Friday, 5 am, somewhere around Vienna: A group of 35 brave students and 4 teachers is waiting to depart Vienna for London.
Soon, this group arrived in England and visited Windsor Castle. There they had the chance to walk through the castle with audio-guides.

On the next day the now tired group had a full-day excursion to the University City of Cambridge. The guide there wasn’t just audible but even human and guided them through the most important colleges in Cambridge and King’s Chapel.

Monday was the day to test the students’ English skills… Fortunately, everyone passed the test and so they were separated into 3 groups according to the score.

Since everyone was interested in the city of Canterbury, the English teachers took the curious group for a walk to show them nearly every part of “Old Canterbury”.

When the group woke up the next morning, a thought of going bowling came to their minds. Lucky as they were, they met after school in front of the canteen to go by bus to Margate and have a great evening with bowling.

The next 2 days were determined by 2 of Britain’s greatest castles: Dover and Leeds Castle. The teachers tried strongly to ‘lose’ students they didn’t like in the Wartime Tunnels in Dover, but the group was full of survival experts, so they did a 2nd try to get rid of them by leading them into a maze in the gardens of Leeds Castle. Again the knowledge of how to survive in dangerous mazes enabled them to escape the brutal trap. As an excuse the teachers showed them “The Queen”.

On Saturday, they visited London and most of its sights. Every participant could choose whether to visit the Tower of London or Madame Tussaud’s wax cabinet. After that they reunited in front of the Winston Churchill statue to see the rest of London.

The next Monday the teachers from England prepared a visit to the Canterbury Tales museum during the lesson. In this museum they did not only listen to the tales but also smelled the medieval spirit (fortunately these smells were much lighter than they had been hundreds of years ago…).

During the next days the group experienced the English way of ice skating, the ancient and modern techniques of navigation and time measuring in Greenwich and the nicest teachers who invited them to the pub in the evening before they headed for Vienna.

Back at Vienna Airport, the whole group stared at the conveyor belt and everyone but 30 got their luggage on the same day.

THE END

written by Edgar Jirousek and Moritz Mathes, 7A

some impressions…