Travel Virus

Last weekend I was again in London with my mum and aunty, again under the rain and the awful freezing English weather. This time I also had some nice English food that nearly killed me! Jzus when is time to go home???

However to contrast the rain there is only one solution: shopping! No better place than Harrods, actually for window shopping. That’s the key of consumerism: bad weather!
Finally I found Diana memorial, it was more full of people than the Pope’s grave in S. Pietro, seriously.

Just to continue with the open-mindness of the British people: some weeks ago when Jeanne was here we wanted to buy a dress that was in the window of a shop (it was the last of the right size), but there has been no way to convince the shop keeper to destroy the window in order to sell us the dress (too much work). This weekend I’ve seen a nice dress on sale in window of a different shop, guess what, the last of the right size was just that one on the window. so I tried my best but the lady said it was too small for me (what do you mean madam, I look so fat?? damn), so I told her “I think I’m not too fat for that dress, I try the same size in another color (which was not on sale), and if it fits me, you sell me th one on the window, ok?” She agreed, and he he, it was perfect so I got the dress!! You see, I’m learning to survive in this country

Sunday and Monday I was in York, visiting Professor Thomas Green, who is now retired.
Thomas and his wife Joe were incredibly nice, they hosted me and took me for a tour of the city.
In the night we even attended a “ghost tour”!!
York is nice, it has a historical centre with a peaceful atmosphere, a number of nice churches and roman ruins, with the walls and towers still running around the city centre.

In the last days it rained a lot (you are not surprised, right?) and in the next photo you can see the consequences in the center of York:

Last Saturday I was in Leeds, a nice city in northern England. The centre is just a huge shopping centre, where you can nothing else than spending money. I really tried hard to find something of cultural interest, but I had an hard time, first because there is not so much, second because it’s disorganized and third because everything close early and open late (for my 24 hours visit).
I was planning to visit an Abbey newly restored (Kirkstall), just outside the city, but on the brochure the was no indication of how to get there, so I went to the tourism office to ask. They didn’t have any map of transportation (and I later discovered that even at the bus station they didn’t have any!), and gave me indications of where to get a bus to get there. I waited 45 at the bus stop - there was no timetable or route explanation - finally a bus come but guess what? The ticket was 2.80 pounds and I had only a 10, and they didn’t have change, so the driver very rudely asked me to leave the bus!!!!! The next bus was after one hour.
From my various experiences around the UK I can certainly state that from a transportation system point of view (trains, buses, cycle lanes), this Country is certainly under-developed!
And if you want to know another story, when I catch the train I had a reservation for a sit, but in my sit there was a lady with a huge luggage, so I sit in another place, since the train was nearly empty. When the train official came, he told me I HAD to go to my sit. So he went to the lady and made her move all her stuff although the train was empty! Very useful.

However I managed to spot some nice places despite the unfriendliness of the square minded people I met on the way.
I visited the Tropical World, which is not very big but nice and has beautiful gardens around it.
Finally I went to the Medical Museum and really enjoyed it. It’s about the history of medicine, and the health conditions of the people from the 1800 on. It’s really well done and very entertaining; a bit macabre sometimes, but made me think how lucky we are nowadays!

Just walking near the train station I saw this church with the symbols of many religions, so I was curious and went it. I discovered it’s a Unitarian church and had a very fascinating encounter with Paul, the catholic minister of the church, explained me with great energy and passion his theories of how the catholic church is distant from the real world and how they bridge this gap. They believe God is only one and the different religions are just different ways to reach the same God. This not a new age movement, it began nearly 400 years ago and some eminent Unitarians were: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, John Milton, Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen.

In the last two days I was in a workshop to learn about roadmapping, run by Rob Phaal from the IfM Cambridge University. It was fascinating to learn about this technique and see the patterns emerging from the post-its…
In this picture we had to make a landscape of world development in 10 and 20 years, and it was amazing to see that all the people (10) came up with more or less the same issues (global warming, economic rise of asian countries, energy scarcity and poverty reduction). As an exercise we had to produce the technology roadmap for a bike and my engineers-groupmates came up with the solution of a floating board for 2016!
I would definitely like one

Some more serious people than us, at Microsoft, put together the world top scientists and made a roadmap of the future until 2020, which ended up in a Special Issue of Nature, the eminent science Journal!

During this weekend I visited Grantchester and The Orchard, just outside the city of Cambridge, within a walkable distance from the center. Jeanne and I had a nice pic-nic on the river; it was a very hot day and there were lots of very British people having very British pic-nics and parties there, some people were even swimming (though I have some doubt about how clean the river is). Then we went to The Orchard, a secretly kept but world renown tea garden, “where more famous people have taken tea than anywhere else in the world” (Orchard booklet). Famous people such as Virgina Woolf, Bertrand Russel, Rupert Brooke, Wittgenstein, etc. It’s not marketing, it’s a real historic place, authentic and enjoyable. My grade: 10+

We also visited the “secret gardens” of the Cambridge Colleges. This is my favorite, just near the river, in absolute privacy, seems a fairy tale garden, coming out from Burnett’s book. The beauty and atmosphere of the garden inspired us some profound thoughts about sense of life and some more wordly plans to reproduce such a nice garden for our houses:

My friend and swiss-colleague Jeanne is here to visit for the weekend!

This pic was taken at The greed Dragon, a pub on the wonderful north-east part of Cambridge on the river Cam. Walking there from the city center we have seen many cute funny houseboat.
Maybe that’s what I really need, a houseboat! So I can keep moving from place to place with the whole house, no more worries about overweight luggages

When I say in Cambridge there are cows just close to the city center… I really mean it:
Cambridge is a very green city, with thousands of parks, gardens, fields and nice places where to spot some intersting wildlife, especially near the river. This morning a very british-looking british lady started to chat with me about the immense beauty of this city (who said the english people are not friendly?!) - and then showed to me this six cute tiny new-born creatures (maybe ducks, but I’m not sure) that were hiding just behind a bush near the busy river Cam:

Having woken up in a “green mood” I decided to take the suggestion of one of my room neighbour, Nana, to visit also the botanical garden. Despite the quantity of green that sorrounds the city, the small fee to enter the botanical garden is certainly worth. From the broshure I read that it was opened in 1846 by Charles Dawin’s teacher and now it counts 10.000 plant species, in 40 acres. Here’s a pic of the central lake

At the end of the day I was just walking along the river and meet Alan Blackwell with his family and also Lorisa, another collegue at the computer laboratory… Cambridge is quite small though!!

Today I finally decacated myself to some serious exploration of the city and photo shooting session. Cambridge is not really very big but it has some well-hided beautiful gardens and green areas.

This is the world-famous Trinity college. Even if I’m now a student here in Cambridge, I was looking at the people who live there and thinking with a bit of envy, how fascinating it must be to live there.

Along the river Cam I spotted those people playing a strange sport, it’s like basketball but it’s played on canoes:

Traffic jam in the river Cam! This picture was taken from the bridge on Magdalene Steet; that’s a very nice area where to hang out with friends, full of people and cafés. As you see in the picture those people are “punting”, in fact those are not conventional boats. Punting is a special and complicated way to drive a boat, by pushing a wooden pole in the bottom of the river to move to boat forward
Well, that’s not a good explanation, I’ll take a video next time

Today’s favorite is King’s College Gardens. But those gardens are well hided, so if you want to them you have to know where to go.

This weekend the Strawberry festival is taking place in Cambridge.

Considering the name I was expecting to see a festival for families picking up straberries etc. but actually with great surprise I discovered it is a sort of hippie revival fair, a huge fair with thousand and thousand of the people.

I have seen many strange people in my life, but not so many all together!!

Look at those poor kids, how their mamas dress their hair!!!
The boy in green and the girl in pink… jzesuz