Anna Jennings

Eight countries, 23 days, and me. This summer I’m going to be travelling around Eastern Europe on my own, on the Cambridge Student Travel Award. Needless to say, I’m ridiculously excited about the opportunity. I’ll be getting coaches and trains from country to country with strangers, staying alone in hostels selected from TripAdvisor based on the sole virtues of being cheap and having no reviews mentioning bedbugs/thefts, and organising food as and when I want it.

Yet, paradoxically, I’m also really not going to be alone. As I travel, I’ll be meeting up with Cambridge students past, present and future everywhere I go.

Let’s deal with the travelling alone bit first. People’s responses to my plans have amazed me. Despite the rise of solo travelling, it is still a notion which is met with mild-to-moderate concern and/or bafflement. Of course, as a young female, safety is a concern, and in the last few weeks I’ve been told a delightful mix of stories about holidays gone wrong.

The confusion is less explicable. There are so many advantages to travelling alone, including not having to compromise on times, food or entertainment. I’m very excited to be free to go to modern art galleries without my brother’s running commentary on their pointlessness.

But in modern society, we’re conditioned to rely on sociability, on never being alone. Phones and social media mean we are constantly in dialogue with a large group of friends. Apps such as Tinder seem to appease a basic urge to be with someone, to not be alone. When we are waiting for a bus, or a friend, or a lecture to start, our generation is possessed by a seemingly irresistible itch to get out a phone to stare at, a newsfeed to scroll down.

This constant bombardment of interaction means that we have less and less time to actually think, and to disentangle ourselves from the opinions and characters of the people that surround us. I’m not going to go all cliché gap-yah here (never went on one), but travelling alone has been a bucket list goal for me for a while now, and I’m interested to see how it will pan out.

The other facet to my travel is that I’ll be meeting with an array of Cambridge alumni, as well as talking to several groups of prospective students, meaning that I’ll never quite be separated from fellow humans. Responses to enquiries about meeting alumni have been overwhelmingly positive. Many ex-students want to meet up for a coffee or beer to discuss their time at Cambridge, how it’s changed, and their life now.

It’s reminded me that Cambridge is very much a global community, and that once you’re a Cambridge student, you’re probably always a Cambridge student. I feel that the University is so much more a part of my identity than my secondary school or sixth form college, for better or for worse. Some toxic combination of the high-pressured environment, the sometimes-claustrophobic colleges and the frankly weird set of traditions bonds us together, meaning that there is a strong sense of something shared, something in common with the ex-students I have never met.

At the same time, however, this sense of community has already been altered since I began preparations for my travels. When I submitted my application for the Travel Award, and when I first began to make plans, we had not held the EU referendum. My plans are tinged with an awareness that my easy travel across Europe may not remain the case for generations to come; that the intellectual transfer of students coming from across Europe to study at Cambridge and spreading across the continent in their careers may someday stagnate. It will be interesting to hear perspectives from outside of the UK on this issue.

I’ll be off on my travels to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and Hungary on the 31st August, and if you’re interested, you can follow my blog or Facebook. 

Ben Williams

With all the events of Easter Term and May Week, making travel plans and booking flights midway through exams felt like an already hectic way to begin the summer. My life was made much easier by the efforts of the University Development and Alumni Relations Office and the friendliness of former students across the continent.

Over a period of two weeks I visited six cities in four different countries, met countless Cambridge alumni and nowhere did I feel unwelcome. Even if just stopping for a drink, I was astonished by the enthusiasm with which those I saw spoke about their time here, not to mention the range of things they have gone on to do since. I now have very little doubt about spending time working abroad in the future.

As Anna mentioned, the changing political climate will naturally influence the relationship we have with others in Europe. I was in Copenhagen at the time of the EU referendum and so witnessed events from a very different angle to those at home – rather than being faced with the turmoil in government at home, I experienced complete disbelief at the result from all I met (including complete strangers who simply recognised I was British). Throughout Germany in particular, the overriding opinion is that to sever the ties we have with such a diverse international community would mean loss for all involved.

It is therefore very encouraging that the Cambridge Alumni Network remains a hugely valuable resource. There are hundreds of groups spread across the globe and each represents a wealth of knowledge accumulated in many professions, or even just the chance to meet up with some like-minded people. First and foremost, these groups are there to help students (former, current and prospective). It is worth checking if anything is going on near you, because the support definitely doesn’t stop when you graduate.

Ben has now finished his travels, but you can read more on his blog.