I’m back!

I’m surprised at being in California. For one thing, it’s sunny all the time and there’s not a cloud in the sky. What’s with that?? I keep waiting for something to happen outside but the weather is static and unchanging. In India it was monsoon season but did I become so accustomed to India?

Impressions of Backpacking

Just got back from backpacking through Europe. We went to 9 cities in 7 countries in 2 weeks! It was an amazingly intense experience.

We were on the go every day. We walked all day, every day, and our frequent train rides – sometimes for a few hours in the morning, sometimes overnight – became a sort of respite: a limbo between locales where we could rest. And as we traveled I got tougher – I found that I didn’t need so much sleep, and I learned to take care of the blisters on my feet so that they went away and didn’t come back.

As we learned how to backpack, it became a sort of routine to arrive in a new city every other day, to find our hostel and a city map, and then later to check train time tables, set an alarm clock, wake hurriedly and dash to the next train. The first day in a new city was usually the best and full of the freshest impressions. By the second day it would feel as if it were time to move on.

But the routine of travel coexisted with the novelty of our destinations. No matter how many cities we visited, the next one would present itself in its own astonishing array, and the impressions of the previous city would fade away. Each destination was distinct and felt like a separate trip in itself. On arrival, the slate would be wiped clean and we would begin again.

Pictures posted

Down the River Cam to Grantchester

Cambridge

Down the River Cam to Grantchester

Today I followed the River Cam 2 miles to Grantchester. After leaving the city center, the river runs through preserved land, and I met with a surprisingly large amount of wildlife on the way. There was a meadow that was preserved historical public grazing land, with real cows and sheep grazing on it. On the banks of the river were nesting geese, one of which hissed at me when I inadvertently passed too close to its nest. It’s spring here, and here the spring has everything you would ever want of spring. All the meadows are blooming, birds are nesting, ducklings are hatching. It’s real English springtime here, in real English countryside.

The reason why I say it that way, is that my destination was the Orchard Tea Garden in Grantchester. I arrived after much adventure (who knew one could get lost following a river) and settled myself down in one the lounge chairs in the orchard with a cup of orange, mango and cinnamon tea and pamphlet of the Tea Garden’s history.

Early in last century, just before WWI, a group of young intellectuals gathered at the Orchard. This included Rupert Brooke, E M Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf. Virgina Woolf dubbed them the “Neo-Pagans” because of their fondness of camping, swimming, and hiking in the countryside near the village. I read of their social life and some of Brooke’s poems that he wrote when he was away from England. From “The Soldier”:

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air

Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

From “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”

But Grantchester! Ah, Grantchester!

There’s peace and holy quiet there

As I walked back through the meadows, I thought about his love of Grantchester and of England, and here I was, walking through an English meadow covered by flowers. It reminded me of descriptions of “the moors” in novels that I’ve read, although maybe moors are more properly Yorkshire than Cambridgeshire. (not quite sure about this) I could remember vivid passages on blooming moors, although it was hard place where they were from—Secret Garden? Wuthering Heights? In all these descriptions there was a deep love of the countryside as a place where one is rooted. And I thought that some of my own cultural heritage is also rooted here in the English countryside.

Being a tourist in Cambridge

I arrived in Cambridge, bleary and jetlagged in the middle of a warm, sunny afternoon, and was abashed when my friend told me not to walk in the middle of the street, because that’s what tourists do.

It wasn’t until the next day that I understood about the tourists. There are tourists everywhere in Cambridge, of all shapes and sizes. There are young backpackers, older sedate couples, and they speak all different languages – French, German, Chinese. Here is a horde of tourists in front of Trinity college:

Cambridge is composed of over a dozen colleges, and many of them were founded in the 1300s-1500s. Many of the colleges are closed to visitors because it is exam time now, and other charge an entrance fee.

On Friday I joined the horde with my map and camera, and blended right in. In front of King’s College I saw a young woman trying to take a picture of herself with the college in the background. She would smile cheerily into the camera, take the picture, look at the results, and try again. After several attempts, I offered to take a picture for her, and since I was also carrying a camera, she offered to take a picture for me as well. Here is the result:

Notice the immaculately groomed grass in the background, striped from careful mowing. The sign in the middle says to keep off the grass.

The grass at the colleges is so carefully groomed the lawns are like flowerbeds, and with the signs saying to keep off I would never dream of stepping on it. Yet, at Trinity College, my friend is allowed to walk on the grass since she’s a fellow and not a student or a tourist. On the grass at Trinity college:

And here again, with my friend’s colleague.

Europe backpacking itinerary

We’ve finally planned our Europe backpacking trip! It took almost an entire weekend of looking up train timetables and hostels, but nearly everything is booked now. All we have left to do is go on the trip!

Here is where we’ll be each night

17 May : Paris

18 May : Marseilles

19 May : Paris

20 – 21 May : Amsterdam

22 May : night train to Dresden, then short morning train to Prague

23 – 25 May : Prague

26 May : Vienna

27 May : night train to Venice

28 May : Venice

29 May : Rome

30 May : night train to Lausanne, Switzerland

31 May : Lausanne

1 June : Paris

2 June: Return to UK!

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