Cambridge

So on March 7th I went to Cambridge for a day trip sponsored by the school.

Originally I hadn't planned on going because I was supposed to go to Venice but that trip fell through for some reason that I can no longer recall. Anyway, so I decided on Tuesday to go on this trip because I missed the trip to Oxford and I had been told by my most hard core Uncle that visiting the Unis (Universities) is a right good time. So I woke up at an abnormally early hour and got on the coach to go the famed Cambridge University.

Before we went to Cambridge we stopped at the American Cemetery. The American Cemetery is a cemetery dedicated to the men and women who fought for America and died while abroad. We stopped there for about 30 minutes or so. It was wonderful in a weird, somber sort of way. The sky was cloudless and the grass was the perfect shade of green. Then... there was row after row after row of white marble crosses and stars of David. When you first walked through the gates into the cemetery there was a long looking pool to your right and running along the right side of the entire pool was a wall with every single name etched in it's surface. Along the top in much larger letters was a tribute to the men and women who had died to preserve freedom. Other people walked along the wall in silence stopping every so often to look at a name or too. I think cemeteries are strange places. They cast this spell over us. They are scary at night. They command our attention like few other things do. In some respects they are beautiful, in some respects they are morbid. And sometimes you just wonder how much of a party it must be with all these people hanging out. I don't wish to be irreverent, but boys will be boys and soldiers definitely will be soldiers. Cemeteries cast this spell of remorse and melancholy upon those that walk through and while I think that the sacrifice that many of these people made is not one they should have made; I don't think they died in vain and I don't believe they would want us to go tip-toeing around. Granted this is not the place to throw your fourth of July bash, but it's also not a place to loose your soul at for 30 minutes. 

There is nothing glorious or romantic about death. As Tom Stoppard once said one moment you are alive the next you are not. It's just an absence of being "Now you see me, now you...". We don't see them. I was walking past a thousand faceless people. People I didn't even know. People I couldn't share anything with or learn from. 

These men and women are brave. Far braver than I shall ever be, but their memorial inspires us to be more than what we are today. They inspire us to make a change, hopefully for the better. There is very little good left in this world, but the good that there is left is something that is worth fighting and sacrificing for. 

So after we left the cemetery we continued on to Cambridge.  They dropped us off on the edge of Cambridge's campus... which is enormous. People wandered off to do their own thing and my friend Elise and I headed for the Kings College Chapel. The grounds of the campus were beautiful. There were little snow drops and crocuses blooming beside all the footpaths and people were lazily drifting down the canal that runs through the campus. Even though it was a Saturday students were wandering around. The intellectualism that was permeating from the school was almost too much for me.

We walked into the the Kings College Cathedral and were stunned. It is one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in. The fan ceiling is probably one of the high lights. It has stunning gothic architecture. The stained glass was also quite incredible. We walked around and sat and reflected for awhile before heading outside to explore the rest of the campus. 

I had come to Cambridge with only two goals: to see the Kings College Chapel and to see the Great Courtyard where the race in Chariots of Fire took place. Now obviously Kings College Chapel is part of Kings College and it was open to the public, but today Trinity College which houses the Great Courtyard was closed to the public. Since when have rules ever stopped a Sullivan. After walking around the campus some more and looking at the outsides of the colleges we decided to simply just break the rules and walk onto the St. John's College campus. We're students anyway so we blended in... sort of. We walked around St. John's for awhile before we headed towards Trinity. The gate door was obviously closed but I just walked up and pulled it open. Other people were doing it anyway so I wasn't the only one breaking the rules.

The courtyard was not what I had imagined at all. It was much bigger than I had anticipated and very open. The sun was shinning and the courtyard glowed in the early afternoon sunlight. We walked around the quad a bit and then left. After that we perched ourselves outside the Kings College entrance and ate our scrumptious  packed lunch. After eating our lunch we headed to the Fitz-William art museum in Cambridge. It had a good selection of world art and ceramics and such. After walking through there we headed back to Cambridge's main market area. On the edge of the market there was a church. The church was of no particular significance but pinned to the fence surrounding the entire church, were flyers for events at Cambridge. These events varied from public lectures, to parties, to theatre performances, to concerts and recitals. It was incredible to see that there was so much going on there. By the looks of it there were atleast 7 or 8 different plays being performed by various groups in the Cambridge community. 

By the time we left Cambridge at 4pm I was thoroughly sold on coming back. If theatre doesn't work out I plan to do whatever it takes to get accepted and study at Cambridge. I don't really care what college I'm in or what I'm studying as long as I get to be part of what goes on here. Cambridge didn't feel like a nerd school to me. Nor did it seem like a haven for a bunch of toffee-nosed rich kids and snobby-elitist-Ivy League Americans. Cambridge is a place of learning, and that learning transcends what is taught in the classrooms. That's one thing I have discovered while I have been abroad-- learning is not something that is limited to notes and ideas. Trust me I've taken plenty of notes this semester, but the knowledge that I have really retained has had little to do with what date the Easter Rising occurred on, or why Charles I was beheaded. What I have come away with from this experience is a greater appreciation for what I have. A much greater appreciation for what my mother spend all those years doing, and an increasing desire to learn more and try to connect with more people.