British Hospitality at its Best

Last week I went to Hungerford, in southern England, to collect water samples for my research. While there I stayed at two Bed and Breakfasts, as they were SO much cheaper than the local hotels (£35/night at a B&B vs. MINIMUM £95/night at a local hotel), and I like Bed and Breakfasts better anyway.

I had to stay in two different Bed and Breakfasts because I made my reservations at the last minute, and this being a popular tourist destination for cyclers on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and it being the end of summer, most locations were all booked up. So I stayed at one B&B the first night and another the next two nights.

The second Bed and Breakfast I stayed at was truly remarkable. It was Berries B&B, where the hosts are Mick and Lynda Berry. As I mentioned, I had to stay at a different B&B the first night, but couldn't check in until 5 even though I arrived in Hungerford at 2 (this was outside my control). I stopped by Berries B&B when I first came into town as they had agreed to lend me their bike to cycle up and down the canal (where I was taking water samples). Here the remarkable nature of the Berrys started to become evident. That they allowed me to use their bike was remarkable in and of itself - bikes aren't all that cheap, after all, if I happened to take an unintentional dive into the canal. But then they offered to let me store my luggage at their B&B while I went back out for the afternoon to start my sample collection. They were tremendously friendly, and I talked to them about an hour before heading out. That evening, once I was checked into the other B&B, Mick DROVE MY LUGGAGE over to the B&B so I wouldn't have to carry it myself. Amazing! The next day, the Berrys invited me to have lunch with an angling friend of Mick's who was coming into town to fish for the day. It just so happened this gentleman knew a bit about the canal and the river that I was studying. It was so kind of them to allow me to intrude upon their lunch for the benefit of my research! Later that evening, when I checked into Berries B&B, Mick drove me over to the old B&B to retrieve my luggage, and then drove me to a takeout restaurant to pick up some dinner. Unlike many bed and breakfasts, where they seem to shoo you off to your room and don't want to see any more of you until breakfast the next morning, Mick invited me to eat in the kitchen and we chatted a bit while I ate. The next day, Mick drove over to the train station to pick up Aaron, who came in for a day to help me. That evening, he drove us out to a local pill box - the canal was considered a possible point of defense in WWII and was lined with them. I had told him Aaron was interested in WWII history, and so Mick drove us out to see one just outside town. Then he dropped us off at a local restaurant, and we called him once we were done and he came into down to drive us back to the B&B. The next day he drove us to the train station at the appropriate time, and waited to make sure we set off ok. We exchanged hugs all around when we left!

It turns out that Mick and Lynda spent a year in a motor home in the US, and have so many stories to share. They run a bed and breakfast because they want to meet people and hear new stories. Lynda is a great cook, and served some of the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. They have three wonderful dogs - which are kept outside the main living areas, but are close by if you want to seek them out. The bedrooms are beautifully decorated.

These pictures were taken the morning we left - the rooms look much more stylish when you arrive. It was just absolutely wonderful, Aaron and I both agree this is the best Bed and Breakfast we've ever stayed at. We really felt like guests of our hosts, not like customers. If you ever have a need to be in this part of England (and they are centrally located for things like Stonehenge, the Avebury Standing Stones, Windsor Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, etc if you have a car), you should definitely check them out!!

St. Catharine's May Ball

There are a few fancy events in Cambridge which seem to be integral parts of the University and College culture. The common ones are punting events on the Cam, College formal dinners, and Evensongs. These all pale in comparison to the uncommon ones, the May Balls. These are extravagent affairs which last all night long and have live entertainment, games, food and drink.

The St. Catharine's May Ball was no exception. The theme was Narnia this year and there were people in character to greet guests as they arrived. There were 5 main stages on the Catz grounds with live music running on all of them for much of the evening. Some of the other notable things included: belly dancing, ice skating, fresh donuts, fire juggling, mechanical bull riding, unlimited drinks, lots of music and dancing, and a huge variety of foods from pizza to pig roasts to ice cream.

Some of the highlights for me included the tarot card reading (not that I believe in that, but I wanted to try it, I got a princess of swords card which means I need to cut out something, possibly obeying laws, I forget), the acapella band from Oxford (great show), the chocolate fountain (yummy), and the juggling where I got to participate and had a bread stick knocked out of mouth (and I was not even hurt). We whimped out and left around 3:30 am but the ball continued until 6ish at which point the survivors picture was taken (or so I hear). I was sad to miss that but Becky was not feeling well so we will have to catch that next time. It was certainly a night to remember and one of the many bonuses for students at Cambridge University.

Wicked in the West End

We watched 2 fairly big West End (this is the London equivalent of Broadway in New York) shows recently. Phantom of the Opera and Wicked. Of the 2 I have to say that Wicked was my personal favorite. It was a bit of a tough choice though since Phantom has fantastic production values and better music. I liked the story for Wicked better. It was actually an improvement over the original Wizard of Oz story in many ways.

Seeing a major West End show is something that anyone visiting London and the UK should strongly consider. I have not yet seen Les Miserables or Mousetrap but these are on my short list. The shows will probably run you around 50-60 GBP for decent seats and skimping on good seats when you are visiting is probably a mistake.

We grabbed a bite to eat in the nearby station so if you are watching Wicked or whatever show is playing in the Apollo Theatre there are plenty of nearby food options in Victoria Station. This is also a major underground station so transport is not a problem either. I recommend seats in the center of the forward half of the stalls or the forward half of the circle. They cost more but are worth it.

Z is for Zed

So, as many of you may be aware, in England 'zees' are 'zeds'. Now, I think in general this is actually a perfectly sensible way to pronounce the letter Z. I can't tell you how many times I've spelled my name for someone at a reception desk and they immediately start searching their files under 'C'... So then you have to spell your name 'Zee as in zebra, ee, cee, kay,...' And being able to just say 'Zed ee cee kay' certainly speeds things up and avoids lots of confusion. On the flip side, if I slip up and say 'Zee as in zebra' here I get a very confused look for a second before they think to themselves 'silly American' and move on. So I am all in favor of moving to the 'zed' system.

However, the Brits are weird about their zeds in other ways. They seem extremely averse to using them. Stabilize becomes stabilise, analyze becomes analyse, fertilize becomes fertilise, etc. In fact, unless the z is an integral component of the word (for example, as in zebra), there's a good chance the Brits use an s instead. So what got me thinking about this (again) is that I have just completed a 25-page homework assignment (hooray! thus ends my homework requirement FOREVER!!), and the word processor on my computer in the engineering department will convert things like labor to labour but for some reason doesn't convert fertilize to fertilise. So I just did a search of my document for 'z', and in most cases replaced it with 's'. I was just going to leave it as is, proud of my American heritage and all that, but since the word processor had already changed all the o's to ou's, and I remembered reading for professional journals you are typically allowed to use either American OR British usage, but you may not use BOTH, I thought it would look better if I made everything British. This of course assumes that there aren't other hidden usages I don't know about and completely missed...

Sleeping in!

Today the UK went on Daylight Saving Time. I am very excited that the sun will now be rising at 6ish instead of 5ish. Since my body seems determined to rise with the sun, this means an extra hour of sleep for me! Of course, by the middle of June, the sun will be rising at 4:00am and going down at nearly 10pm...but we're just not thinking about that right now.

Street signs

We hired a car to drive around East Anglia a bit yesteday. It was a lot of fun but we got lost 3 times and mostly because of the lack of street signs! It seems like the english are not big fans of labelling their streets and we often found ourselves at an intersection with no idea what road we were on or what the other road was. Not sure why the street signs seem to be so scarce here in the UK but I would recommend getting a GPS map thing if you plan to do any serious driving.

UK food labels

There is a fairly universal food labelling system they use here in the UK that I like a lot (see the image). It makes it pretty easy to tell at a glance how good the food is for you. It includes Calories, Sugar, Fat, Saturated Fat, and Salt. They tend to print this on the front of the food packaging so you don't even have to turn it over. Recently, I have noticed that they are now including a color scheme as well. Red means high (bad) and green is low (good). I hope they start doing something like this in the US to make it easier to tell how good or bad something is for you.

Earthquake?

Apparently we had an earthquake near here. The BBC news site has information about here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
I did not feel it or even wake up but some friends have been telling me it was "intense". I guess there will be more information about it later but apparently it was the biggest in the UK in a couple decades or so and was about a magnitude 5 on the richter scale.

Spring is Here! ...Almost

Today has been an absolutely beautiful day. Sunny, not cold (I won't go so far as warm yet), birds singing, the whole nine yards. I actually got a little too warm walking around in my winter coat today. It is interesting how rapidly the seasons change - I felt that the change from summer to fall was very abrupt, happening in just a week or two. Now again, it seems that over the past week the sun is finally staying up until a decent hour of the night (doesn't go down until 6 now!), the temperature's improving, and overall the signs of Spring are everywhere. My spirits are lifted. However, my happiness was doused a little today when one of my supervisees told me that this was very unusual weather for Cambridge at the end of February. So perhaps we'll have another relapse into Winter...but I'm enjoying my temporary Spring while it lasts!

The Eagle Pub

I went out to the pub with some coworkers Friday night. This is sort of the common thing to do as far as I can tell since all pubs seem to be packed on Friday nights. We went down to The Eagle which is one of the most well known and central pubs in Cambridge. This one is particularly famous for hosting World War 2 pilots and being the place where Watson and Crick announced the DNA double helix. It is a nice pub with a fairly relaxed atmosphere (not unsual really) but is pretty crowded. I would say this is a must see for visitors to Cambridge. It is typical english pub sized so there is not a whole lot to see but it is worth stopping in for a pint.

Catz Connections

While we were at the Gielgud Theatre (see Aaron's post earlier today), I ran into an alumnus from St. Catharine's College! I was wearing my College scarf as I typically do in the cold, and he leaned over and said 'perhaps you'll recognize these'....he was wearing cufflinks with the St. Catharine's College shield. Apparently he went to St. Catharine's in the 60s and studied philosophy and law. It was pretty neat that he recognized the scarf and said something.

Iolanthe in London

We went down to London yesterday to see Iolanthe (a Gilbert and Sullivan play) at the Geilgud theatre. I have not seen any of their stuff before but it was pretty good. There were a lot of references to British politics that I did not quite understand but the production values seemed good and it was entertaining.
We took the train down and back and used a line which went into Liverpool Street Station that we had not tried before. Overall I liked the train a little better but it was slower than the line that goes into Kings Cross. It also required more travel on the underground to get to central London but it was slightly cheaper. We discovered that you still have to go up to the ticket window to get the cheapest tickets (as opposed to ordering them online or getting them at the machines). For four people it was 38 pounds total for a return trip into London (off-peak).

A new home!

On Saturday we finally moved into our own flat! We'd been living with Antranig for 9 months (11 months for Aaron) - it is so nice to be on our own again! We found a nice one bedroom flat, it's a little small, but has enough space for all our things, so that's all that matters. The living room is big enough to put in an air mattress for company, so we're in good shape!

Saturday was an exciting day. We had to bring the deposit and first month's rent in cash or banker's draft (guaranteed funds) to the rental agency. We had meant to go out Thursday or Friday to get the cash, but our days filled up and we didn't have time. So we went to the bank Saturday morning...only to discover that although the bank was physically open (there were people there ready to help you open a bank account, etc.), the tellers were not! We couldn't withdraw more than 500 GBP - the limit on what we could get from the ATM. Not good! Aaron wanted to just give up and go home, move in on Monday. I was determined I was not going to be delayed in moving AGAIN (after the initial delay that arose when the landlord from the previous place we had lined up backed out the day before we were to move in), so I decided to go on to the rental agency and plead our case. Aaron followed. Fortunately, the gentleman at the rental agency was pretty forgiving. We explained the situation and gave him the cash we did have, then wrote a check for the rest. We had to go back and give him cash on Monday for the amount on the check, but that was a small price to pay to go ahead and move in. We were so happy to be dealing with someone who had everything organized and together.

We had a celebratory lunch at Pizza Hut (Aaron says he was going there anyway, but it's kind of expensive, so I felt like it was celebratory), then went back to Antranig's and finished packing. We took a first load over to the flat on our bikes and looked around to determine the pre-move in condition (we'll have to sign something about the state of the flat on move in when they mail it to us here in a few days). While we were here, the man with a van we hired called up - he was waiting outside Antranig's! Fortunately, the new flat was only a few blocks from Antranig's, so we hurried on over. The man with a van was absolutely wonderful (I highly recommend him to any Cambridge folks looking to move a small quantity of stuff). He was well-organized, loaded his van very efficiently, and got all of our stuff over here in just one trip. He was extremely friendly, and enjoyed picking on you a bit - he had me going for a while that he knew someone in Blacksburg Virginia (where my parents live)...until I realized he was looking at a box shipped from my parents while he was talking. The whole move probably didn't take more than an hour.

I spent the rest of the day unpacking, and got mostly done. We still needed hangars and a cabinet for the bathroom, so I couldn't get everything done quite yet. Yesterday (Monday) we got our internet hooked up and went out and got a few more things. Still no bathroom cabinet, but everything else is in pretty good shape. I've been really enjoying having our own place!

Accommodation Scams

Well, as many of you have heard (and most will soon hear), we were unable to move into the apartment arranged for us due to some personal circumstances on the part of the landlord. So I've been looking for accommodation again. Will it never end?

During the last round of accommodation searching I found Gumtree to be very useful, so I put a 'wanted' ad up there again. Last time I had lots of legitimate inquiries, although not always from people who read the ad fully (several inquiries that were too far away, too expensive, or wrong type of accommodation). This time, I had one legitimate inquiry (although the person hadn't read the ad well) and FOUR, yes FOUR scam responses!

We actually got fairly far along with one of the scammers - the name he gave us was 'Antonio Lemma', although I'm sure that wasn't his name. Through a bunch of really poorly-written emails I determined that he claimed to have a rather large place available for really cheap - £410/month for a 2-bedroom house! Now, not living here, you might not realize it, but that is really ridiculously cheap. It was supposedly in the next village over, but even there such a place would probably run closer to £1000/month. Unfortunately, there weren't many properties advertised in this village, so I didn't have much of a sample to compare to or I might have realized how absurd the price was. So, first caution: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

So I tell him we're interested. He wants us to prove we have enough cash to pay the deposit and first months rent, and asks us to demonstrate this by sending him a copy of a Money Gram receipt for that amount - sent from one of us to the other (e.g., from me to Aaron). Now, if you haven't heard of Money Gram, it's basically the same as Western Union - it's a way to transfer money from one person to another. You have to pay cash on one end, and then 10 minutes later a person on the other end can pick up cash from a corresponding location (for example, in Britain you can send money this way through post office branches). So, given that you have to pay cash to send the money, it didn't seem too unusual that he would ask us to get one. However, the things aren't free, and we were disinclined to pay money just to prove we had money. So we asked if we could just send him a copy of a bank statement with important information blacked out. He said no, he insisted on the Money Gram. So we told him we'd go and get the Money Gram the next day.

There were a couple things that were already rubbing me wrong with this guy. I had to ask twice before he responded about the tenancy agreement he would use - and then it was just to say his mother was going to get it worked out with her lawyer and he'd bring it when he came to Cambridge (I had asked for an electronic copy to review ahead of time). He didn't ever mention the cat - I mentioned quite clearly in my wanted ad that we have a cat, and asked him about it specifically, and he didn't ever answer or make any mention of her. This made me particularly nervous because the pictures he sent of 'his' house showed a home that was REALLY well decorated - not a place anyone in his right mind would allow someone else's cat to live in! I asked about average utility cost and he never answered. All in all, he was only focused on getting us to send him the Money Gram receipt so he could set up a viewing and didn't seem at all concerned about any of the details that a real landlord should have been concerned about.

After I told him we'd get the Money Gram receipt, things started getting even more strange. He responded that I should make sure and do it asap the next day so he could solidify his travel arrangements (he claimed to live in London and would not come up to show us the apartment until we proved we had enough money to be seriously interested in it). We went to get the Money Gram the next day, to find out it would cost £46 for the amount we needed. This was completely ridiculous, we thought, so we decided he would need to take the bank statement or nothing. However, I was really anxious about the whole thing, so I first sent an email to the Graduate Tutorial Administrator for my College (a really nice & helpful lady) asking her advice. In the meantime, I started researching the Gumtree forums on scams. The Graduate Tutorial Adminstrator got back to me promptly and said she thought it looked fishy. In addition, I found this forum entry, which pretty much mirrored our situation. Turns out you can pick up money from Money Gram and the like without a real id - you just need the number off the receipt. Fortunately I read all that before we did anything damaging! I blocked his email immediately and reported him to Gumtree and Yahoo - of course, since it was probably a fake name and email, I doubt there's much they could do about it, but that's all I could do.

On top of that, I got an email from a 'Rev. Paul' whose family had just won the lottery and moved to Australia, so he was trying to rent out his properties fast...yeah, that's believable... Also got two more who first approached me like this Antonio guy - giving no description of the flat in the initial communication, having a ridiculous amount of spelling and grammar errors, and on subsequent communications getting very urgent about the timeline and overrating my interest in their properties. Actually, that was just the third guy...a fourth guy emailed me and I figured out from the first email (no description & bad grammar/spelling) that it was a scam. Absolutely unreal.

So, moral of the story: be careful! There are scammers everywhere nowadays...