Arriving in Cambridge Friday evening, I find a place in a little Bed&Breakfast. It was not easy; apparently it is graduation weekend, all colleges are receiving parents, you see people with shirts and ties on every street... The porter (=gatekeeper) at Churchill advises me to not look in Cambridge, but rather in places outside. Well the place is a bit outside, but it is not a problem with a vehicle (you can see a bit of my bike behind the sign).

My host at the Amber lodge is a friendly lady that you can see on this photo. She gives me my first serious encounter with British English :) and a map (the "best little guide to Cambridge" - indeed), which is going to be very helpful in the next days. During the weekend, I read papers, explore the city by bike and on foot, to find important places like the local mosque, my working place, the computer science lab etc. I enjoyed my stay here a lot so far. Later, on Monday, it is goodbye, and I rush to my first working day, after which I finally can move in to my room at Churchill college.

In order to connect to the civilized world (i.e. the one where you drive on the right lane), I discover that the indigeneous people have, too, benefitted from the spread of the internet. In Hills road, an internet cafe is hidden behind scaffolding, and right next to it a shop for laundry and cleaning services, which has an amusing label. In the cafe, I find only the time to write short mails, finding more detailed maps to find out where Microsoft Research is.

It turns out to be very close to Churchill college, and moreover right next to the University's computer science building. Since at EPFL we make such a fuss about our new building, here something for comparison. This one has two things ours does not have: wood, and a name. It is called the "William Gates building". The "Roger Needham building" which is home to MSR will receive some coverage later...

Those buildings are quite outside the city, close to the college in which I moved in on Monday. That's why it is not on the central maps. But it is also not in the Science Park as I was told. In fact it is at the border of the city; the horses are just on the other side of JJ Thomson Avenue. The charming view next to it is the Cam, as seen from Fen Causeway. Allah has blessed this country with beautiful nature.

The inner city impresses in a different way. Cambridge is full of colleges; in fact for a long time, there was no central university but just those colleges. Students subscribe to a college, live there, study there, eat there and belong to it afterwards. There are many of these colleges, and you find them spread out over the whole city.

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