic after the last life boats had gone away.

When an umbrella is no longer of any use

Mark Twain had been especially excited about Venice when he visited it aboard the Quaker City (the first American luxury cruise to Europe). But upon seeing it, he became fascinated and disillusioned with what he saw as a wonderful kingdom, centuries past its prime. The ruin or the Republic struck his notions of its greatness, and in his writings he seems shaken by the state of the city when he visited it. But, he adds

"In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless - forgotten and utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations of the earth."

I couldn't agree more.

"to summon her vanished ships...and know again in dreams the pride of her old renown."

Laura and I agree that the only fair way to treat Venice is to give a separate rating for living there and visiting:

Living there - 2.0/10.0
Visiting - 9.0/10.0

When they take old Berlin

Whilst taking a stroll through mainland Europe once more, we decided to drop in on the German city we hadn't seen in our earlier tour of the Vaterland: Berlin. Also, we had some friends who lived there, so we had free lodging (which has been known to draw me like a magnet from distances up to 500 miles).

The view from the ground

We began by going on the (free) New Berlin Tour (no relation to the small Illinois town of pretzel fame) offered by Sandeman's, which I highly recommend. Our guide was half-Swedish, half-Japanese; she'd lived in London for a while but found it too expensive so she moved to Berlin. This is one aspect of the city that recommends it to cash-strapped 20-something hipsters looking for a good time: it's cheap. If you live in the Turkish neighborhoods, you can pay very little for rent or delicious kabobs.

Jumping the Gate

Another thing that stuck out to me over the course of the tour was the city's inherent sense of narrative (granted, that was built into the tour, but it's very present in the monuments, universities, churches, etc.). It's easy to just think of 20th century Berlin's story, and no doubt there's quite a lot of that. But after taking in all the history of the previous centuries (Holy Roman Empire, Frederick the Great, Franco-Prussian War), 20th century Berlin has a lot more context, even if it still seems incredible. You can see some ancient buildings, but most of them were destroyed during WWII. There are 'bomb gaps' between residential buildings, where an older building was spared but its neighbor was demolished and has been replaced by something newer. Small metal plaques on the ground commemorate Jews who were removed from their homes and killed in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust memorial, a valley of 6,000 marble slabs of various heights, is disorienting and overwhelming (each slab stands for a thousand Jews killed) to walk through. But my favorite postwar addition to the city is the new Reichstag building, where the German parliament meets. The building was subject to a fire which was blamed, probably spuriously, on communists. Hitler and the Nazi party used the public outcry to gain special powers for the detention of suspicious characters. This, of course, led to Dachau and all the later concentration and extermination camps. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Reichstag began to be renovated. The new design allows anyone to walk up to a large glass dome above the Bundestag, the chamber where the parliament meets. This philosophical idea of "the people watching the government" is omnipresent in the new design, and it lets you get a nice view of the city as well.

View of the Brandenburg Gate from the top of the Reichstag

Across the street from Humboldt University, there is a large open square called the Bebelplatz where the Nazis organized the students of the University to take part in a book burning. The memorial to this is simply a glass panel on the ground that opens into a lower room full of empty bookshelves. Accompanying the memorial is a quote from Humboldt poet Heinrich Heine, who predicted in 1820 that when people burn books, it will not be long before they burn people.

Though distinctions of East and West are less important now, it's interesting to realize where some of present-day Berlin's icons would have resided when the Wall was still up. Potsdamer Platz is an encouraging example of Western commercialism building modern glass-laden business centers on what had been the desolate no-man's-land between East and West Berlin. Alexanderplatz contains the TV tower, the tallest structure in Germany. Built to flaunt the triumph of East German engineering, the tower later annoyed the atheist East Berlin government because the sun's light projects the figure of a cross onto the tower's glass.

The cross, known as "The Pope's Revenge"

Ronald Reagan later referenced this phenomenon in his "Tear Down This Wall" speech. Speaking of the wall, large portions of it are still available (now as cool artistic murals) in the East Side Gallery, located in former East Berlin.

Hey, that's Laura's birthday! And something else...

All in all, an incredible city. This was my second time there and I feel that I've barely started to see it. 9.0/10.0

The Other Place

Despite our plethora of spires, elitist colleges, and questionable historical accuracy here in Cambridge, we eventually decided it would only be fair to spend a few days in Oxford, where apparently they couldn't figure out how to build a bridge and had to name their city after a muddy spot where oxen waded across the river. I'll try to lay off on the digs, but it's part of the adversarial culture here.

Us and the Radcliffe Camera and a digital camera

As I mentioned before, the University of Oxford is older than Cambridge, and has very consistent architecture due to its nearby stone quarry. Thus the spires seen on a few Cambridge colleges are nearly omnipresent across the 38 colleges at Oxford. Oxford is stereotypically stronger in the humanities and politics while Cambridge is stronger in the sciences, although there are notable exceptions on both ends. Oxford is slightly larger than Cambridge, but it feels much larger due to the double-wide street (St. Giles) that comes directly into the city centre.

But despite this, after having lived in Cambridge for a while, Oxford seems more like a bizarro version of our latest hometown. Both have imposing libraries with deposits of every printed material in the country, both have delicious tea and scones easily available, and both rely on the antiquated method of pushing yourself across a river in flat-bottomed punts (although we do have bridges instead of fords - see first paragraph).

But I have to go easy on the place not only because it's a beautiful and historically significant piece of British history, but because Laura was here for a semester three years ago. We went back to visit one of her favorite spots, University Park, and recreated a shot from the Rainbow Bridge there when I visited her there in 2007.

So young, so much hair...

And the award for "Most Years Aged in 3 Years" goes to...Braxton

In all honesty, I would definitely have applied to Oxford if they'd had a program(me?) that fit my skill set. As it is, we just get to visit. The bus from Cambridge to Oxford is known affectionately as the "Chunder Bus" in honor of the winding roundabouts taken at full speed ('chunder' is a British slang meaning 'to vomit'). I didn't quite live up to the bus's name, but I did feel some carsickness by the end of the 2 1/2 hour ride.

Jumping off the Rainbow Bridge and out of the shot

One of our favorite Oxonians (and later a Cantabridgian as well) was don and author C.S. Lewis. Despite the various worlds he created in his mind, Lewis hardly ever traveled - he came to Oxford from Belfast, fought in World War I, and then lived in England for the rest of his life. He was known (along with Ezra Pound) as the best-read man of his generation, and later became famous for his lectures about Christian apologetics on the BBC during World War II. Later in his life, he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, a children's fantasy work for which he is best known today.

While employed as a fellow at Magdalen (pronounced 'maud-lin') college Oxford, Lewis and his brother bought a house known as The Kilns on the outskirts of the city. Named for the clay kilns originally on the property, the house and grounds are now maintained by the C.S. Lewis foundation, and is used to house scholars and authors from time to time. We were lucky enough to get a tour of the place, which was something of a pilgrimage for a Lewis-phile such as myself. Afterward, we explored the forest behind the house, which is affectionately known as 'Narnia' today.

The window through which Lewis looked when writing at his desk

We ate at The Eagle and Child, the pub in which Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their society known as the Inklings met to discuss their essays and works of fiction. After scouring the literature of their day, they decided they would have to write for themselves the stories they wished to read. The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and many other works were born out of this society, which continues to be an inspiration to aspiring fantasy writers today. Lewis and Tolkien were good friends, and it was Tolkien's vigilant discussions with him that resulted in Lewis's conversion to Christianity.

And we ate lots of scones and meat pies, drank tea and Suffolk cider, and then braced ourselves for the chunder-y ride home.

So many puns available I couldn't decide on a title

Whilst exploring this dark, damp island people call Britain, there are some things you just have to do. Bath is one of those places - according to one tour book, it's the single best city to explore outside of London. Since the Gates Scholars are full of intrepid foreigners eager to have an 'authentic' British experience but not look too much like tourists, a group of us took a charter bus to see this very old city whose hygenic implements go back a millenium before the battle of Hastings.

But on the way, we ran into another must-see British tourist attraction: a very large pile of rocks.

A lovely shot of us in front of...HEY, THAT'S NOT LAURA!!!

Apparently there are many such 'henges' around Britain, but this one grabs all the attention. Despite our (successful) efforts to convince my friend Victor that the rocks were shipped in boats from Australia, the actual technology used to erect these large rocks is fairly impressive, (moreso if you're an early neolithic cave dweller whose main use of mathematics involves the most efficient way to club your next meal or future wife and drag it/her into your bachelor pad). I've seen it now, and I bet the rocks will still be there in another few thousand years.

It just looks like we're jumping high because the rocks are so small.

Bath, meanwhile, is a lovely city, once you get over the confusion about how to pronounce a common American word which is also an English place; how long do you really want that vowel to be? If you're like me, your main impression of Bath comes from Jane Austen novels in which the wealthy people are always making trips there for their complexion or something while the young poor protagonist feels awkwardly out of place, not to mention the inevitable worrying over whether [standoffish male love interest] really likes her or if the family's reputation will be damaged by [naive female relative's] dangerous liason with [roguish military officer who's really no good for her].

I managed to catch Jane for a photo-op while she was contemplating the social plight of 19th Century lower-class English ingenues...she keeps pretty busy like that.

If you hadn't guessed, Bath is named for the Roman baths which were built during the Roman rule of Britain 2000 years ago. The Romans took their bathing seriously - supposedly a non-Roman asked the Roman commander at Bath how often he bathed, and he was ashamed that his duties only allowed him time to bath once per day. (It was because the barbarians saved so much time by not bathing that they decided to take up other hobbies, like undermining the Roman Empire, and yoga).

The audio tour took so long, the water turned green...

The baths are quite a site - the bath part used to have a covered roof but is now outside, and the outside section is now under a roof, so you have to use your imagination a bit. There are some lovely sound-only exhibits where you can hear a goat being slaughtered so an augerer can read your fortune from its entrails. Also, instead of a wishing well, they had a cursing well, where you could carve nasty things about someone on a coin and throw it in (don't say what you cursed for, though, or it won't come true!). Ah, Rome. Right on plumbing, but they had some more progress to make in fortune-telling and curse-selling.

Bath also has beautiful architecture from a more recent period. The city's status as a resort for the rich led to many architects designing master works for the elites who lived or vacationed here. Among these are the King's Circus and the Royal Crescent, where architect John Wood (no relation to the Community College) showed the unique beauty of curves instead of corners. The Royal Crescent in particular is quite striking, with a lovely vista of the rest of the city in the valley, with green hills on the other side. The rich people living in the crescent tried not to be too upset with us foreigners taking in their view.

If I had a skateboard, this would be an awesome grind.

And we went to pubs and Indian restaurants, and the food was good if not overly healthy. But that pretty much goes without saying at this point.

Final Score: 7.5/10.0

Switzerland, Part Deux/Zwei/Due

So my uncle Mark decided to visit Europe while he had two nephews there. Unfortunately for those of us in England, he speaks German so well that he didn't want to bother with any countries that speak English, and thus he stayed with Zack instead of us (NOTE: the sarcasm in the last sentence would be apparent if you could hear my tone of voice or if you knew my uncle Mark. I think he just stayed with Zack because Zack has a car).

At any rate, Laura and I went to meet them by flying into Basel, a city on the corner of France, Germany, and Switzerland. After waiting in line for Swiss customs, Zack texted me to come out on the French side instead, so we rapidly shifted countries and got our passports stamped. Then we met Zack and Uncle Mark and drove to Switzerland in about 5 minutes (apparently parking is easier on the French side).

Alp-gazing

We had a similar experience to the last time in the Lauterbrunnen area, driving into what was apparently a beautiful mountain valley but not being able to see mountains until the morning.

My uncle, despite being a bonafide Midwesterner and resident of Nebo, IL, spent many many summers of his life in Colorado, climbing up mountains and rescuing wayward children. So he's always loved mountains, and was very excited to see the Alps. He was thus overjoyed when we stepped out of the chalet where we were staying on the first morning and saw....part of a mountain. It was pretty cloudy.

We decided to hope it wouldn't rain, and went for a hike up the side of the valley. We made it to a
small mountain micro-village that seemed to be closed for the off-season, such that it seemed eerily like an old western ghost town.

It's quiet...a little too quiet.

Going a bit further, we found a mountain stream whose bridge had been taken down, probably to keep travelers from getting hurt by going farther in the winter. Naturally we instead found various ways to jump across the stream, nearly slipping on ice in the process. You just can't contain the exploration instinct.

We climbed up farther, just above the snowline, and had a very brief snowball fight (it didn't get too intense, as we sensed the possibility of slipping, falling, and dying, for which our mothers would never forgive us). But it was extremely beautiful, and only renewed our desire to start a bakery in Colorado. One of these days...

We climbed so high that Zack was beheaded by the troposphere. Or the edge of the camera.

We also visited the lovely mountain town of Grindelwald, though as semi-educated Americans we couldn't really get past the Harry Potter associations.

So that's where he was hiding!

Laura finds the Eldar Wand

The next day we went to Lucerne, which is also a beautiful city set up in the mountains with lakes all around it. I saw the lakes and the beautiful city, but by this time the clouds were obscuring nearly all the mountains. But although I could sense that on a clear summer day, the city would be a different kind of beautiful that I couldn't quite see, the cloudiness added a certain isolated quality that's hard to describe. It was almost like Brigadoon, up in the mountains and separate from everywhere else on Earth.

Jumping on the Creepy Skeleton Bridge

All in all, we didn't have nearly enough time in Lucerne, but we got to walk around the old city walls and the old bridge with creepy paintings of skeletons that represented the black death. Maybe I'll come back there someday and go skiing. Or maybe not - it may seem tautological, but I'm beginning to realize that these places that gain such majesty from their isolation are also very difficult to get to, and are only going to seem more isolated once I'm back in America.

Lucerne (cloudy and cold version): 7.0/10.0

The Lost Tracks of Edinburgh

Part of the 'work' I'm doing here made it necessary that I meet with the designers of the acoustic simulation software I'm using. Originally this was going to involve tracking them down in Denmark, but later I found out that they were actually teaching a course on the software in Edinburgh right after I arrived. After a little wheeling and dealing, I got various people to pay for my trip, and our first foray into exploring Great Britain began.

Edinburgh's grass verges appreciate the effort

It was about the same cost to take a flight, but since we had plenty of time and a desire to see the countryside, Laura and I opted to take a train to Scotland. Despite enjoying Scots (apparently 'Scotch' is not an okay adjective anymore) history and having a slew of Scottish ancestors, I had never been there and was excited to see it. The train ride up was beautiful, allowing nice views of Newcastle and the surrounding countryside.

While I was cooped up in a seminar room all day, Laura got to do some exploring (completely unfair, as she'd been there before anyway). Although to be fair my seminar room, which was on the top floor of a snazzy hotel, had an incredible view of Edinburgh castle and the North Sea.

Contemplating haggis and other serious matters

The first day when I got out of class, we checked out the National Gallery of Scotland. Like all major UK cities, this has the advantage (if you're not paying UK taxes) of being free. It also has some really beautiful landscapes of the highlands by the Scottish masters (assuming you're an art-ignorant simpleton such as I and like landscapes better than portraits). As usual, it contained some obscure painting that Laura was excited to see, but the gallery containing it was closed. I suppose that is the price you pay for knowing about art.

Afterward, we feasted at Deacon Brodie's tavern, a must-eat stop in the city. It's named for the seemingly upstanding citizen upon whom Robert Louis Stephenson based his novel Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Crossing off another of my lifetime to-do list items, I had some haggis. Haggis, if you're not up on your offal-based ethnic foods, is the Scottish national dish, consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, all boiled in its own stomach. I came prepared to be grossed out, but actually liked it quite a bit. It tastes like spicy hamburger, all ground up beyond recognition - just the way I like my sheep organs...

The castle walls prove impervious to jumping-over

The second day, we headed straight to the castle to tour it as fully as we could in what little daylight remained (Cambridge is already pretty far north, but Scotland gets even less sunshine). The castle is a wonderful old monument to Scottish history and mentality. After the hike up to the gate, we tried to take in the view as long as we could until the darkness set in fully. I'm always on the lookout for cities that are on the water but also have mountains next to them - some people have told me this is geographically impossible, but Edinburgh comes close. In addition to its lovely view of the harbor and the craggy castle that dominates its skyline, it is surrounded by ranges of hills on the mainland (some small-minded people in the UK would call them mountains, but they've all been cramped together on this tiny island for so long that we can't really hold that against them), and on a clear day you can see Ben Lomond across the bay.

My only famous ancestor of note - Robert the Bruce - was featured heavily in the exhibits inside the castle. In reality, he was nothing like the simpering coward shown in Braveheart, but was pretty dislikable for other reasons (he once agreed to a peaceful meeting with his rivals in a church, where he proceeded to kill them). Come to think of it, probably most 14th century Celtic clan leaders were not exactly the sort you'd want teaching Sunday School...

Some hoodlums took a very nice picture...before STEALING OUR CAMERA...just kidding

You can see the Scottish Honours (sort of like the crown jewels), which many Scots gave their lives to keep away from English aggressors. You can read about the stone of destiny, on which the Scottish monarchs were crowned. Further up, the chapel contains a memorial to the Scottish units that fought in "The Great War" and WWII. Even recent Scottish history possesses a certain mystique that I don't think exists as much in the new world or even in England. War, hono(u)r, heritage, and bloodshed form a strong part of the Scottish identity, from Rob Roy to Sean Connery.

Edinburgh retains that greyish, stone, 'hard' feeling that I felt in Prague, but here it feels more natural, as though it were a part of the national character. Plus, there is more green space incorporated into the city, not to mention the fabulous land- and sea-scapes that border the city on every side. A 4-day visit wasn't nearly enough; I really want to go back and see the highlands
as well.

Final score: 8.0/10.0

Bridge on the River Cam

We have often walked down this street before

So, after a good bit of galavanting about the continent, we finally came to Cambridge (our fair city), where we would be actually living for the year. I've been contemplating how to write about Cambridge, since my initial impression of it was shaped by the fact that I knew I would be living there, and my impressions since have a depth lacking in my short visits to other places. Cambridge has a large amount of history behind it, and I've been able to take lots of it in and select the parts that appeal to me most. Because of this, I've decided that I'll just do a series of posts about aspects of Cambridge that stand out to me, and try to leave behind the nutshell-reduction approach that I've used for everywhere else.

Cambridge is located is located about an hour's train-ride north of London, in the middle of a swamp that is affectionately known as the Fens. The city has basically no natural resources in itself - everything it has needed has been imported over the centuries. Though the city is often compared to "the other" English University city (Oxford, though we prefer not to speak the name here), Cambridge does not even have its own rock quarry, which has made its architecture much more varied over the years, while Oxford's building style is much more uniform.

The brick- heavy front gate of St. John's College

While the University of Oxford predates the city of the same name, Cambridge existed as a city before the university came about. The university traces its roots to an incident in 1209, when a dispute at Oxford threatened to bring about scrutiny from the monarchy, and a group of scholars decided to make for the market town of Cambridge to lay low for a while. However, like most
scholars who try to get out of academia, they found that they possessed no useful skills, and soon took up teaching again.

Though the first college was not founded for another 20 years, Cambridge University has been recognizing 1209 as the official founding date of the university, mostly because it gave them a great excuse to undertake an 800th anniversary fundraising campaign throughout 2009. In 20 years, they may change their minds to celebrate another 800th anniversary, depending on their financial situation.

The bonfire on Guy Fawkes' Day

The university currently consists of 31 independent colleges, which are residential bodies responsible for housing, socialization, and one-on-one tutoring of their students. For most of the university's existence, the colleges held supreme power over the actual education that went on at the university. However, in the 20th century, as Cambridge's scientific prowess created a need for expensive laboratories which individual colleges could not afford, the university's departments gained more power through the construction of such facilities, which the colleges shared between them. Older facilities, such as dining halls or playing fields, are still owned by individual colleges.

Though Cambridge was a younger university than Oxford, it proved adept at gaining royal patronage, which can be seen by such marvels as the famous King's College Chapel, built by Henry VI-Henry VIII, and the fact that HRH Prince Phillip is the symbolic chancelor of the university to this day.

King's College Chapel - excellent, er...rib vaulting

Many of the oldest and richest colleges are located along the river Cam, possessing green space next to it which is collectively known as "The Backs." The quintissential Cambridge experience is to going punting down the Cam through the backs, looking at the architecture of the old colleges and feeling inconsequential in the scope of history. Punting, by the by, is not a football (or even rugby) term, but rather an idiosyncracy of English cities on shallow rivers, whereby people get in flat-bottomed boats called punts, and propel themselves by sticking a long pole into the bottom of the river and pushing themselves along.

If you're less interested in the history of Cambridge than interesting stories, a fun passtime is to simply wait on one of the bridges over the Cam and listen to the profession punt tour guides. While there are some things along the Cam that it's generally agreed that there are certain things along the Backs that have interesting stories about them, there is virtually no consensus about what those stories actually are. For instance, the Clare College bridge contains a stone ball that is missing a wedge. Apparently, this is a boring stretch of the river, because every single tour guide has a different take on what this means - some will say there was a tax to pay on fully completed bridges, others will say that the builder wasn't paid and sabotaged the bridge out of vengeance.

The mathematical bridge, nails and all

When you pass another bridge in Queen's College, known as the mathematical bridge, some guides will try to persuade you that Newton himself, in the midst of a metal shortage, constructed the bridge out of wood without any nails, despite the fact that nothing about Newton would lead you to believe him to be an exceptional bridge engineer. If you brought up the fact that the bridge obviously contains nails now, they would tell you that it later needed repairs and was disassembled, but no one could figure out how to put it together again without using nails. It combines a ridiculous unprovable assertion with a deity-like glorification of a Cambridge icon - everything you need for a good punt story. The truth is that most of these stories are lost in history; things are the way they are because they've always been that way (we haven't even started using oars, for crying out loud!). If you enjoy romanticized versions of history, stop by sometime and I will punt you up and down the river with even more ridiculous stories than these.

Or maybe I'll just keep posting them here.