9/15 October 2011 – the group of Gimnazjum No.4 of Gdynia (teachers: Ms Malgorzata Balsewicz, Ms Aniela Korybalska, Ms Grazyna Szotrowska and students: Klaudia Hinz, Damian Jahn, Kamil Lewanczyk i Robert Syrnicki) went to England for a meeting of our COMENIUS - AD FONTES RERUM EUROPAE – project. We landed at the Heathrow aiport. Mr Andrew Jackson met us there and he accompanied us on our way to Bath. For a few days we were hosted by St. George’s College in Bath where we also met our partners from Czech Republic, Hungary and Turkey. All the meeting participants learned from each other finding out more about different cultures we represented. We all were enchanted with the kindness of our English hosts who took care of us so very well.

Multicultural diversity

England is a multinational country. It is one of the reasons why tourists find the country so interesting. We met many people of different nationalities there. The biggest diversity of the nations we could notice in the streets of London. Many of the people we passed by must have had some connections with the old British colonies. Dark-skinned persons might have had their roots in Africa and Asians possibly in India, which had been the pearl of the British colonies.

In the streets of London, Bristol, Cardiff and Bath we noticed school children who wore uniforms. In many schools in Poland, including ours, we have dress code but Polish students most often tend to dislike wearing uniforms. When in England, we could see the school kids were proud of wearing their uniform.

At the beginning of our meeting its participants divided themselves into small groups connected with the cultural differences, as we were from different countries. Some problems were also caused by language issues. We had thought we would not be able to communicate in English so at first, us Poles were sticking with the Czech. Our languages are quite similar so we could simply speak using Polish and Czech, and understand each other pretty well. The English, Turks and Hungarians were staying in their own groups at the very beginning. Later, thanks to all the project activities, we managed to break the ice and communicated with each other using English. Our prior fears disappeared and we made friends with our project partners.

Places we visited

Lond o n On the first day we visited London. We had known it is a very large city and during one day visit we would be able to see only some of its attractions, but we enjoyed visiting London a lot.Since the Olympics start in July in London, we began the sightseeing with visiting the Olympics’ village. We could see how much work had been done there and how modern all the area was.

After that we admired the view over The River Thames, The London Eye and also some other popular tourist sights of the city such as The Parliament area, Big Ben, The Tower Bridge, the James’s Park, Buckhingam Palace, Trafalgar Square and St. Paul’s Cathedral. We were quite excited when we stopped at Buckingham Palace but the midposition of the flag placed on the mast informed us that the Queen was not in her Rooms. All of us enjoyed watching

the Ceremony of the Changing Guards near the palace.

London is also the birthplace of the Shakespearian Theatre. The students of our group are part of the school drama programme that is why they were really intersted in seeing The Globe Theatre. Besides, we could see in our own eyes the famous London doubledeckers and London cabs. At first, we found difficult to get used to the left sided traffic and what also was rather strange to us, that the coach door was at the other – ‘wrong’ - side. A very nice surprise was an opportunity of watching the view over the city from the top floor of the highest building of London. A lift took us to the 144th floor – the view was breathtaking indeed.

Bristol

First we went to the Bristol bridge situated over the River Avon. The view from the bridge was quite amazing. Later we admired the modern and historical parts of Bristol: we were amazed at its medieval cathedral, we also enjoyed the cruise by a river cab. It reminded us our sea trams of the Baltic Bay region. One of the most interesting activities when in Bristol was visiting the Great Britain ship. We spent almost three hours watching its details and

learning about the way people had travelled overseas by that ship. It was fun. Bristol surprised us with some architectural attractions such as the stairs – fountain and a big glass ball.

While flying to England by plane we could mostly see sea waters below us. Of course England is situated on an island. Poland is also located by the sea but our

country is on the mainland. While visiting England we could notice some differences in the landscape (comparing to our home region). We were struck with the view of some kind of monotony of the flat and little aforrested landscape. We had learned in history classes about the industrial revolution in England and the intensive logging which results we could apparently see. We found it strange as in Poland we have lots of forests and what’s more, our home city Gdynia is surrounded by woods and the post moraine hills. When we reached Wales we could finally see some uneven ground.

Coal mine – mu seum in Wal es and open air museum of wooden architecture

All of us enjoyed visiting the old coal mine and going so far below the ground level. It was an exciting adventure. In southern Poland there are also many coal mines but they are about 700 kms far from our city. Most of us had never been to a coal mine before. Meeting a virtual miner who was our guide in the mine was fun too. In the open air museum we expected to see some wooden huts similar to the ones we had seen in the museum in the north of Poland. We were really surprised when we reached a kind of a western shop with so many goods that we found it as an early kind of a supermarket. Our history teachers were very much interested in the history of housing construction – from the medieval ages up to the modern times. They also imagined all the interesting classes they could run in the Welsh museum.

Cardiff – capital of Wal es

In Cardiff we had some free time and an opportunity to choose our own sightseeing route using the map prepared by our hosts. Our teachers found all the monuments of the city very attractive. Frankly speaking, us – students – enjoyed shopping that much.

Bath

Bath appeared to be a charming and hospitable city. All the buildings in Bath were build In so called King George IV style. The hotel where we were accommodated reminded us Harry Potter’s school of magic that was why we called it Hogwart. Walking along the halls of the hotel, trying to find the ways to our rooms and the showers we made friends with our Project partners. The old Roman baths are the greatest attraction of Bath. The ones who had happened to visit Rome could admit that the Bath baths are prettier than the ancient city

itself. We listened to the recordings in English which told us the story of the baths: The baths were founded by the Roman colonizers who also built the temple of Aqua Sulis there. The ancient remains are accompanied by contemporary heaters where Bath visitors can enjoy

relaxing and therapeutic treatments. We very much appreciated our English guides who were doing their best speaking to us as clearly as possible, it helped a lot and thanks to their effort we could truly enjoy the walk around the city. We Saw the Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent building, (it is so large it was not possible to take a picture of the entire structure), the Pulteney Bridge, The Cirrus building, the Assembly Rooms and the Prior Park Landscape Garden designed by poet Alexander Pope. We also found out that Jane Austin had been a citizen of Bath - she lived there in the 19 century. Bath was also visited by Queen Victoria.

A nice surprise was the meeting with the city Mayor. We had a short talk – the Mayor told us he had visited Poland a few times and he enjoyed Polish hospitality and tasty food. His son lives in Cracow with his family! Next day the Mayor honoured us with his presence at our Project activities at St. George’s College. We were a bit stressed as we were to make a traditional Polish dish – souerkraut and mushroom dumplings and present our version of ‘Suitcase Story’ – our project task – to other project partners. All went well!All the dishes made by our friends were really tasty. The Czech pancakes tasted almost like Polish potato pancakes . We are quite familiar with the dish made by our Hungarian partners as we happen to make it at home too, but the spicy plate by the Turks was quite a surprise to us. We hope they enjoyed our dumplings too.

The final evening of the meeting was quite an unforgettable experience. All the groups had their presentations but the most memorable to us was the performance by the English students. The hospitality and kindness of the students’ parents were quite impressive also. The play presented by the students of St. George’s College was set in the times of WWII – it was all about patriotism but also about great love and partings. The performance had been prepared very carefully – perfectly. The set design, costumes combined with some modern music resulted in a terrific effect. It was great! We also appreciated the acting by the students. It was all like in a real theatre not in a school drama performance. We enjoyed both the technical and the acting side of it. Congratulations to our English friends on such a great achievement.

Pol es in England

When in England we often met our fellow country men who had started their personal and professional lives there. One day, when we were getting on a bus we heard words spoken in Polish (‘you can speak Polish’) by the bus driver. He was Polish of course. He told us there were many Poles in Bath and also quite a few Polish children studied at the school we were hosted by. We met them of course. In Bristol, while visiting the cathedral, a few little kids came to us when they heard we spoke Polish. They were having an active history class then. They spoke very nice and correct Polish though some of them had been born in England. Talking to our teachers, the boys (apparently football fans) mentioned Jerzy Dudek, a goal keeper of Liverpool football team. The teachers recalled the famous match played by the Polish and English national teams at the Wembley stadium in 1973. The match resulted with a draw – which prevented the English from winning the world cup. Our history teachers reminded us about the Polish pilots and sailors who served in the RAF and Royal Navy troops during WWII. Also, long ago some Polish kings were trying to marry princesses of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties.We will be glad if can continue the tradition of Polish – English connections.

All the project participants were really great, so nice and friendly. We got on well, that was why it was so hard to say ‘goodbye’ on the last day of our meeting. Luckily technology lets us stay in touch and meet our friends online.

Our visit in Great Britain was a great experience. We enjoyed all the programme activities scheduled by our hosts and meeting the people as well. We appreciate their sympathy, understanding, dedication and hard work. Thank you!