Cambridge: You're like coming home

Cambridge has probably been my most-anticipated destination of the summer - looked forward to beyond Prague, beyond Venice, more even than Paris. What, you ask, does this college town have to offer that the major cities of the world lack? Simply memories.

When I was 15, I spent a month studying at the University of Cambridge with a program for high school students. The summer was amazing: for the first time, I was studying with students who were bright and interested in what we were learning; I met people and made dear friends from all over the world; and mostly, I fell in love - with the city :-)

So when my bus deposited me in Cambridge, I could hardly wait to leave the area of my hostel behind and make my way back to Magdalene College. I put on my running shoes, not just because I wanted the exercise but because I literally didn't think I could stand to get there any slower. As I was running past a pub toward the city center, I saw a sign for the England v. Kazakhstan World Cup qualifying match, but even that only held me for 10 minutes. I watched my boys score their second goal, then was gone again. Finally, slowing to a walk, I was back on Magdalene St., walking past where Garfunkel's used to be, past Cafe Uno, over the bridge... I slipped into the private entrance to the college as another student walked out. I had arrived.

When I was at Cambridge in 2003, I studied Creative Writing, and my contribution to our literary magazine was a vignette describing my moment of arrival in England, in Cambridge, the overwhelming sense of finding myself, my home, in this foreign place. And returning to Cambridge ultimately felt quite similar: it was like coming home, but not a home you live in day-to-day. It was the feeling I get when I drvie back to Buford and in the midst of nostalgia recognize that this is no longer where I live. I was a visitor in Cambridge, a tourist; for all my knowledge, all my memories, that's all I was: a girl standing, heart tight, in a place she had once lived.