Via the BBC, two river towns meet over breakfast

The BBC Radio Cambridgeshire crew arrived in the full bloom of spring to talk about snow -- well, to learn about the city's snow-clearing operations. It seems that Cambridge, England, has a dickens of a time coping with the occasional winter burst, according to Emma Maclean, a co-host -- or "presenter" as it is known across the pond -- of the "Breakfast Show" broadcast weekdays on the local 24-hour news/talk station.

Maclean, along with co-host Trevor Dann and show producer Katharine Coulston, spent the first weeks of May here comparing -- and contrasting -- life in the two namesake communities, broadcasting live for two days between the hideous hours of 2 a.m. to 5 a.m (7 to 10 a.m. in England).

While snow clearing was definitely a focus -- a picture of Public Works Director Lisa Peterson posing with Dann and Maclean in DPW caps featured prominently on the show's Web page -- so were the public schools, town-gown relations, the high cost of housing, Harvard Square, and Fenway Park.

And besides, as Coulston noted, "Trevor wanted to go abroad."

"The shopping here is fantastic," Maclean added, speaking on her cellphone at the CambridgeSide Galleria the day after the last broadcast.

They seemed to catch on rather quickly. "The city manager is the bloke to talk to, because he's the one with the power," Dann said, who at first wondered why they weren't interviewing the mayor.

Dann actually found an off-street parking space in Harvard Square in the middle of a weekday afternoon and briefly interrupted an interview with a reporter at Au Bon Pain to "feed the meter." He was driving, he said, "a ghastly American thing called a Chevrolet Impala."

Said Peterson, "they seemed like fun people." They were curious, she said, not only about snow, but also curbside recycling, a program relatively new to Cambridge, U.K., and they peppered Peterson with questions about the blue boxes.

"What happens when it rains out?" they asked.

"I said, 'It gets wet,' " Peterson recalled.

Coulston and Maclean also visited the Kennedy-Longfellow School in East Cambridge to record the American-accented students saying, "Good morning, Miss Maclean." They were taken aback to discover that students here call their teachers and even their "head teacher" (that's British for principal) by their first names. "The strangest thing," Coulston said.

"What's interesting to me is how unlike Boston it is," Dann said of Cambridge. "It does feel like an enclosed town. . . . It's a bit left bank."

Dann, seated at an outside table overlooking the entrance to Harvard Yard, said, "it's very nice, it's lovely, but coming from where we do, it's nothing special."

"The only thing we do better than you is old, is ancient," he said. "To have four or five of the most beautiful buildings in the world in your town is an astonishing piece of luck."

But, comparing the two Cambridges, Dann said, "it's uncanny, some of the similarities."

Both are centers of high technology that play host to world-renowned universities (the University of Cambridge is about 500 years older than Harvard), have the same size population of roughly 100,000, and are located on rivers (the Charles is wider than the River Cam). Both also struggle with problems such as traffic congestion (Maclean praised the access here to public transportation), expensive housing, and high retail rents that attract chain stores and push out local shops.

"It's impossible to get on the property ladder," Dann said of his Cambridge, a county town 48 miles northeast of London.

One difference that made City Manager Robert Healy blanch: the Cambridge, U.K., City Council consists of 42 members.

"Forty-two councilors. I thought, 'Oh, that's ridiculous,' " said Healy, who reports to nine.

Dann suggests that the two Cambridges develop stronger ties. Ironically, Cambridge, Mass., has formal "sister city" relationships with municipalities in Asia, Europe, and South America, but not with the town for which it was named.

But Dann, et al., should not expect a visit anytime soon from Healy, who has never had a passport.

"Probably not," Healy said, when asked if he would be visiting the other Cambridge. He prefers "warmer climes with golf courses and oceans."