I probably shouldn't have started my writing by putting the names of these two universities in the same heading, because it can be considered almost as blasphemy. The competition between the universities makes me think of ice hockey games between Finland and Sweden, even though I think the rivalry here might be more severe. Luckily I was warned on the day of "the Big Game", last semester, not to wear anything red, because the yells that a person wearing anything red got were pretty intimidating.
However, my year here started actually at
Stanford. My orientation was organized by the Stanford
Language Center and I got to spend five days at the Stanford campus with 40 other new comers. I had been told before, that the
microclimates in the Bay Area can make a huge difference in the daily weather, so even if you're going to a place not that faraway, the weather can be really different. Conveniently I forgot that, when packing my few belongings in Berkeley before heading off on my first public transport adventure. By the time
I got to Stanford, my light sweater and walking shoes were way too much for me to be wearing, because the nice Berkeley day of about 20 degrees Celsius and a little breeze had turned into (for me) a hot and dry desert heat of probably more than 30 degrees. So the first thing I had to do was to go and buy sandals. Unfortunately the only sandals they sold on campus were Stanford sandals, so ever since then I've been trying to hide them. I only use them as my shower sandals, because I can claim the "S" really stands for "shower", not Stanford!
I had a really good time in Stanford and got to meet
lots of very nice people. Most of them unfortunately flew away again after those few days, to start working in different universities all over the continent. Stanford campus, however, was in many ways confusing for me. It was really easy to find places, because everything was very ... angular. The campus is very beautiful in its own, English private boarding school type of way, but I felt like I was missing my tie and white dress shirt the whole time. The buildings were gorgeous, the fraternity houses looked like mansions and everything was clean. Since the semester hadn't officially started yet there were hardly any students on campus, which added to the slightly surreal feeling I had there. I'm sure it would be amazing to study in a university that has obviously a lot of wealth and such good premises and equipment for (language) studies, but I was actually pretty happy to head back to my "hippier" campus in Berkeley, where I didn't feel as much out of place and like "the common folk".
The campus in Berkeley is also really beautiful, but in a very different way. Lots of the buildings have an ancient Greek or Rome feeling to them and everything is very lush and verdant, even in "winter". My house, I-house, is right next to the campus and surrounded by lots of
fraternity and sorority houses, so especially during the first weeks there were quite a few parties going on at pretty much every house. Berkeley is very much a college town, and without a car it sometimes feels really difficult to come in contact with any "real life". I've heard lots of people use the term "Berkeley bubble" and I guess it's pretty true in both good and bad. The campus is great and the atmosphere is really liberal, so people can feel pretty free to be who they are. The first presidential add I saw for McCain and Palin was on my trip to South Dakota; in Berkeley I hadn't heard anyone (dare?) support him before. I've seen boy couples and girl couples walk hand in hand on campus, which I at least this far haven't seen back home and the multitude of people and of their family backgrounds are overwhelming sometimes. People hang out on campus a lot more then what I'm used to, and they're usually glued to their MacBooks with a course reader in one hand and a disposable coffee cup in the other.
This is day time however. Berkeley has it's own alternative history, which still reflects itself usually through the random street people and runaways
who hang out on the (formerly) radical
Telegraph Avenue and
People's Park. The most activism I have personally witnessed this year, were the
tree sitters, who stayed in the big oak trees in front of the stadium (and next to the I-house) for 21 months before finally climbing down in September. They had their own selected group of supporters, who were very active as well in trying to convince anyone passing by and being willing enough to listen of all sorts of things. Most of this type of Berkeley activists seem to be pretty harmless, but there is lots of
crime here as well, mostly robbings, even if the number of crimes has diminished significantly since the 80's. The fact that Berkeley is situated between
Richmond and Oakland
, which have some of the highest crime rates in the country, can of course have an influence on Berkeley as well. Even the campus can be pretty unsafe, as I got to experience a couple of months ago, when me and a friend of mine were mugged on our way to the office. The
campus police and the university, however, seem to
be very well prepared for these problems and they offer all sorts of services for people on campus. They even have a special "escort service" for people who are working or studying late on campus called the Bear Walk. You can call the
Bear Walk number and they'll send someone to walk home with you, or if it's after 2 at night there is a shuttle service. When I heard about the service in the beginning of the year it was such a strange thought that there would be a service like this, but I guess that now, after my own experiences on campus, it makes sense even to me.
Santa Cruz, Seattle and ColumbiaI don't actually know that much about other campuses here, but I've seen a few during this year. They've all been different from each other, but at the same time they all share a feeling or a certain atmosphere, that for me make them feel American. Maybe it's the fact, that most of the campuses I've visited are pretty centralized and you need to have a car to get there. Whenever I visit a campus here, I can hear an announcer in my head saying "You have now entered a delimited campus area", and once you're inside those gates it's a different world and reality all together.
UC Santa Cruz campus we visited just really quickly. We had heard it's a huge area with
mountain lions running wild! We didn't get to see any mountain lions, but entering the university grounds was like entering a Finnish summer camp site: random buildings in the middle of the forest and most of them so far away from each other that you had to take a bus in order to get from one class to another. But it was beautiful! And from the edge
of the campus you got a beautiful view down to the Pacific Ocean, where I heard it's not too hard to get even with the public transportation. Luckily, we had a car so we drove down to the city and spent the rest of the day walking on the beach spotting dolphins and avoiding the ugly buildings of the
boardwalk.
The campus in Seattle was also a bit outside downtown. The weather wasn't the best when I went there, but I got a really good and comprehensive guided tour by my private campus guide. Since Derek studied Finnish as well while he was in
University of Washington, I got to see where I might have ended up if I didn't get to come to Berkeley. The building for
Finnish Studies was in a really pretty area and the library next to it was just beautiful!
The Columbia
Morningside campus I probably got to see the least, but that was from within! It was fun to see where and in what kind of premises Leevi was teaching.
The part of the campus we visited was right off Broadway and in a very urban setting, so in that sense it had a different feel to it, than the other campuses I had visited. But all in all, for all the campuses, as well here as in France or elsewhere I've been, it's nice to notice that not everything is better elsewhere. Even with more money and more prestige in some other places, some things back home are still pretty good!
It was actually from Helsingin Sanomat that I learned today, that California officials have declared an emergency in the state because of the swine flu outbreak. Well, the emergency isn't too severe here in the Bay Area, since no one else seems to know about this emergency declaration and I haven't seen any mention of it in any American media I've looked at. It seems, that the most important outcome of this "declaration" is that it makes it possible to get federal funding to help the state fight the flu. And with 13 people sick out of the 37 million total population, I am not too worried at the moment.
Most of the cases (5+5) in California have been found in Southern California, close to the Mexican border, in Imperial County and San Diego County. The closest county with 3 confirmed cases is Sacramento County. So life here in the East Bay continues as normal. We got a reminder from the dorm to wash our hands often and they put some hand disinfectant for us to use before going to the dining hall, but that's pretty much it. And hopefully our very nice Mexican cleaning man is healthy and will come back healthy from his two weeks vacation in Mexico. And hopefully the flu will pass soon, so my last six visitors for the spring won't have to change their travel plans!
