See, "the Sea", by the Sea

Country: England
Town: Newcastle
People: Me, Julia and Nico

1st half of the trip, 2nd part of the blog.

So, lets get started then. Friday, me and Jules took a 2 hour train ride to visit our friend Nico. Nico is a buddy we lived with at Grebel, my residence in Waterloo. He’s studying at a University in Newcastle. He met us at the train station and showed us around his city. Its really close to the North Sea and definitely had the feel of fishermans town.

On our way back to his flat, I got to ride a double-decker bus! Front seat baby! I know we have them here and there in Canada, but this was a first for me in a long time!
My legs loved this bus too, cause again, you are NEVER walking on a flat surface in England, its always either up or down.

Nico lives in a 6 person flat, one Irish guy, one British guy, him, two Irish girls and a British girl. Its always so interesting to be surrounded by people from multiple countries, I really love it! Its opens my eyes to cultural differences (such as accents, we all spoke English as our native tongue, but we were dealing with 3 different accents….I often had to get the Irish people to repeat themselves cause I couldn’t understand them) but I’ve also learned that even though we’ve grown up on different sides of the WORLD, we’re all just people and we have a lot in common!!

Saturday, we slept in (if you can call it sleeping) me and Jules each had a thin sleeping bag and sliver on Nico’s floor. ( I am SO thankful Nico let us stay at his place, but I definitely learned a new appreciation for not only my bed, but ANY bed!!) Our day turned into a trip to the North Sea. The train ride itself was eventful!...complete with a totally drunk English guy threatening to smash a bottle into an Italian guys head if he didn’t let him play his accordion…. ( Don’t worry dad, we were safe the whole time)

Once we were at the sea, we walked along this giant peer, it was absolutely gorgeous! I love being by the water and we caught the 4 o clock sunset! Its crazy how early it gets dark here! I don’t like it! Following English tradition, we stopped for the best Fish n Chips I’ve ever tasted before saying bye to Nico and heading back to Sheffield.

It was really cool to spend time with Nico and Jules. Alot of the time it felt like we were just hanging out in Waterloo and not on the other side of the ocean. Its also really weird that I definitely feel like Germany is a home for me. This was a great trip, but ya know how when you’re traveling you miss your shower or your room or whatever…..I thought about my little apartment in Germany every once in a while and was happy to return to it late on Monday night…..

I’ve added a bunch of new pictures to my photo stream, so check em out!! I miss you!!