Shocking pictures of the first day in Cambridge
I don’t know why, but whenever I have to make a picture for an ID card, I look like a goofy nerd. It’s always the same routine: all exhausted from running around the campus trying to get my paperwork together, I sit in front of one of these digital cameras attached to registration computers, they take a picture and it looks like I don’t know how to use a comb. The last picture from the ID Card of the Catholic University of Leuven was so terrible that I did not dare to show them to anybody except the library stuff. This time it’s not as bad, but almost. I don’t know how I managed, but before walking to the Card Office, I shaved myself and cut myself slightly on the cheek, and now the picture features a beautiful red spot on my right cheek – looks like marmalade.
Anyway, I got a nice blue Cambridge card now, can access my Cambridge Mail, go to the Library and many other things that are useful in this digital age. So far I can’t eat yet, the Dining Hall at Trinity Hall College is still closed and I haven’t found a supermarket. We’ll see how things go. I only had to go to five different offices in order to get the card – Porter’s Lodge, Bursary, Graduate Office, Board of Graduate Studies, and finally the Card Office. But the people were very helpful and nice and did not show any kinds of amusement concerning my speckled face.
The room at Trinity Hall is very nice – a corner room with two windows, a spacious bed, nice green shrubs in front of the window and even two desks. I arrived there at about ten in the morning. Terrible sleepy, because this morning the plane left shortly after six pm, but getting to the airport took quite long. I already checked-in last night, wrapped my bike like a Christo-piece-of-art, paid 85 Euros as an overweight charge. At the airport this morning, the police offers started searching my laptop and vacuumed between the keys of the keyboard. They suspected explosives because they founded organic particles between the electronics. They did not know that maybe one or two of my bread crumbs have found their way into the laptop. Oh well.
When I arrived in Stansted, the British Sun (not the tabloid, the real sun) came up and greeted me – which improved my mood and fatigue considerably. I had to wait quite a long time for the bike to arrive, so I missed the train to Cambridge. With some cappucino I kept myself awake. At the Cambridge train station with the friend of a friendly passenger I hauled the luggage on a trolley, pushed it to the Bike Shop, had the tyres refilled and searched for a cab. The rest is history and I’ll write more soon.
