On Thursday, January 25th, we began our trip to the British city of York, which is up the North of Great Britain. We started at twelve o’clock, after the fourth lesson, with our coach to Rotterdam Europort, Netherlands. In the coach we were warmly welcomed by our coach driver, whom we were allowed to call “Horst”.

When we arrived at Rotterdam Harbour around four o’clock as planned, we had to wait for about half an hour before we could go aboard and check into our cabins. One of the stewards of the ferryboat, “The Pride of Hull”, first gathered us in the so-called “lounge”, which was also a big disco at night, to give us a few instructions on how to behave on a ship. Afterwards we all eagerly went to check out our cabins, which were small but quite comfortable with four beds and a bathroom, which even had a nice shower that worked and had hot water. I think all of us were really pleased to have such unexpected luxuries.

We were even more pleased to find out that on a Thursday night there was much to do on the boat. You could have a nice meal in the restaurant, visit  the shops, have a drink in the lounge, play cards in the casino, listen to a professional piano player in the top lounge or go out to the “sun deck”, which was at the back of the ship. Some of the group met there around nine o’clock to see the ship leave the port.

The transit was alright, there  was no bad weather, it didn’t even rain, so the ship only swayed a little bit. Fortunately nobody got seasick and so we were all in good health (but not that good a mood) the next morning, when we had to get up at six o’clock, woken up by a gong with a woman’s voice saying: “Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now half past six, the weather has been good at night and we will arrive at eight o’clock in Hull etc...” in three different languages. Though we didn’t like to get up that early, we did like what we found in the breakfast restaurant, there was a full English and Continental breakfast offered, so we could choose from sausages, beans on toast, eggs and mushrooms, but could also have some of our “normal” European food, like tasty rolls, chocolate croissant, muesli or whatever else one desired.

After we got off the ship at the port of (Kingston-upon-)Hull, we had to go to York by coach, where we first went into the city to find the Minster of York. We took a picture there (it took about ten minutes to take the pictures because everybody who had a camera just gave them to Mr. Jansen and Mrs. Osthues, who had some trouble taking a photo with all of them).

When we had finished that, we had about six hours to move around York in small groups.

Apart from the Minster there was much else to see and explore in York, for example there was a really small but cute shop, which produced and sold fudge, a kind of caramel toffee, and which also offered to show people who asked for it how they produced the fudge. Many of us also went to the “Disney shop”, which, we have to admit, is mainly for children, but was irresistable to us, because we still love the disney characters. There you could by all kinds of disney accessories, costumes, books, movies, even underwear with disney cartoons on them. 

But even though York had a nice pedestrian precinct and many shopping streets and cafés and restaurants, after six hours of walking around and chatting and shopping we were all quite exhausted and happy to get back to the coach (some of us more than others).

The evening we spend on the ferry boat again and had another night of party in the lounge and even got to know some British and some Dutch guys, who were open and friendly, so that we could also train our English language a bit. The next morning, after another wonderful breakfast, we got back to Coesfeld at about half past eleven, where we all parted to go home and tell our families about the trip.

All in all I think it was a great journey to York, we had a lot of fun and I think we would all love to do it again some time, thanks to CTS Lemgo and your teacher Mr. Buss, who organized the trip.

                                                                                                                    Maria Geilmann