Taking in the Berkeley Campus

It Takes Four Days to Fall In Love

A surplus of airmiles won me a long weekend exploring my soon-to-be stomping-ground with the Grand Old Man (GOM) last week, and after a ten-hour flight the first things I saw were the mountains, cutting through the low hanging cloud. Mountains had not been not part of my vision. I swiftly altered the preconception to shoehorn them in before the plane rolled the other way, and the bay came sweeping into view.  As I staggered through the hour-long immigration process at the international airport, I instructed myself that I should start trying to think of this as ‘home’. Difficult, as we stayed in Fisherman’s Wharf, the kitschy tourist hub of San Francisco, (http://www.fishermanswharf.org ). The wharf throngs with tourists, buskers and street-sellers, like a cross between Brighton Pier and the London South Bank. 

By half-past six local time GOM announced that he couldn’t take the eight-hour time difference any more, and fell asleep in the hotel room. To celebrate my first night in the big city I decided to take a different approach- I would power-drink through the jetlag barrier. Wandering along the piers at Fisherman’s Wharf earlier in the afternoon I had picked up the strains of a discordant jazz piano, wafting through an open window. It seemed like as good a place as any to start, and so I found myself walking through the door of Castagnola’s (http://castagnolas.com/). It was still very early, and the place was virtually empty, the piano abandoned in a corner. Having been warned repeatedly about the strict nature of American drinking laws I whipped my ID out, and tentatively ordered my first transatlantic beer. The bartender- tall, dark, undeniably cute- didn’t even glance at my driving license. I felt vaguely cheated. Was drinking here going to be as easy as it was in the UK? 

Apparently even easier: as the bar slowly began to fill with locals, it transpired that where I concerned money didn’t even come into the equation. All I had to do was start speaking. I was fascinated by the ease and friendliness with which people engaged with each other. As I sat scribbling in my diary, the people around me introduced themselves to each other simply by yelling the names of their hometowns across the bar- “MICHIGAN!” “WISCONSIN!” “ILLINOIS!” I tried to envision a scenario where English people would sit around a bar shouting: “GLOUSTICHIRE!” “PECKHAM!” “PENRITH!” I tried to express this to the people immediately around me, only realising after a moment or two that everyone at the bar was hanging on my every word. As the drinks filled up around me, I decided this was a life I could get used to, and with a (free) Mexican coffee in hand, I felt like everyone’s best friend. 

The next morning, having successfully broken through the jetlag, I crossed the Bay Bridge to take a first look at the Berkeley campus. The skies were clear and blue, and the wind dropped on the other side of the bay, less exposed than Fisherman’s Wharf. We reached the campus at nine a.m. I was surprised by the silence, before reminding myself that this was a university- of course at nine on a Saturday morning it would be a ghost town. It took a while to make the connection I think; because of how much the campus resembles some sort of national park. Velvet lawns stretching in every direction, the buildings bleached white in the sun. It was difficult to reconcile with the concrete and rabbits of UEA, and I certainly couldn’t imagine myself there as a student, despite a slight confusion with some professors resulting in them thinking I was there to study Optometry. When I commented on the vast range of courses available for study, one professor gave me a narrow-eyed stare, as though convinced I was making some sort of joke. “It’s Berkeley,” he said.   

The afternoon was spent exploring San Francisco, riding one of the city’s trademark cable cars over the hills and wandering through the financial districts and back along the piers. In the evening I tried oysters for the first time at the Boudin Bakery, (http://www.boudinbakery.com/) talked to a couple from Atlanta, who told me to get in touch if I ever came their way over the next year.

We left San Francisco on the Sunday morning to head north, visiting the wineries, and ended up in a tiny town called Sonoma. (http://www.sonomauncorked.com/wine-country-places/town-of-sonoma/). “You British people have such light tastes in wine,” one of the winery owners commented, uncorking a bottle of ‘zinfandel’, “eleven, twelve per cent.” She showed me the eighteen-per cent label on the bottle, “Now this- out here we like to call this ‘date wine’. If you’re out with a guy and he orders one of these, you know what’s coming.” 

Upon leaving the bay in any direction, the wind dies and the full force of the California sun beats down: I sat in the vineyards and slowly felt myself begin to fry. That afternoon I returned to Castagnola’s, where the bartender sat me down in a booth and told me “Lady, you cuss like a sailor.” We spent an enjoyable half-hour discussing superheroes, and I left with a promise to return in the autumn. 

As it often happens with first love, by the Monday afternoon everything suddenly became overwhelmingly intense, and I had to go and lie in a darkened room with a cold flannel over my face. Flying back to the UK, the one thing in my mind was that before seeing San Francisco, the notion of Berkeley was a cute idea, something harmless that would be occurring only in the indefinite future. Now it has become something real, which was going to be hitting me very, very soon. It is time to adjust my ideas accordingly. Berkeley beckons.

From West Africa to the West Coast…

Two years ago, a dizzy eighteen year-old was potato-sacked to the other end of the world for a life of blazing sun, burning heat, and kamikaze goats. She spent six months causing herself irreparable skin damage; careering around Africa in minibuses (or tro-tros) held together primarily with duct tape and bits of string; learning how to teach a class of thirty children armed with machetes; and beginning that arduous process of Growing Up…

 

Now aged twenty-one, and officially deemed An Adult, I’m still not quite there. Yet, coming to the close of my second year as an American Literature and Creative Writing student at the University of East Anglia, life is good.

 I have amazing friends; a course I love doing; a student dive modelled on Withnail and I. 

I am the Glee Choir’s resident Diva; the Housemate Who Sings At Inappropriate Hours In The Morning; a waitress at an eclectic little Italian restaurant in the city centre. 

I am happy. 

So of course, now is the perfect time to dig out the potato sack again: Back across the Atlantic with you- but this time we’re sending you in the opposite direction altogether! 

In exactly three months’ time I will begin a year of study at The University of California, Berkeley. Described online as ‘one of the preeminent universities in the world’, it is an Ivy League institution with a vast spectrum of academic programs, and a Golden Bear mascot.

At this stage, that is more or less all I know. 

So, once more into the blogosphere! Here we go again…