26. Diary Entry: My best days during the excursion

Dear Diary,

I swear I was never ever that exhausted than that morning, I slept over at Elena’s house and we talked all night, so we almost didn’t hear the alarm ring. We ran to Weidenau Bismakplatz to get our coach on time but someone overslept so we could have had our breakfast, instead of rushing to the bus station.

Because we didn’t slept well, we catch up sleep, till we woke up from some loud and noisy voices which sang really skew. Nevertheless we were so excited and started panning the week. On the ferry to Dover, we put together our flat of social studies students and Ann-Christin (the only MeWi). We arrived after a long ride and an injured (maybe dead) seagull, ready to receive our flat. Afterwards we went to the local bar and heard about the 50th anniversary of the University of Kent with a few bands in the bar we were sitting, a firework behind the Ferris wheel and an event in the club at the campus.

Saturday 5th September 2015

Dear Diary,

After a very very long night we start our tour to Dover Castle. I’ve been to Dover before, but never visit the Castle before and did I mentioned the beautiful weather we had the whole week, pure sunshine and temperatures my family would have dreamed of back home ( I was glad to had my sunglasses with me  ). Dover Castle was one of my favourite showplace at the excursion however not because of the castle but of the building down the hill near the beach. I have absolutely no clue what building it was, maybe a vacant barracks we were all fascinated and planned to build our own “Apfelkorn” factory with a small bar near the beach. Everything was planned, but wrecked because of missing capital.

After Dover Castle we made a little hike along the cliffs of Dover and lost the group directly at the beginning, but who cares when you get this beautiful view. On top of the Cliffs, we met our group again and everyone made tons of selfies. After the selfie marathon we were ready to pick up the hiking group and stopped in a small town to have a little snack by the beach, which was a really quick snack, because all the seagulls were focused on our food.

Tuesday 8th September 2015

Dear Diary,

The special day had finally arrived, we went to London<3. Everyone in our flat got excited, because of different reasons (food, shopping, and sightseeing). The traffic in and around London was really busy , so we had more time for a little nap, but when the coach dropped us in London, everyone got active and rushed to the tube station. Unfortunately it took a while for us to went to Covent Garden (our first station on our list), because everyone needed to buy a ticket at the tube station. At Covent Garden, there was so much to see, street artist like street comedian or musicians. We stayed there for a while and watched a guy who made a street comedy show, but than it was time for us to seek our tour guide from “Sandman’s”, a company for free guided tours. Our guide, Lena was from Perth Australia and she showed us some places in London a tourist would normally not visit. The tour started at Covent Garden and she told us some stories about the artist there, the artists at Covent Garden are a special group of chosen artists, like Ed Sheeran was at the beginning of his career. Afterwards we made our way to St James’s Palace and walked through the “Knockturn Ally” the famous ally from the third Harry Potter movie the Prisoner of Azkaban. At St James’s Palace she told us the history of Henry the VIII, a very important king of the British history. First of all Lena told us the famous poem:

King Henry VIII,

to six wives he was wedded.

One died, one survived,

two divorced, two beheaded.”

King Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon was first married to his brother, but married to Henry after his death. They’ve got a daughter, called Marry. When Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn, he tried to get the pope to divorce him and Katherine, so he could marry Anne, but the pope didn’t accept his request, so Henry VIII was “forced” to separate the English monarchy from the church in Rome, so he became the head of the British church and could marry Anne, they got a daughter called Elisabeth. After a few years, Anne got beheaded, because of some rumours that she had slept with her brother. After Anne, Henry married his third wife Jane Seymour but she died after giving birth to Henry’s only son Edward VI. For political reasons, Henry decided to marry another woman after Jane’s death. He saw a painting of Anne of Cleves and chose her as his fourth wife without seeing her once. As he met her in person and she didn’t reach his exception, Henry wanted a divorce for their half year marriage (she’s the only woman who outlived Henry VIII and his other wives). Thereafter he married Anne Boleyn’s cousin Catherine Howard, who was also beheaded as her cousin a few years earlier, because of her extramarital affairs. His last wife, Catherine Parr was the last wife of Henry VIII, till the day he died.

After Lena’s witty performance of King Henry VIII and his important role in the British history, she led us to a statue of her favorite Queen, Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, also known as the Queen Mom. Queen Elisabeth is her favourite Queen, because every day she started drinking at 11 am and drank another Gin Tonic every hour, the Queen lived 102 years, so she’s a perfect excuse for drinking alcohol during the day and at work.

Subsequently we went to the Buckingham Palace and the first fact Lena taught us was the flag on top of the roof of the Buckingham Palace, as she’s a symbol of the Queen’s abidance. If the visitors and the British citizen see the Union Jack, they will know that the Queen is not in Buckingham Palace, but when the Royal Standard flag is on top of the building, everyone know that the Queen is at home. At this day the Union Jack was on top of the palace, so the Queen wasn’t at home. But Lena told us a funny story of a drunk a homeless man, who once brock into the Buckingham Palace. He climbed over the protection fence and threw a stone through a window at the ground floor. Than he sneaked into the palace and started his tour through the floors and it was a surprise that none of the security guards kept him, so he took a bottle of alcohol and went into a room for a little nap, afterwards he continued his tour around the Buckingham Palace and went to the second floor. He was so inquisitive of what was behind the doors, he started opening them and entered into a room, where he found a beautiful and cosy looking bad, where he could take another little nap, but this time the bed was already taken by none other than the Queen herself. The Queen woke up and started talking to him and invites him to a drink and the man asked her for a cigarette, so the Queen called one of her butlers to bring her a cigarette. The butler was so confused because the Queen doesn’t smoke so he asked her why and she told him that the man at the end of her bad wanted a cigarette. At that point the security got to know that a man not only broke into the Buckingham palace but also in the Queens room, they took him away and the public prosecutor wanted to impeach him, but the funny thing at the story was, that the homeless man was allowed to break into the Buckingham Palace, because it used to be free property, he only had to pay for the window, but the British Justice has learned something from it and changed the law.

Our next station was St James Park for a little break, where we decided to leave the group, but our flat split up into two separate groups, Jenany and Sarah wanted to go the London Eye, Elena and Ann-Christin wanted to grab some food so we went to a tiny ice cream shop called “Gelupo” where they had their ice cream (a little portion and way to expensive I’d rather buy a new bracelet than ice cream).After a little shopping tour (and a few new clothe), we got very hungry and searched for a restaurant we all could live with 😉 at the end of the day we decided to eat at the Pizza Hut and my Pizza was one of the best I’ve ever eaten, but none of us could eat all of our pizza, so we took the rest back to our flat and eat it at midnight. After a long and exhausted day, we went back to the meeting point where the coach dropped us, but the way back was like a little adventure, because no one remembered the street of even the corner where Peter (our bus driver) would pick us up. But thank god we had Ann-Christin she found the way back and we could ride home. As we sat down , we Elena and I started sleeping the whole tour and only woke up a few times, because some of our group members got excited and started their own little party in the back of the coach. When we arrived at Kampsdale Court we went straight to bed.

Friday, 11th September 2015

Dear Diary,

I’m finally back home I’m really glad I’m home, because I missed my family, friends and my pets. But I need to confess, that I miss to be around the crazy bunch of people, I miss the noises outside and in the floors, I miss the fire alarm in the morning or when I wanted to go under the shower, but most of all I miss the conversations we had at our kitchen table in the morning and Elena’s and mine movie nights (since Canterbury we are huge fans of Under the Dome). We became great friends and sometimes we meet and laugh about all the funny little things we experienced. I’m glad I made this excursion and I told my friends at the university to take this course next semester.