Or rather, as this is England, I went to shabbos at Uni. University of Cambridge in fact.
Yes, that Cambridge.
Becky (the friend I stayed with two posts ago) sympathized with my desire to GO EVERYWHERE AND SEE EVERYTHING and mentioned that she had a really good friend named Donna at Cambridge, St. John’s College. (They pronounce “Saint” slightly differently here. More like “Sent” vs “Say-nt.”)
Anyway, her friend, Donna, was willing to host Dasi and me along with Becky, so come Friday afternoon we were off!
It was my first trip on a train in the UK this trip, and I had a great time. I love trains, and this one left right from King’s Cross, which was super-convenient.
So, shabbos in Cambridge!
Friday night we walked from St. Johns (the college Donna was attending) to the J-Soc (Jewish Society. In case it wasn’t obvious yet, British people abbreviate everything), which was about a five-minute walk. JSoc was lovely, we did kabbalat shabbat and then rearranged the whole space for dinner. Not so much singing, but an American studying law.
The atmosphere was really nice. It’s a smaller group of students, but more diverse. The divre torah were also really nice over shabbos.
So, after dinner we went to this lounge-room-place where a lot of Jewish students hang out and play pool. Donna was great at it, I declined. (On the incredible off chance anyone who has ever seen me play pool is reading this, you know why.) A few boys on the dart team were throwing darts pretty impressively, but Dasi and I were drifting off, so we left a little before midnight.
We stayed up late to chat, and the next morning Dasi ran off early and managed to find the JSoc by herself. We met her for lunch, and then went on a walking tour of some of the nearby colleges.
Remember, Cambridge is a university broken up into a bunch of smaller colleges, most of them founded by kings and such. Basically every college is OLDER THAN MY COUNTRY. Which is a little, you know, daunting. The boy from Friday night came with us, Austin, and between him and Donna we learned a ton of random, and occasionally hilarious facts and myths. Turns out St. Johns is the “Slytherin” of Cambridge. Who knew, right?
I am happy I didn’t go there, but I have to admit that it would have been pretty awesome.
Also, everyone biked everywhere. Bikes, as far as the eye could see. Crossing steets wasn’t just a game of “look in the other direction!” It became a game of “BIKES ARE UNPREDICTABLE. RUN AWAY.”
We hung out in the afternoon after our walk – it was freezing, by the way – and then went back for seudah shlishit and havdalah, and then ran back to the dorm to grab our bags to try and catch the next train out.
Round trip, our tickets cost £20. Good deal! Becky and I got to chat a lot on the train back, and make informal plans to visit Highgate Cemetery at some point.
One nice thing – I gave Donna a fairly large bag of M&M’s and she tagged me on facebook a few days later to let me know that they came in handy for her paper-writing all nighter! 😀
