Trip to UK. The beginning

I always wanted to go to England _ from my childhood… how was I supposed to know I’d go there in my 10-th year in school?! Wow! That was really fascinating… I always dreamed about walking on the green grass of UK and looking at old, medieval buildings, castles… I always liked England with its history, culture, location, nature, people, football… I’m Liverpool FC club fan by the way! Everything about England was adorable for me in my mind. I can say, it all began with cartoons called “Robin Hood.” I really loved this cartoon in my childhood. I liked English splendid fortresses, brave knights… green, beautiful picturesque gardens with lots of fountains and flowers. Royal families with luxury clothes and jewellery.

So, I want to tell you about my exciting trip to United Kingdom _ to the greenest and knightest country I’ve ever heard of…

It was 1 a.m. when we came to Tbilisi International Airport. And our flight was at 4 a.m. We met our coordinators, checked-in, went upstairs and waited for our flight to be announced.

Airplane took off… it was still night when we arrived in Kiev airport and we watched the dawn waiting for our flight. We watched how the sun was rising slowly in the sky, in front of us. Rays were crashing on the planes’ surface and the sky was getting red and red. A new day was dawning with its hopes and bright… in kiev…

London Gatwick airport was huge.  We had to walk through every door to get to the hall, where we could wait for drivers sent by our schools. The weather was just English! There was fog everywhere and it was like raining… and everything was so green,  like my green oil paint in it’s tube. And there were many big planes in the whole airport…

We begged the driver to go through London, but he said he had to go on a shortcut. So we could do nothing but sleep as the road was not something unusual and we were very tired and asleep because of about 15 hours on our way to Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.

When we came to Cambridge everything seemed so familiar (perhaps because of many movies that I have seen about England…) that I could feel myself like at home.

My hosts were Filipino family _ Vicky, Rudy and 4-year-old Luigi. They were very friendly and kind.

The second day _ Sunday was full of excitement. It was a sunny day, though we thought there would be dull, foggy, chilly days in Cambridge. In fact, it turns out that Cambridge is the driest place in the whole England. We went throughout the city and we were becoming more and more amazed with every glance at buildings and people and transport… wow! That was a strange feeling. Somehow we came here and we were walking on foreign land puzzled. Yes, that’s the right word for it _ puzzled! The city was marvelous! It was calm and clean… like cities in PC games I have played. And still, the most astonishing thing was architecture. It was something like mix of almost every style of buildings, but mainly gothic I intend.

Cambridge has significantly shaped the world we live in, and there’s a real sense of living history almost everywhere you look. Cambridge is famous for its old and distinguished University _ the University of Cambridge. The University and its thirty one colleges dominate the centre with chapels, gardens and bridges. Cambridge is a mix of dramatic modern architecture with the traditional and historic one, and lovers of architecture will find much to admire. Like its twin city Oxford it has much brilliant historic and contemporary architecture. Cambridge is set on the River Cam and there are many colleges giving Cambridge a lot of its charm. Each college competes against the other to attain better and more beautiful architecture. Imagine vast green valley fenced by those aged historic buildings of England. You stare and can’t describe your feelings. It’s like you’ve gone far, far away from here. You’re now into the streets of medieval Cambridge, falling autumn on your face… you see how you feel confident and safe. You feel yourself like you’ve been here for your entire life and it’s so familiar place to you, that you still remember those times walking on its causeways…

Who can forget Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall”?!   I didn’t know Cambridge was Pink Floyd’s home, until Tom (he took us to sightsee the city and the next 2 weeks he was very friendly to us _ Georgians, he even had lunch with us) told us that the banks of river Cam near a pub Anchor, were the group’s favourite places to write songs.

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