Our classtrip to Canterbury (England):
04.02-09.02. 2024
On Sunday the 4th February 2024 at 5:30 we’ve met at the school to begin our journey to England. We have planned to go by bus. We hoped that the journey would only take 10 hours.
Most of us slept in the bus during the whole trip. The bus trip was boring most of the time and we usually took a break every 2 hours. At around 4:15pm we stopped in Calais. While some of us were at the toilet, illegal refugees jumped out of the boot of a truck next to us. French border patrol saw it and tried to catch them. The refugees escaped. After that incident we continued our journey to Calais harbour to reach the ferry. Unfortunately we didn’t get the first one and had to wait 90 minutes for the next one. Everything went well until there was an emergency on a ferry. So we had to wait before we could arrive. At 11pm we arrived at the hostel in Canterbury. Finally after 17 hours!!!! We ate dinner and went to bed.
Our hostel, named YHA ,was in Canterbury. We all had a room for 4 people and had to share 2 toilets and 2 showers with 44 people. So we had problems of who is going to shower first. The food there was good but a little bit to less. For breakfast we had baked beans, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon and some toast with jam and vanilla yogurt. We even got a lunch packet for our trips to London including a sandwich of your choice, a bag of crisps, an apple and a chocolate bar. We needed to get up early because breakfast was at 8am and before breakfast we needed to get ready for the day. During daytime we were able to sit in the lobby of the hostel and talk or watch TV with typical English TV stations. If we didn’t want to stay inside we could go to Canterbury on foot which was only a 15min walk from the accommodation. The water there smelled like chlorine but it didn’t taste like that. That is normal for England because not all countries besides Germany have good water quality. In case you didn’t want to drink the water in the accommodation you could buy water at Tesco, the local supermarket. We had to to go to bed at 10pm and before that we always played some games, e.g. truth or dare, with the whole class and teachers.
After having British breakfast we went to Canterbury where we had a tour guide who showed us the city and explained its history. After the interesting tour around mostly the old part of Canterbury we had some free time to go shopping and look around the more modern part. It wasn’t much different of the aesthetic like in Lüneburg. When everyone came back to the hostel we relaxed, played some games and went to bed to get ready for the next day when went to London for the first time.
On our first day in London we drove around 2 hours and the first thing we saw after we got out of the bus was the famous Big Ben. We then walked to the Buckingham Palace and to Piccadilly Circus. After some free time we went to the Tower of London and watched the royal jewels and the crowns. After that we went back to the accommodation and got ready for the second day in London.
On the second day we first went to Greenwich and again we had some free time. We went shopping and had a great view over the skyline of London. After that we had a boat tour on the Thames and watched famous sights of London like the Tower Bridge. We also had free time to eat something and in the evening we went back to Canterbury.
The return journey by bus from Canterbury to Lüneburg went via ferry from Dover to Calais and through France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Because we drove at night we couldn’t really see beautiful landscapes. At 6am we were back in Germany and our families waited at school to bring us home.
Accompanying teachers: Ms. Franziska Bockenauer and Mr. Frerk Rodewald
