Uppsala vs Lund...

Visiting Uppsala, we wandered into the entrance to Uppsala University to gawp briefly at the very fine architecture and decor. Happenstance, we were met by a university staff member who said "I suppose you'd like to see the auditorium" (we didn't know there was one) "Most people try to see it if they can, and I've got the keys here." Well, we said yes please, of course.

I took the 5D3 with the 24-105 f4 L. Today I wished I had taken the 7D too, with the 10-22. Wide would have been better, so much better, but we got what we got. The auditorium is fantastic! The gold is in fact, largely gold leaf. The brief gawp continued into a good hour of private tour of the normally locked back rooms, while we were thoroughly entertained by tales of a historic rivalry between Uppsala and Lund Universities.

I have no idea if any of the tales are true! They included theft recycling of redundant railway lines for the construction of raised platforms, the theft repurposing of hollow copper decorative columns from a grand clipper ship to hold the upper levels of the auditorium, and practical bankruptcy of both universities in their battle each to be so much better than the other!

There was the crazy university clock mechanism (which we saw), that is housed thirty odd metres from the actual clock face (which we saw), inconveniently placed with no room for said mechanism and whose clock hands therefore are driven by cables strung behind the walls over pulleys and ducts. The upshot of this, with all the thermal expansion and contraction inherent in an old building, is that the clock is notoriously never right nor even reliably wrong (except in summer, when the temperatures stabilise for a few weeks, but when of course there are no students to check the time!)

We were also allowed upstairs into the faculty boardrooms, which most students have no knowledge of and only ever see for only one reason - if they are caught cheating they are summoned to sit before a judicial panel who discuss the student in their presence and determine if he or she is to be expelled or otherwise punished.

There were many other stories during the unexpected and totally free backstage tour, some of which if true would be best not related in a public forum. Such an entertaining fellow, and I don't actually care if the tales are true or not. The rooms themselves are beyond splendid (do the Large thing for once, it's worth it). 

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