My six months stay in the UK began on
Saturday 28th September, when our friends Michael and Rosemary took me
back with them to Hastings after a visit to my family in Schwerte. On
the Monday my big adventure began. I had won a scholarship for two terms
(1 semester in Germany) at Reading University! As Reading and
Düsseldorf are twinned, the two universities also support exchange
programmes. There were four of us from Düsseldorf University
participating in this programme during this university year.
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St. Andrew's Hall
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Michael and Rosemary were so kind to take me to
Reading and drop me off at my hall of residence St. Andrew's, an
Edwardian style building, which has by now been turned into a museum.
My room wasn't in the main house though, but in the so-called Garden
Annexe. But I always went to the main buildings for meals at the central
dining room and to study in the old library. St. Andrew's Hall was also
conveniently located in walking distance between the university and the
town centre. |
In the evening of the 30th new students were invited to a reception and
dinner with the university's Vice-Chancellor at St. Andrew's Hall.
During the first week a Fresher's Fayre was held which provided
information on the many societies and sports clubs at the university. I
signed up for the aikido
club (which became one of my major evening occupations) and the
English Club (where I never turned up in the end). During my time in
Reading I also tried out Taekwondo and Wu Shu Kwan. There were regular
disco evenings at the university's Students'
Union or the different student halls, one of my personal highlights
was the Halloween disco at St. Andrew's. My best friends at Reading were
Sophie from France, Lizzie from Belgium and Antje from Germany who were
all staying at St. Andrew's Hall. The Spanish hall residents organized
sangria parties from time to time which was fun and people often met for
a coffee after lunch or dinner in one of the hall kitchens or just for a
chat in the corridors. After aikido practice the club members usually
went to a pub after training sessions and once in a while we even went
out for dinner, most often a curry at an Indian restaurant which was
quite affordable. I often went to the
cinema and sometimes we organized video evenings or saw a live band at a
pub. One night a hypnotist show with Michael Sutherland was organized by
the Students' Union. It was really interesting what some people where
asked to do who I actually knew as ordinary students!! One evening I
went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest", a play from
Oscar Wilde, enacted by students of the university. Sophie also had a
part in it, as well as in "La Sauvage" by Jean Anouilh.
I also saw "West Side Story" and Verdi's "Aida"
which were also staged by students.
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  Reading
itself is not particularly interesting, but it's very conveniently located in
the heart of the Thames Valley, very close to London and on most of the major train routes
to all parts of England. The University of Reading
belongs to the so-called "red brick" universities, meaning that it
came after the old universtities like Oxford and Cambridge, but before the new
20th century universities. Founded at the end of the 19th century, the
university moved from the old red-brick campus site on London Road (right next
to St. Andrew's Hall) into newer and bigger buildings on Whiteknights campus in
the 1960s. The campus is set within Whiteknights Park, a beautiful landscaped
area with a lake and woods. |
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Oxford |
For
Sunday, 6th October, a trip to
Eton College and
Windsor Castle was organized for new students. During my time in
Reading I made further day trips to
Oxford and to London.
On 9th November I took
a train to
Hastings for the weekend (£14.20). On 16th November I went to
London again with some folks from the aikido club.
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Canterbury Cathedral |
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13th December was the end of the autumn term. For a few
days I was nearly on my own in St. Andrew's as most people had already left for the
holidays. On 19th December I took a train to Canterbury. Canterbury
has two train stations and it's about a 10 minutes walk between the two. Canterbury's main attraction is
the famous cathedral where Thomas
Becket, Archishop of Canterbury, was murdered, but it also boasts of many
Tudor-style houses that scarcely seem to
have changed for centuries. Unfortunately the day of my visit was a very grey
day. I travelled on to Hastings where I spent Christmas and New Year's Eve with
Michael and Rosemary and their family. On Thursday 9th
January I bought
a train ticket to
Salisbury (£18.50) where I spent the night at the youth
hostel. Salisbury has a lovely historic centre with many half-timbered houses and it has a famous
cathedral with the tallest church spire in Britain. Unfortunately, without a car
and out of season, I was unable to go to Stonehenge. |
Salisbury |
Bath, The Circus |
Then on the 10th
I went on to
Bath (£5.75). Bath is full of amazing architecture and I
would highly recommend seeing it as its Georgian-style buildings are
very different from British towns built in Tudor-style. The
highlights are Pulteney Bridge, Bath Abbey, the Roman Baths and Pump
Room, the Colonades, the Royal Crescent and The Circus. Bath is also
famous for its hot springs and spa water. I climbed up to the castle
on top of a hill and was surprised to find out that it's just a
facade. Jane Austen lived in Bath and set two of her novels in the
city.
On Saturday the 11th I finally caught
a train back to Reading (£6.20). |
Pulteney Bridge |
| Monday 13th January was
the first day of lent or spring term. One evening
in January the four Düsseldorf girls were invited for dinner at the home
of the head of the
Reading-Düsseldorf Association. We had the traditional roast beef
and Yorkshire pudding.
On Saturday, 15th February, the Reading University Aikido Club made
their second inofficial trip to London. On Thursday, 27th February, I went to
Edinburgh with some of the aikido folks for an aikido weekend
course. It must have taken around six hours by car. In Edinburgh we
visited Nelson's Monument which offers a great 360° view of the city and
we hiked up Arthur's Seat, a hill overlooking the city. We returned to
Reading on Tuesday 3rd March.
On Friday, 6th March,
Queen Elizabeth II visited the Reading campus for the university's
100-years anniversary. I even managed to take a few pictures.
On Wednesday, 18th March, I
joined a Thames Rivercruise
party aboard the Caversham Princess with some of the aikido folks. It was a
crazy night with lots of beer and cider, disco-dancing and partying!
Unfortunately it was one of my last nights in Reading.
Friday the 20th was the end of
my second term in Reading. I was sad to leave my new friends and I enjoyed
living in another country. It was a fantastic experience which I would recommend
to everyonebody interested in other cultures and languages. University life in
the UK is much more international than it is in Germany and I've never met so
many people in such a short time in my life! There are so many social clubs, not
just sports clubs and because most student halls also cater for their resident
students there are many more opportunities for contact between them as everyone
meets for the meals once or twice per day and the usual coffee afterwards. I
made many more contacts at my hall and at the aikido club than in my university
classes.
But I still had an exciting
holiday ahead of me! From Friday, 20th March, until Wednesday, 8th April, I
travelled around the UK on my own (click
here for details). After some more days in Hastings my parents
arrived on Monday the 13th. On Tuesday we went to Reading by car so I could show
them where I had spent the last five months and to pick up the rest of my
luggage. After a few more days of visiting places with Michael and Rosemary the
three of us took the ferry from Sheerness to Vlissingen in the Netherlands on
Saturday. After another night at our holiday house we got back home on Sunday
the 19th.
But I came back to Reading very
soon. On Friday, 5th June 1992, I took a British Airways flight from Düsseldorf
to London Heathrow at 7:50 a.m. From there I took a RailAir coach to Reading
(£5.50). I spent a few days with my friends from St. Andrew's and I also took
the opportunity to visit my old aikido club and practise a few sessions with
them. On Thursday the 11th Sophie, Lizzie, her Finnish boyfriend Christer and I
took a train (£8.60) to Warwick where we visited
Warwick Castle with its beautiful gardens and to
Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace and a lovely medieval
town.
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Warwick Castle Gardens |
Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon |
| On Sunday the 14th I visited Kew Gardens in the south-west
of London with Sophie and Edmund from Hong Kong.
Then on Monday at 13:30 I took
a flight back to Düsseldorf.  4.5 months later, on Saturday, 31st October 1992, at 10:10 a.m. I took
a Lufthansa flight to LHR. From Heathrow I took a train to Hastings where I stayed
with Michael and Rosemary once again. On
Wednesday morning I took a train to London and in the afternoon I continued to Reading. I stayed with Lizzie
again,
visited friends and practised aikido. A friend of mine from Düsseldorf was now
also spending a university semester abroad. On Thursday the 5th Lizzie and I
went to Winchester (£4.55),
once the capital of England. Its cathedral contains the tomb of Jane Austen. The
weather was perfect. On Saturday we visited Henly-on-Thames (£1.50),
which is very close to Reading, and on Sunday
the 8th I returned to Düsseldorf.
I was to see some of the aikido people again during one
more weekend course in Edinburgh and two Aikido Summer School weeks in Durham in 1993 and
1996. Click here for details.
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