London trip 2019

Seit nunmehr 4 Jahren findet in der BG Hanau unter der Leitung von Josef Ender 2-3 mal im Jahr ein Englisch-Konversationskurs über jeweils 10 Unterrichtseinheiten statt.
Im Schnitt nehmen 5 Personen daran teil, die inzwischen schon einige Fortschritte vorweisen können.
Im Juni 2019 ging ein Traum in Erfüllung und die Teilnehmer des Kurses samt Begleitpersonen fuhren für 6 Tage nach London, um das Erlernte der letzten Jahre endlich mal in der Praxis ausprobieren zu können.
Es war sehr spannend und hochinteressant, denn es ist ein großer Unterschied, ob man in einer kleinen Gruppe von Deutschen Englisch spricht oder ob man es vor Ort im "wahren englischen Leben" ausprobiert.
Silvia Schäfer hat einen kleinen Bericht über die Erlebnisse der Gruppe geschrieben - dies natürlich in englischer Sprache, denn wir wollen ja zeigen, was wir in den letzten Jahren bei Josef so gelernt haben.

 

England-Trip from june 17 to 22 2019

For many years I have wished to visit England again.
45 years ago I once was there as a 14 year old girl.
It was an exchange of German and English pupils and for 3 weeks I lived with my pen-friend and her family in Westcliff-on-Sea, which is situated on the south-East coast of Essex.
That family showed me a lot of interesting and typical British things and we also were in London for one day.
In my memory I see two young girls walking through the streets of London, passing Buckinham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

There was no time to go in anywhere and today I'm afraid, I was not sad about that.
Up to now we have had our English course for about 4 years and during that time I became very keen on visiting London again.
I wanted to practice all we had learnt in the last years and I wanted to see the famous sites and points of interest again.
I tried to convince the others - or should I better say, I persuaded them? Never mind - in the end they also really wanted that.
So our group finally started on June 17 at 5:30 am at Hanau main station.
All members of the course besides Ingrid and the partners of each (besides mine) met at plattform 101.
The local train, we actually wanted to take, had been cancelled, but - no problem - at that early time there were a lot of possibilities to travel to Frankfurt.
The change to to ICE in the direction of Brussels was almost without any problems. Only the waggon, in which we had our reserved seats was not there.
We took another one and looked forward to the next adventures.
Will there be an assisstence in Brussels, where we will have to pass the customs and security check before we will be allowed to enter the Euro Star?
Oh yes! A guide came and I could hold on his ellbow. He took my suitcase and led me to our next destination.
The others only had to follow us.
Everything had been okay up to the security counter.
We had to put all our luggage including handbags, backpacks, belts, jumpers and so on onto a mooving belt.
Everything was checked and finally there was even a body check.
Almost everybody was allowed to pass but not poor Josef, who had forgotten to leave his two pocket knives in his suitcase or better at home.
One was a pocket knife with many tools like bottle opener, screw driver, scissors etc. which he wore on his belt. The second one was a foldable knife with one blade which could be ;locked to be used at meals. They were not allowed on the train - so he had to leave them at the counter. They had to be packed into a special box in order to travel seperately in the Euro Star.
He had to pay 34 € and they promissed, he would get the knives back in London.
This action took a very long time and I was afraid, they might arrest Josef.
We reached London in time and experienced imediatly the sound and smell of that city.
We took two cabs to our hotel and had to fight with the usual traffic jam.
During check in we could test our English knowledge for the first time.
I was proud of being capable to understand all the information, the receptionist gave us and also to ask some questions on my own.
We were full of desire and had a break for only half an hour, before we started for our first excursion to the area of Oxford Street.
First we looked for bus stations and the Underground and we got information about conditions for tickets.
It was not easy, but with the help of a nice and friendly assisstent in an Underground station, we finally bought a so-called Oyster Card for each of us and charged a certain amount of pouns on it.
We all were quite tired because of getting up really early that morning and having a lot of exciting adventures, so we decided to have a break in a typical English pub and have our first English beer and Fish and Chips.
In English pubs you have to order your drinks and food at the counter and you have to pay it in advance.
They bring the food to the tables, but the drinks you have to carry on your own.
After that we walked further through the streets and had a lot of impressions.
We finally reached Hyde Park, but all of us were knocked out and had no more power to walk through that famous park.
Back to our hotel we took the bus or even the Tube - I don't remember.
During the next five days we had a lot of inspections of the points of interest.
I don't remember the correct order of our trips, but I can say, we had a lot of interesting visits of famous sites and a lot of fun and adventures, too.
We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which is scaffolded at the moment,
we visited the Tower and also Tower Bridge, which we crossed, of course.
We also visited Westminster Abbey, which was really impressive.
All over the place there were huge queues in front of the entrences and everybody had to wait infinitely.
In addition, they had to pay extremely high admission charges.
But all of them had no Josef like we had.
He always led us to the information counter and asked for assisstence and a reduced prices for the "poor" blind people.
Mostly he was successful and we saved a lot of money.
Further we had an interesting boat tour on the Thames.
We drove from Tower to Westminster Abbey and got very good information of a jolly announcer. His English was well understood.
We looked for Downing Street Number 10, but could not go close to it, because there was a high iron fence.
But we saw Buckingham Palace and even the Change of the Horse Guards.
We had a walk through Saint James' Park and saw the famous pelicans.
We often took the Tube and also the red double decker busses and watched the busyness all over the place.
Sometimes we even saw one of the former red telephone booths. They looked really nostalgic.
Another highlight was the visit of the Greenwich Park, where you can see the Zero-Meridian and the Observation House.
Only Werner and Jürgen were interested in visiting that museum. We sent them to have a look and asked them, to tell us later, what they had seen.
The rest of us used the time to have a extended break with coffee and some sandwiches.
Of course, I have to mention our adventure with the famous huge London Eye.
Jürgen wanted to visit it and we joined him. Petra and Renate usually suffer from fear of height and they didn't want to take part.
Again we had to fight with long queues in front of the counters and again Josef had to bargain the price for the tickets.
Moreover we had to wait for a long time, before we were allowed to enter one of the cabins.
Oh no! We saw a security check again and Josef wore his two knives at his belt as usual!
There was a big discussion between him and the officer and in the end he had to leave both knives again.
This time Josef had to realize, that in England nobody is allowed to wear a knife that can be locked, at all.
They told him, that a policeman might take the knife away or even arrest him..
After the tour Josef was to get back the smaller one, but the bigger had to be destroyed.
Josef was rather angry about that rule and of course very sad about the loss of his favorite and often very useful knife.
During the tour Josef and me sat on a bench in the cabin and rested for a while, whereas Jürgen, Brigitte and Werner enjoyed the beautiful view over London and the Thames.
By no means I may forget our visit in St Martin's Theatre to watch the "Mouse Trap" by Agatha Christie, which they have played each day for about 67 years up to now.
I was curious about that play and had wondered before, whether I would understand enough.
Oh, yes, I did! And I enjoyed the performance of the play and the atmosphere in that theatre at all.
Have I forgotten anything? You see, in those few days we experienced very much!
We all had a lot of fun together and finally we happily reached Hanau main station on Saturday, June, 22 at 10 o'clock pm.
Thank you very, very much, Brigitte and Josef, for the good organisation and preparation of that wonerful jo ourney! And many thanks to our sighted helpers who led us safely through London's traffic and explained all the intercting things to us.

Silvia Schäfer

(zum Vergrößern auf die Bilder klicken)

die Teilnehmer: Jürgen, Petra, Silvia Teilnehmer: Renate, Werner, Josef und Brigitte eingeblendet, weil hinter der Kamera
Tower Bridge
Tower of London
Westminster Abbey
Gardesoldaten auf Pferden, mit silbernem Brustpanzer und silbernem Helm, stehen nebeneinander auf dem Exerzierplatz "Horse Guard Parade"
London Eye, mit einer Höhe von 135 Metern das höchste Riesenrad Europas
Teilnehmer
Tower Bridge
Tower of London
Westminster Abbey
Horse Guard Parade
London Eye

Wenn Sie sich den kleinen Film über diesen Trip ansehen wollen, dann klicken Sie hier.

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