The Brighton Diaries

The Brighton Diaries

Bereits im vergangenen Jahr waren die Englisch LKs von Herrn Wood und Frau Mackrodt zu einer mehrtägigen Reise nach Brighton aufgebrochen. Für einige sollte es der erste Ausflug nach England sein. In ihren Tagebucheinträgen berichten die Schüler*innen von ihren Erfahrungen – natürlich auf Englisch.

Friday (14th Oct)

To start our trip together we all met at the airport . You could feel the excitement within the group and everybody was planning out what to do. Few of us were nervous before the flight but we all managed to get there safe. After the flight we got on what felt like the longest train ride ever. Some of us used the time for a nap while others were just exhausted watching Netflix and talking. Finally we reach our final destination: Brighton. We immediately got into groups that went to the house either by foot or by bus. The arrival at the house left all of us stunned. It was even more beautiful and posh than we could have ever expected. After some complications with who gets which room, everybody settled down. Even though we all were pretty exhausted because most of us had been awake since the early morning hours, we still did not let that stop us from celebrating the first night in England. You could feel the excitement for the upcoming days and we were looking forward to them.

Saturday (15th Oct)

Dear Diary,

The British have a weird idea of breakfast with which we were confronted at our first breakfast. They eat white beans with sauce, drink their tea with milk and have these pancake-like thingys which looked hella weird and somehow grew on all of us. After the breakfast we were on our own, exploring our host city Brighton. The given task was for us to take a picture for every school subject, though these rules were somewhat bent by most of the group to just mean “take touristy pictures“.

Exploring Brighton really gave us a feel for what it is made out of, and to give you a feel for it as well, it has LGBTQ-friendly clubs, CCTV and jaywalking.

I am a little bit reductive though, there were very niche shops which were a blast to explore.

The people of Brighton seem really friendly, at daytime you can spot a lot of important-looking businessmen jaywalking to get to their very important office to do their very important business.

At nighttime you can see these same businessmen walking around in drag, standing in front of clubs, socializing.
As Brighton is populated with mostly young, progressive people, a lot of the Brightoners were very open, but as someone who was walking around Brighton in the dead of night I can assure you that no matter if young or old, with enough alcohol in their system everyone becomes a drunken brawler.

At the end of the day we had a very tasty dinner prepared by Mr. Wood’s brother who was visiting his birthday-sibling from afar. His butter-chicken is a dish which you should be very grateful to experience, the taste is something dreams are made out of.

Sunday (16th Oct)

Dear Diary,

the third day in Brighton was a Sunday. We had good weather in the morning, but it changed quickly during the day, but while the sun was still shining, everyone prepared breakfast for themselves and got ready for the 15-minute bus ride. We all really enjoyed the ride on a typical red double-decker bus from where you could see all the people on the street. Besides the fact that it was really cool, it was also very scary for me personally.

When we arrived in Lewes, we were way too early for the table we had booked at the Lewes Arms pub. Nevertheless, we were able to sit down and go to the bar to order our drinks (which felt very strange because in Germany the waiters come to the table). Although we had all ordered the food in advance, we were shocked when the plates arrived: They were HUGE.

In addition to lunch, we walked the streets of Lewes with a friend of Mr. Wood. She took us around the town and also through the nearby park, where there were lots of little puddles, and at the end we walked up a little hill with paths winding around it that made it look like a snail.

When we got to the top of the hill, Mr Wood gave us some more free time to explore Lewes on our own. Although Lewes is not as big a city as London, it had many beautiful and historic places, which made it a very valuable experience for me.

While we were on the bus back to Brighton, we saw the clouds getting darker and soon it started to rain. As we walked back to the house, some other people and I really felt like we were going to be blown away by the wind, apart from the fact that we were soaking wet when we arrived at our front door.

Because of the bad weather, most of us spent the afternoon at home. My friends and I used the time wisely and watched the children’s film „The Addams Family 2“.

To end the day, we topped frozen pizza with our own toppings (originally we wanted to make our own pizza, but there was no pizza dough to be found anywhere) and all ate together in the kitchen.

Monday (17th October)

As written in our program, we took the train to London on Monday. We set out at about nine thirty and arrived at the London Victoria Station at twenty past eleven. Then we separated into several groups according to our past experience in London and went sightseeing. Since it was our first time in London, both of us decided on doing a hop-on-hop-off bus tour with Mr. Wood and Mrs. Mackrodt.

The first bus we took went around the Hyde park, yet it was the wrong route. So we stepped out of the bus and walked to the right station. We also took pictures before the famous Queen Elizabeth Gate.

After that, we visited the most famous attractions of London, for example, the Baker Street, the Parliament House, the National Gallery, so on and so fort. Of course, we took a lot of fun tourist photos on the way, especially when we were reaching the Big Ben. Then we decided to get off the bus and make a cruise trip on the Thames instead.

We boarded the cruise ship only to find a special guest accompanying us: a seagull that stayed on the side of the cruise ship. We were totally obsessed with him and named him Jackson afterwards. During the ride, there was a member of the crew who was also the tour guide. He made typical British jokes that made us laugh so hard. Through his guidance, we saw many different bridges and the Shard. It was quite a lovely ride.

Eventually, we decided to get some food in a café. The coffee was good, but the cake didn’t taste as good as it looked. We were enjoying our food so much that we set out late for our tour in Shakespeare’s Globe and almost missed it. However, it was fortunate that all of our class made it there before four. The tour guide was a fairly old man and we also got headsets to put on during the tour, because there was a rehearsal going on. The guide brought us up the globe while explaining the history of this building, how it was rebuilt three times and the story of “the Queen meets the Queen”. After that, we also got to see the fantastic souvenir shop to get some good stuff about Shakespeare.

Lastly, before we go back to Brighton, we went to a local garden where we can enjoy the food around the world! Mr. Wood’s brother, Michael, also joined us for this experience. There were many food trucks of different nations. You could found there American food, Asian food or British food e.g.

It was very delicious and everybody of us found something. While eating we were sitting outside on a long table.

After we finished our diner, we went back to the bus station and drove to the station where we took the train back to Brighton. We were all very tired, so the most of us went directly to bed after we arrived at home. It was a very nice trip and we’ve really enjoyed to see London!

Diary of Caro & Corinna

Tuesday (18th Oct)

The day started with a nice late english breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausages, crumpets, beans & bacon) prepared by Mr. Wood and Mrs. Mackrodt. One of us helped Mr. Wood making a very special pumpkin soup using most of the leftovers. We then all went into the living room and presented our presentations on what we discovered in Brighton on Saturday and on our tourist-photos from our day in London on Monday. Around noon, we both went to visit the Brighton peer and we were surprised to find a very cool arcade, but in the end, the tickets that we won only got us a small piece of candy.

While some of the students went shopping for dinner, we then went to the beach and walked through Brighton. In a second-hand shop we met a rocker that recommended us a pub near the train station and gave us some music recommendations. We were about to go back to the East cliff house when we met our teachers who were on their way for a “sundowner”. As they asked if we wanted to accompany them, we had a drink on a platform while the sun set and talked about mental health. We were a bit late when we finally arrived at the house, since we were part of the old class of Mr. Wood that had to cook dinner as result of loosing a game against the class of Mrs. Mackrodt in the past school year. As we were preparing the noodles with bolognese and tomato sauce Mr. Wood suggested that we put on the recommended music from earlier, which was quite good. While we all had dinner everybody stood up once to give feedback on the whole trip. For dessert we had ice cream with multiple toppings to choose from. After some cleaning, the teachers, and some students, including us, gave the leftovers a group of homeless people. Instead of going back, we both decided to explore Brightons nightlife, but since Bene aka Bean 🫘 forgot his ID, we didn’t have many places to choose from. We ended up going to the “Prince Albert” pub, which was the pub that was recommended to us, and it was actually quite nice. Back home we had a little discussion with Carol and the teachers before we went to bed very late.

Wednesday (19th Oct - Flo’s perspective)

Wednesday was the day we departed from Brighton. I woke up at 8:00 am, brushed my teeth, took a shower and then I chose my outfit for today. Of course, it had to be my favorite black jacket with the white prints on the sleeve. After getting ready for the day, I did some final preparations for our journey home, like finishing packing my suitcase and rucksack before I went downstairs. In the kitchen I could only see a few students from our group and of course our supportive teachers who cleaned the kitchen for us since it was a little messy from the yesterday evening. As they did not require any help and we still had one hour left before we had to leave, I decided to go outside and get a coffee and a sandwich as I needed some fuel, having a long day ahead of me. I came back at 9:40 am and now almost everybody was sitting on the table in the kitchen. Our checkout should’ve been at 10:00 am, however, we then realized that one person was still missing, there could only be one reason for this phenomenon: the person must have overslept and after we went upstairs to figure out what had happened to her, our suspicion was confirmed. Therefore, we had to wait for her to get ready and after more than half an hour, her majesty came downstairs. Finally, we were able to check out and we had to leave the beautiful East Cliff House behind. Then, we immediately started walking to the Brighton train station and some of us bought a coffee or some snacks for the day. Soon after, our train to London arrived and I took a cozy little nap on the train. The train ride to London passed quickly and as soon as we hopped of the train, we noticed that her majesty was missing again. It was no surprise to any of us really, the person had forgotten to leave the train at the right station. However, our teachers called her phone and we all reunited after a while. At this point, I was leaving the group because I was visiting a friend who is currently studying in London. I decided to take a walk to her apartment since it was not that far away from the train station, where we got out. After having a nice day with her, I stood on the sidewalk and hailed a cab which took me to the Airport. The London Taxis are very quiet when you are sitting inside, however, their interior reminds me of that of remind German buses. The driver was very friendly, and we had a nice talk together. I arrived at the airport at 5:00pm and I was the first person there from our group, so I decided to get a small bag of chips as a snack. After a while, some students from our group arrived and then we decided to go through the TSA since it was very busy at the airport, and we did not want to miss our flight. However, after passing the security check our flight was delayed. Anyways, we had gone through security, and we were able to relax a bit and eat something. We landed in Frankfurt at round about 10:00pm, went through the immigration check, since the UK is not in the EU anymore, grabbed our luggage and finally went home. Some students got picked up by their parents, however, Mr Sawalies, a teacher from our school was generous enough to pick us up from the airport and drive us back to Internat Lucius. All in all, it was a very fun trip. I am very thankful that I was able to gain new experiences while also having a fantastic time with the teachers and students.

19th October 2022 (Helen’s - perspective)

We started our day earlier than the other days and had a leftover breakfast, with of course crumpets. Then we packed our last luggage and said goodbye to our East Cliff House. One last look at the sea, one last walk through the streets of Brighton and we were already at the train station.

We took the train to London and dropped off our luggage. A little time was left, so we splittet up in groups and discovered London. Of course not without a challenge, the Challenge for today was: “Survey on the opinion of the British population on Brexit”. Shopping, sightseeing and visiting a museum were the plans of the groups.One of the groups that went to Brick lane had Lunch in a stylish Fish&Chips restaurant. At a neighboring table sat a group of men, who were interviewed without further ado about their opinion on Brexit. From this developed a nice conversation.

Brick Lane was a great ending to our trip to England.

Of course, the time passed much too quickly and before we knew it, we were already back at the train station to the airport.

On departure we had a beautiful view of London at night. The weather allowed us this beautiful view on the entire return flight. As soon as we landed, it was time to say goodbye. The boarding students were driven back to Lucius by the boarding school bus, where we were eagerly awaited by our fellow students.

English: Food on our Trip!

Breakfast! For some, it is the most important meal of the day, others do without breakfast to save time or because they are on a diet.

I for one love breakfast and couldn’t start a day without one. That’s why breakfast on the Q3 trip to Brighton, England, was very interesting to me and also a bit disturbing. Especially considering the preconceptions one hears about British cuisine.

However, I was, and I think I can speak for most when I say that it was rather pleasantly surprised at how well eggs, sausage and bacon combine with beans to make a brilliant morning concoction to start the day, so well in fact that I will consider including beans in my breakfast as well.

To my surprise, this was accompanied by what we call „crumpets“, which taste like little pancakes but can be toasted in the toaster like toast, which was really good addition to our bean mix.

Breakfast could always get us going after the long nights before.

We ate a similar breakfast every morning, and after the initial surprise of beans on the breakfast plate, most, aside from a few bean haters, started to enjoy our breakfast together every morning.

Shortly after breakfast, a snack is needed to survive until lunch. For the group I was with most of the time, that was usually fish and chips, which I and most of our group would describe as exceptional. Most didn’t like the fish part of fish and chips, so we usually just had a few fries as a snack. These fries and for a few others, mozzarella sticks, were very good all around.

It was the same for lunch, because in most restaurants we ate many different things, and often cousins from other countries. Until we ate at the Black-Horse Pub in Lewis Arms. There we had „Half Roast Chicken“ and for the vegetarians „Vegetarian Wellington“. These were large plates of the promised chicken and Wellington, plus rosemary garlic roasted potatoes, glazed roasted carrots and parsnips, red cabbage, mashed turnips, a selection of seasonal green vegetables, lots of gravy and a homemade Yorkshire pudding.

Again, there was a surprise for me. The very good tasting Yorkshire pudding, which is more of a sticky bread than a pudding, was a wonderful blend of flavors with the Swedish mash combined with the chicken.

To keep this article as short as possible, without further ado, let’s move on to the main dishes of the evening, which were a mix of cuisines from around the world. At one point, we were treated to Indian butter chicken and potato butter curry for the veggies at Mr. Wood and his brother’s home, which was super delicious and really tasted good.

And lastly, we went to a mixed cuisine restaurant where many different cuisines were open at small booths in a park-like outdoor and indoor area where everyone could find something they liked to eat!