Eighth College: Gonville and Caius College

I never really perceived Gonville and Caius (or just Caius as they call it here) as a college. I think the main reason is its proximity to King's College and the fact that it is located at the beginning of the old town center. This is also the cause for us not finding the door and literally walking around it twice, before getting in (we'd still be there if a guy had not just walked out the door the moment we were passing it).

It is impressive how you never expect these huge lawns behind the walls. I have actually walked quite often on the street that is on the other side of the gate on the picture above and it's such a tiny alley that you'd rather expect the wall to be the back of some small shop...

Caius is the 4th oldest college and apparently pretty wealthy. Due to it's super central location the lawn part is not as interminable as Jesus College for example, but it is till surprisingly big.

Of course they have their beautiful chapel (who doesn't, duh!).

Ok, I took this picture because I liked the architecture and did not know that the guy was an important English academic named Stephen Perse. As a matter of fact, Caius has a lot of famous alumni such as: Francis Crick (the guy from the DNA structure), John Venn (the one from the Venn diagrams (surprise!)), Sir James Chadwick (Discoverer of the Neutron) and Stephen Hawking (who is a fellow there, not an actual alumni). Not too bad...

At first I thought that they were making publicity for Chanel (just like the street lamps in London) but then I noticed it was a C and a G.Clever..

Ok, one last thing about Caius. Yes, caius. Are you reading it? CAIUS!

Well, chances are you are not pronouncing it right in your head (or aloud if you are reading this out for some reason). The name is (inexplicably) pronounced like the word "keys". So it's Gonville and keys.This is a classic "We don't care how you spell it, let's say it this way"-case of the English language. A guy told me on the street that John Caius was born John Kays and changed his name to Caius to sound latin (who does not want that). But apparently he insisted on the old pronunciation (which is kind of cheating, you either change your name or you don't) so this is why everyone is mispronouncing it, but I still do and always will pronounce it "Kah-ee-ouz", because there are things that one can simply not get away with...

Pose like there is no tomorrow

Dublin is full of statues and sculptures of all kinds of things which makes posing like a real tourist much easier (not to mention more entertaining) than buildings or landscapes. Here are some of my favorite monuments:

Of course the first statue is the one of Éire, the matron goddess of Ireland. Although she seems to be quite an important Gaelic goddess, after very extensive research there is not much information about her on Wikipedia. So far I know that she was daughter of Ernmas and therefore one of the Tuatha Dé Dannan and her sisters were called Banba and Fódla. Yes, most of the Asian people I have met had easier names.

The statue is really beautiful and expressive, which is why it is one of my favorites. In case you are looking for it it is located in the Merrion Square Park. 

I am starting to regret that I am not an Irish citizen, because from what I have seen as good as everyone can get a monument there. The picture above shows Molly Malone a fictional character from the song with the same name. At some point people started claiming that she did exist and there is still a debate going on about whether street-hawkering (totally a word) was her only occupation or wether she had another job during the night as well. Be as it may, the Dublin Millenium Commission found a girl with the same name that died on the 13th of June, which is why this now officially the Molly Malone day and therefore one more reason to celebrate. In case you were wondering where all of this hype about this woman is coming from, apparently the song has become the unofficial anthem of the city over the years and is therefore a big part of their culture. The more you know...

A more chaste figure is St. Patrick the primary patron Saint of this country. As you all read my post containing explanations about the St. Patrick's cathedral I don't need to tell you how much he baptized everyone and all of that...

At the Guinness museum you had many opportunities to satisfy your inner tourist by posing with all kids of interactive exhibits. This guy is from the famous advertising where he is running away from a lion. In this case it's me fleeing from more alcohol...

This statue was in the basement of (I want to say...) Christ Church Cathedral. I am not sure it is famous or meaningful, I just enjoyed the admiring look of the girl to the incredible piece of eye-candy on the right.

Here you can see me hanging out again with my buddy Oscar. This is the statue that has his quotes on some pillars next to it and you can find it on Merrion Square Park, where you can also find... 

...this throne! From what I have read it is there to commemorate Dermot John Morgan, an Irish comedian and actor (EVERYONE gets their own monument here!). I this case I am just showing you what a great queen of the world I would give (just saying...). 

Definitely a lot to see around Dublin!

Some more ethanol

After this post you might be getting the impression that we have some kind of alcohol problem especially considering older Ireland posts, but I have to assure you, it is the Irish' fault, not ours! It's their idea to build half of their tourism around alcohol, we just did our job visiting all the important attractions of the city. Now that this is clear, I give you:

The Jameson distillery museum!  

Unlike the Guinness Brewery the actual factory is not located in Dublin anymore, but somewhere else in Ireland (that is probably less expensive than the MIDDLE of the capital...). How cool is the lamp in the picture above, by the way? (and if you are enough of an alcoholic or have a couple of years you can make one yourself!).

The exposition was quite interesting. They showed how the distillery worked back in the day and even had an entertaining (and unexpectedly well done) video about it.

Of course the also explained how they produce the whiskey today. Since I tend not to have a clue about the different kinds of alcohol, this was quite instructive for me (We learned about the varying types of whiskey and why they taste and look different).

.At the end of the tour I even obtained a certificate as qualified Irish whiskey taster, which is more that I ever expected to get as a non-drinker... Good night!

Seventh College: Emmanuel College

Yay, another college! 

After my tour last weekend I have to keep them coming one after another in order to win my challenge. This time I'll show you:

 Emmanuel college!

 Emmanuel College is actually one of my favorites so far (the fact that they had a free bouncy-castle in their gardens once might have influenced this opinion to some extend). Another reason is that it is not too famous (like King's is) and yet not only really beautiful but also one of the best colleges. The fact that it always scores best in the Tompkins Table (apparently this is a thing they do here where they compare the average of all the students' grades and see which college has the smartest kids (I am not making this up... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tompkins_Table)) has some people calling it the Ravenclaw college (this one of the many funny Harry Potter analogies here).

In the upper picture you can see a very British phenomenon. I have put no filter or anything, that is the actual color of the grass. This is what happens when it does not rain EVERY SINGLE DAY for a couple of days. Having more precipitation than... (nothing to compare here since the UK is pretty much as bad as it gets in terms of rain...) ... everyone, these people probably don't even know what a sprinkler looks like. So whenever it gets hot for a week everything dries out. But don't you worry, these people take it very chilled, I have heard people saying we just need to wait for the next rain and everything will be fine again. Seems fairly easy to me.

The dining hall is really cute in this college. While usually they tend to be rather dark and sinister (and yet very impressive) this one is happy and classy (except for the paintings, can they be any darker, please?).

The chapel is very cute as well:

Nothing incredibly spectacular (after seeing what feels like 1000 college chapels...) but instead they have this:

It is the most amazing tree I have ever seen in my life!! Really. And you cannot tell how awesome it is from the picture, but the branches go all the way to the floor and then up again and when you are inside it's like you are in a huge dome of leaves and happiness! Unfortunately you are not allowed to climb on them though :(

Another big plus of Emmanuel College is its fancy swimming pool. From what I heard it is actually pretty cold but I still want to jump in some day (the problem is you need an Emmanuel Student to go there and, damn, those people are busy!)

They have a small lake with ducks and cute houses everywhere so a very nice atmosphere. 

10 points for Ravenclaw!

Reading the Sky

In an earlier post I mentioned the Gravity Bar on top of the Guinness Museum and it is about time you guys see what I am talking about. It is basically a round room with a counter in the middle and glass all around. What makes it even more instructive is the fact that it has explanations on some of the windows that describe the famous tourist sites around Dublin in the direction you can find them. This makes it very easy for me because it is pretty self-explanatory.

The very famous St Patrick's Cathedral:

Make sure you remember all the facts about this Cathedral because I have a blog about it coming up as well.

This one I have not even visited but it's good to know...

All lies! Everyone knows Trinity College is in Cambridge!

As I mentioned before you got a free Guinness up there. I really like the way it looks with all the waves going up (you cannot tell very well from this picture but it is actually very pretty).

And last but not least the Guinness brewery itself, of course. 

PS: I think no one has been able to take pictures with a sky like this EVER. Also, don't you think you are getting a right impression here, because it looks really spacey and empty. No, good Sirs, it was packed and I probably made more than one enemy pushing everyone around to get decent pictures... You better appreciate them!

So this is what I should be doing...

Since we have run out of Shakespeare plays for the moment we had to look for another source of entertainment and I think we did a pretty good job. The Botanic Gardens in Cambridge hosts a concert every Wednesday (assuming the weather is nice (haha, right)) and this week we had....

Flamenco! 

Whoooo! I mean, Olé! Haha the musicians actually told us to shout it when we thought it was good and some of the Brits were doing a decent job doing so... 

The music was really good and the dancers very talented. For some miraculous reason the weather was fantastic as well (this is starting to be suspicious, there is probably a hurricane on its way...)

As usual we were just sitting on the grass having a picnic (I bought a blanket a couple of days ago, because this seems to be my new form of dinner...) and enjoying the atmosphere. Lovely!

Freeze!

I told you!

I was going to see Leprechauns in Ireland! 

How?

Welcome to the Wax Museum of Dublin! 

It is a very entertaining museum and I have to shamefully admit that I did not know most of the people in there (there were whole rooms dedicated to Irish sportsmen, politicians and writers, which I don't happen to be very familiar with (especially not with their looks...)).

Of course I knew my good friend Oscar Wilde so we had a little chat...

... and I was very excited to meet my idol and life-guide Spongebob!

Last but not least a picture of a guy that I picked up in the end. Apparently he had also come all the way from England to Dublin...

Behind bars

 A very impressive landmark of Dublin is the Kilmainham Gaol, a former jail that has now become a museum. This building was prison to many of the leaders of the Irish rebellions in the beginning of the 20th century and is an important part of Irish history. 

The East wing is very impressive and unexpectedly beautiful. Apparently it was the first prison to have this kind of interior patio that allowed the guards to watch numerous prisoners at once (many of the modern jails follow this style). This hall is so extraordinary that several films have been shot here and sometimes it even hosts theater plays (no famous video-clip worth mentioning here).

I feel like it has a lot of very cute details considering the fact that this is a prison we are talking about here...

The yards were very impressive as well, but the guide showed us corners where rebels were shot, so that kind of dimmed everyone's enthusiasm.

Although its history is quite depressing the prison itself is quite remarkable and the tour-guide was really good, so we enjoyed the stay. I guess it is easy to say this for someone who only spent an hour there and not a couple of years...

Sixth College: Jesus College

I know you guys probably think that I will never complete my challenge of visiting and blogging about all the 31 Colleges in Cambridge, and considering that this is the sixth one I am writing about your thoughts might have been justified to some extend. But not anymore, my friends! This weekend I went on College-tour with a very good friend of mine and we covered 13 of them! It may not sound as impressive as it actually was but you have to consider that a visit consists of the following steps:

1. Find the College (might sound trivial, but believe me, it is really not). Some of the colleges do not have actual signs in front of it (or not the ones you might be expecting) and some were just big doors you passed by everyday without noticing they were College entrances so you don't even acknowledge them. More than once, I kid you not, we went AROUND the building that we assumed was the college twice without finding the entrance (it really was the College, so I don't understand what we were doing wrong...)

2. Convince the porters, that we are allowed to go in, even though we are not College members (University card helps, but smiles sometimes did so even more...)

3. Cross the portal to Narnia and run around endless fields and buildings that cannot possibly fit into the area that is surrounded by the walls.

4.Make sure you covered everything, visited the College Chapel, avoided the Fellow-areas, only stepped on the allowed grass and got a sneak peak of the Dining hall.

5. Find the way out and cycle to the next College (or at least in its direction...)

Anyway, and without further ado, I give you:

Jesus College

Even though it is fairly close, I had never been to Jesus College and now it is one of my favorites. Why you ask? Because this is the first thing we ran into:

At first we were a little shocked, but then we figured that these were not real people. And this is when things started to get weird! We later found out that they were hosting some kind of modern exposition, but I have to say, that I really love this College with all this incredible randomness and if I were them I would keep the sculptures forever.

Jesus College is huge! And as we continued walking I lost my orientation which added up to the confusion of the sculptures before.

Some parts of the College are very modern and it does not look like you are in the college anymore. As we continued walking we ran into this:

Of course there is a huge, yellow (yellow!) firetruck in the middle of the College (we still did not know about any exposition, so imagine my state of mind at this point)! Next to all this randomness we still had a lot of beautiful Cambridge-typical scenery:

Then, we apparently passed some time tunnel, because the building we walked into was like a really old castle and not at all like the rest of the College:

Naturally this old path led to a patio with golden umbrellas lying around...

... and we then ended in a small garden that had pieces of huge clocks and other sculptures such as:

lying around.

To wrap it up this sign was standing in a corner under some bushes.

As we went out we took a last look at the rocks on the grass that had something fishy about them...

Whoever came up with ALL OF THIS is my Person of the Day (a highly prestigious award). Really good job, Jesus College, I did not see any of this coming!

PS: longest post ever, is anyone still reading at this point?...