Tourist Sunday

Today was travelling day again, this time I went to Southport which lies in about the same distance to Liverpool as Chester but not to the South but to the North. Although it doesn't have as much to offer as Chester, it is a nice little seaside resort town. The city centre's nothing special, mostly shopping opportunities of all kinds on the high streets, nothing you wouldn't find in other cities as well. Southport's peculiarity is it's seaside which boasts an amusement park, a tramway out to the pier head (yes, a tramway, you've read right, the line's only about a mile long, connecting the shore's amusement park with the pier head) and a nice artificial lake just in from the beach. It all could have been more impressive, but to be fair, the weather wasn't as nice as it had been last week - had it been I'd probably have enjoyed myself better. Still it was a nice day and I'd recommend the place for a weekend at the seaside - especially since Crosby's not far too.

Historical boat rides on Marine Lake




Pier head

...and the tramway that leads there




I've never seen such a big swarm of birds before!




Typical seaside resort view: minigolf course in front of a hotel building




View on the Marine Lake from Kings Gardens, a nice, small park

And a curious architectural sample: since I came to Britain it was for the first time that I saw such a colourful, plastered building the architecture of wich quite reminds me of Austria.
The city of Linz is full of it...

P.S.: Happy Birthday, Joel!!!



Joke of the day: What goes "Clop, clop, clop, BANG, clop, clop, clop?" An Amish drive-by shooting!

Happy Birthday!!!

Royal Mail stupidity

Last week I tried to send a small package to Germany and today it was dutifully delivered - to me!
Apparently Royal Mail had mistaken the sender for the recipient, in spite of the labels clearly saying To and From...
Well, at least they didn't charge me for sending it again... :p

Religious? God, not me!

The above written is the title of my Japan essay which I’m going to hand in in a few minutes. It’s supposed to point out how habitual religiosity is in Japan: Shinto purification rites, protective amulets etc, they all do it but hardly anyone’s really a believer. I.e. they’re not religious. Or are they? It’s all a matter of defining ‘religiosity’. Anyway, the essay’s done and over with. If anyone fancies going out for a drink tonight, give me a text. I’d love to, after work.

Joke of the day: Patient: Doc, I think I need glasses. Teller: You sure do. This is a bank!

Tourists and Sundays...

Phew, I'm back! Today I went to the city of Chester. Since with 25 miles away it's only a stone's throw away and the weather was great I went by bicycle - it's healthy, good exercies, dead nice and it's free! Well, not completely, since the Queensway Tunnel restricts bicycle access to certain times but that's another story...

Tudor style houses

One thing quite significant in the city centre of Chester is the attractive architecture of many houses: they are built in the so-called Tudor style - half-timbered black and white. The abundance of these Tudor houses makes the appearance of the city totally different to that of Liverpool...

City tours in a historical bus

Ancient ruins at the Roman amphitheatre

Speaking of old buildings, one of the oldest structures that can be seen in Chester are the remains of the Roman amphitheatre - according to the signboards the biggest one in Britain. There I should mention that Chester is a city of superlatives: the biggest Roman amphitheatre, the most complete circuit of defensive city walls in Britain, one of the oldest horse racing courses, you name it...

Grosvenor Park - it's marvellous...

The next superlative is of personal nature, namely the Grosvenor Park. According to my taste it's the most beautiful park I've seen so far in Britain - even the glory of the big parks of London fades away when compared with this one. That's a personal opinion of course... each his own, eh? And the best thing is, the whole day I didn't encounter a single scally or dodgy looking person, no, the Cestrians all looked quite friendly and happy on this nice Sunday.

Quite a lovely city




And a lovely river: the River Dee (the border to Wales!)




But no bird flu yet. Thank goodness! :)




The 'rows'




View from the rows on the street




The shopping area is two-storied

Another thing that Chester is famous for, are the so-called 'rows', elevated, roofed walkways that seem to be already part of the houses but still accessible by the public, making the streets of the city centre two-storied. A most peculiar architectonic feature!

Chester Cathedral

I then paid the Chester Cathedral a visit, the next peculiarity. For me, not for the British, for coming from Europe, I picture something quite different in my head when I hear 'cathedral', something like Notre Dame or the cathedral in Cologne. This architecture - especially with the England-flag fluttering on the top - looks rather like a castle to me... beautiful though, in it's own way.

City walls from the perspective of a defender - from the top




The Roodee - one of the oldest horse racing courses in Britain

Next thing I went for a walk around the old city centre on top of the city walls which you can do for free and at a leisurely pace within a little less than an hour. It rewards you with a few really nice views on the city inside and outside the walls and on the moat and its vegetation. When you circle the complete city walls, you also pass the Roodee, one of the oldest horse racing courses in Britain - and also a peculiarly shaped one, it's one of the few horse racing courses you can overlook completely without using binoculars...

A nice pedestrian area - something Liverpool can't keep up with, despite it's size




Tame squirrels at Grosvenor Park - they even eat out of your hand when you feed them!!

And then the day was already drawing to a close and after one more quick walk through the Grosvenor Park I returned to my bicycle and started on the return journey. Summarising I'd say, if you like ancient structures, old buildings and cities with a really nice and friendly appearance overall, Chester's a really good place for you to go. I'll go again, definitely!

Our 'Merseypolis', photo I took while waiting for it to become 9pm -
the time from which cyclists are allowed to use Queensway Tunnel again on a Sunday...

Settled in again

Yesterday I finally finished unpacking and now my room's quite tidy again, almost as if I'd never been away. Except for some small changes. One of these changes is the bundle of Austrian hard cured sausages that's hanging from the wardrobe door :)
Today's essay day, since the Japanese society essay needs finishing til Monday, tomorrow, hmm, we'll see...

Home sweet home

So, I'm back in the pool now. It was a really nice week, it wasn't too short and not too long. Of course there were things which I wanted to do but didn't have the time to but I didn't expect anything else. I've seen some reminiscent places, met my family and my mates, did some sightseeing, ate some great food and even got a job for the summer hols already. What more could I ask for?

The 'Bummerlhaus', the oldest house of the historic town centre of Steyr -
the capital of the district my parents' house stands in

View from my parents' house - fields and farmhouses ('cows and bells') lol

Kenji, one of my two cats

Full moon in the countryside

My room

A nice Easter weekend!

While on Friday I spent most of my day shopping and there wasn't much intersting to take photos of (although of course Austrian beer and sausages are interesting too^^) on Saturday I went skiing with my brother and once again I was impressed by the nice view. Luckily the weather was perfect, it was warm and there was still enough snow to enjoy yourself. Of course I took photos there. As the sun was shining all day and the snow reflected and thereby fortified the sunrays by the end of the day I had a nice sunburn. But I don't mind since my sunburns always turn into nice tans within a few days. On Saturday evening then I went to a class reunion, the first one in a long time and it was really interesting to hear what all my old schoolmates are doing now. And of course it was great fun joking about our teachers and stuff...

What a nice view...




A few sunrays later - I look like a lobster thrown in a pot...
Class reunion on Saturday evening

Sunday then was relaxing day. My parents, my brother and I went to a thermal spring in Bad Schallerbach, the one I like best in Upper Austria, where they have a range of saunas and warm baths. Just the right thing for a cloudy afternoon and evening. Since in Austrian saunas it is common to be naked I'm sure you understand why I don't have any photos of there :)

After some good relaxation we went to Germany on Monday, more precisely to the city of Nuremberg. This city might be known by some as one of the headquarters of the Fuhrer some 70 years ago and also the place where our human rights were first formulated after the war but it's also got loads of nice old buildings, a historical city centre and the house where the famous artist and painter Albrecht Durer lived. And since it is in Bavaria, the sausages and the beer are great!! In fact Nuremberg is the place where the German 'Bratwurst' was invented...

Sausage capital Nuremberg...

Historical city centre

Inside Albrecht Durer's house - where they've reconstructed the furniture of his times. Here the kitchen...

In the evening we went to a Nuremberg inn and drank beer out of 1 Litre jugs. Prost!!!

53 days til the World Cup in Germany starts

Schlacken Sie Kracken...

Today I went to Linz, my 'old hometown' for some job interviews. I had the first one at eleven and after it I had all the time til five in the afternoon for myself. Luckily, my brother and my dad had lunchbreak too at noon and we went to a Chinese resteraunt where they had an all-you-can-eat buffet. I think with only 4 quid it's cheaper than Yum's? Anyway, the food was really yummy and then my dad took me around the city in his car. And I felt overjoyed to see all those places again!!Then, at half four, I had my second job interview and - OMFG - I got the job!!! So, even if all the other 7 schools should reject me, what I strongly doubt, I can still teach English in Austria in the summer hols. Wootage!!

Austria, I'm here!!

Now I'm finally here in Austria, typing this blog entry on a dead slow PC, on a keyboard with that awful German layout... brr... z and y swapped, colon, semicolon and other punctuation marks in strange places...
Here a few comments I wrote on my laptop while coming here:

Phew! Now I'm sitting in the coach on the motorway to Manchester. Almost missed it!! The alarm must not have gone off because instead of the intended half five I woke up at half six and literally jumped out of the bed into my trousers and legged it in order to still reach the coach. But now everything's ding-dang-do for me and I can sit back and relax and by the evening I'll be in Wuersterreich. Finally! My mum's home-cooking! My dad's car! And cheap entertainment on the telly - in German! Austria, I'm coming!! Lol

I'm at Manchester Airport now. Somehow I really like the atmosphere of airports: it reminds you that life holds promises and that there are dozens of doors to your destiny. When you walk through one door, you'll be in Turkey soon; walk through another door and you'll find yourself in China and yet another door might lead to Mexico. The whole thing doesn't sound so magical anymore when you take into account that you have to pay for it, of course, but still...

Guess who I just bumped into at Manchester Airport: Kanako, telling me that she was going to visit her cousin in Germany. She seemed to be in somewhat of a hurry so we couldn't talk a lot but still, wow! The world is a small place! Or should I say North-West England? lol

Back on the net!

After one laptop, a new network cable and hours of software installation later I'm finally back on the net! With my own photos! So here a short summary of what's happened in the last two weeks:
On Wednesday two weeks ago, the day on which my old laptop broke, I went to O'Neills, an Irish pub down in town, with Clare and some of her mates to celebrate her birthday. I think it was her 24th. Happy birthday again!

Some Guinness again, hehe...

Earlier that day I went to the library to help my mates with their phonetics coursework but we weren't really up to it, I was knackered and Joel was being funny, juggling and hiding behind the shelves... lol

Better than 'Where's Wally' :-)

In the weekend, Jamie and I went down to town to look for cheap laptops. We went to Dixons and John Lewis and then we came across an European food fair where they had German sausages, sweets and other nice things. Hmmmm....

German food in the centre of Liverpool

On Tuesday then we went to the 'Liverpool World Museum' since Jamie's never been in there before and it's really interesting: they've got an aquarium, a bughouse, tonnes of historical artifacts and much more. At one point we saw some crickets in a glass tank and guess what they did: shagging!

It was the swingin' sixties in that glass tank...

This Thursday we all went round to the Scream since it was the last time before the Easter hols. I was knackered from work but it was okay, before we went to the Scream we'd watched some Gladiators and Jackass on the telly and then at the Scream Colin pulled out a ciggy and wanted to give it to me but I was so scared of Charlie scowling at me that I didn't take it - and it was smoked by Joel, Jamie and Mike. I think Chris had a drag too although I'm not too sure of it. Can't remember it really well.

Oh! How unhealthy!! *rofl*

And finally, yesterday was the last day at uni before Easter and we had loads of fun. Before the phonetics seminar in the afternoon we found a little buffet waiting for us (or anyone else happening to pass by ^^) so it was free fruit and milk. JMU catering rawks!! :)

Now, what's that??

After our last portion of bilabial pleasures Joel, Chris and I went round Joel's place where I fixed his internet connection and he started emptying his wardrobe and drawers and showed us all the items he owned and hardly ever wore. Lol. He even gave me a t-shirt. And we dressed up funny.

Then we went over to the living room to play Tekken 3 on the PS2. I'm really shit at it but it was great fun.