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Archive for December, 2009

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Bournmouth to Oxford

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Leaving Cambridge I learned there was a tube strike in London, excellent…lucky I had a few hours to make my way across town to catch my bus to Bournemouth so joined in with another couple of million angry people on the bus system but managed to get there on time and jump on my uber cheap mega bus down to Bournemouth to stay with Vikki who I had done an exchange type thing with when I was at high school. 6 years on Vikki owns a house with her boyfriend Martin and has a real job, sometimes I feel a bit irresponsible! But lovely to spend a few quite days chilling around Bournemouth in a nice house with a big double bed. Bliss.

We went strawberry picking, cooked yummy food, went to the pub, watched DVD’s, ate fish and chips at the seaside and had dinner with her family who I had stayed with last time. We even manged to track down a pair of steelcap boots I needed for my upcoming job I was feeling a little bit nervous about.I was due in Oxford on the Sunday and caught a train up on Saturday to stay a night with my friend Kate’s mum and step-dad, Marianne and John, who are doing a belated O.E living in Oxford. I managed to navigate my way to their place and spend the afternoon and evening with them. Nice to see some kiwi’s again and was very welcomed into their nice house. Oxford is a cool city, while dominated by the university its really busy, lots going on, beautiful buildings of course and only an hour away from London! Not having any student guides this time I couldn’t get into any of the colleges but still nice wandering around the streets all the same.

I got in touch with my boss for my upcoming job I was still very vague about, all I had heard that we were going to Denmark on Tuesday. He said someone could come pick me up the next day which was great. I walked around a few college parks the next day and lay around in the sun waiting till I would get picked up, unfortunately though an extra lock had been put on the door of the house which I didn’t have the key for so couldn’t actually get inside to get my stuff. Luckily Marianne and John eventually came back and I got in touch with the guys from work who turned up later on that evening to pick me up and drive me back out to the base, about 20mins drive from center of Oxford. Time to start my crazy job for the summer…

Posted in England 2009, EUROPEAN SUMMER 09 | No Comments »

just another day at the best uni in the world; Cambridge

Monday, December 7th, 2009

My trip around England began to feel like a bit of a university tour as I left York uni for Cambridge to meet up with Pete, a guy I meet in Romania last year who had somehow convinced the university to give him a grant to travel in Romania and write his dissertation on backpackers. Pretty sweet. So again great to have someone on the inside to check out Cambridge. Uni was winding up for the year and everyone was finishing exams so good time to be around with everyone out and about. Cambridge is set up in colleges, Pete being in one of them where you live and do everything through, very different system than home. Pete’s college wasn’t one of the old original ones, but impressive nonetheless, beautiful grounds with ponds and fountains, he lived in an old house with about 30 other people, all with their own rooms and a cleaner…very cool. I was lucky enough to stay in Pete’s room while he crashed with his girlfriend on the floor below us. I arrived pretty early in the morning and walked the half and hour or so with my massively heavy pack over to meet Pete who had just made it out of bed, there was some serious end of year partying going on. After getting my stuff together we headed out to check out the town.

Basically the whole town is the university with the different colleges spread out around the place. The main colleges are amazing, set in beautiful grounds with incredible buildings. I can’t beleive people study here! One of the colleges dining halls looks like a museum with portraits on the wall and carved wood detailing around the walls. The colleges are closed to visitors so was pretty cool having Pete to be able to get into them all. There is a river running through with everyone punting along it, it beautiful, I loved Cambridge. It would be an amazing place to study, if only I was smart enough!

After wandering through several of the colleges and getting a bit of history from Pete we did what all good students do and headed to the pub where we proceeded to drink a lot of very very highly alcoholic cider despite warnings from a guy at the bar that “Old Rosies cider will fuck you up.” The rest of the afternoon/evening passed in a bit of a blur, something about dinner, a trip to the college bar, then very early bed as we had started the drinking session far too early.

In the morning it was time to move on again, this time to Bournemouth via London, so me and Pete got a much needed coffee before it was on another train into London to find my bus onwards. Cambridge was a cool place to visit, amazing history and would be so interesting to study there, very very different than our 1970’s Canterbury uni, Pete seems to take it all in his stride and is in no way a snobby Cambridge academic, he’s off to London in the new academic year to study at UCL, which will need another university visit.

Posted in 1, England 2009, EUROPEAN SUMMER 09 | No Comments »