Do U.C.? It is elementary, my dear Watson.

Tuesday was another day for a field trip. These things are getting better by the end of the course. Perhaps they should do nothing more than organize a bunch of these fields trips. (Maybe they should start a travel agency or something.) We went to visit the famous U.C. Berkeley and its law school.

As I later found out, the usual procedure would have been that we have the last week of classes at U.C. Berkeley. However, the constant campus constructions occupied almost the whole law school (even in Davis, so we had our classes in a different building), so they thought there was no point in shipping us down in Berkeley. I think they should have. It's a nice place. Generally. But when we arrived the scene looked like it was transported over to California from the Soviet Union. Ugly 70s buildings, which posed as "modern architecture" at their time. They are ugly. Plain and simple. Luckily, this was not true for most of the campus.

We started with a tour of the campus, conducted by 3 gorgeous undergrad students. They were a bit intimidated by the fact that the time was long one when we were high school students, they usually give tours for would be Cal undergrads and their parents. We got to see the tourist attractions: the Bell Tower, the oldest building on campus and the library with its "Harry Potter Room" or "napping room"(it really looks like as if it was taken out from Hogwarts).

Our guide


said the bell tower



was a replica of what stands on Saint Mark Square in Venice


except that it was not made of bricks and it was 3 feet shorter (out of respect for the original). Well, as you may see from the pictures they might need to update their guide preparation materials. :)

Anyway, the campus was fantastic, even though the law school was under construction. Having seen some parts of it, I guess they had a pretty good reason for renovation. (I didn't dare taking pictures.)

We also learned a bunch of funny stories about both U.C. Berkeley (Cal, as they call it, because it was the original University of California, which later expanded to multiple campuses, such as Davis.)and their arch rival: Stanford. Football (the American version) is really popular here. In fact, they plant the school spirit by giving the best seats on each game to freshmen for free so that they get to become part of (and soaked with) football. Every year sometime in October the Big Game against Stanford takes place. At one time, Stanford students brought a huge axe and started cutting down some decorations in the stadium. Cal students were so outraged that after the game they started chasing Stanford to get the axe and eventually they got it. Now Stanford started chasing the Cals to get back the axe through San Francisco (it's quite a distance, I might add) and even had the police involved. The police closed down all way to ferries through the Bay (which was the way home for the Cals), so the Cals found a butcher shop and cut down the handle of the huge axe. One student hid the head under his jacket and a gorgeous female student distracted the posting police officer at on of the docks, so they managed to sneak back to campus. Next year Stanford stole the axe back. Then the Cals stole the axe back. This went on for a couple of years and then the Presidents of both universities agreed that whoever wins the Big Game each year gets to keep the axe. By the way, the story started 1899. The story in more detail at Berkeley's site. And in the spirit of "audiatur et altera pars": the Stanford version.