This weekend I made my trip to Bradford to see Vero and her friends. I started off Thursday night and went through Weston, Bristol, Manchester Picadilly, Manchester Victoria to Bradford. Vero came to the station. It was soooo great to see her after such a long time. We talked for a very long time in the evening and went to sleep pretty late.
The following morning Vero had to go to some job thing, because she got herself a job now. I'm happy for her. So she showed me around in the area a bit and then we met in her school her friend Sahr. We helped him to do some homework (or actually Vero did) and then went to Morrissons to get some food for the supper. Vero left me to her place to cook. I was finally able to cook! I made minced vegetable soup and tried to make apple-tear cake, but unfortunately I didn't have the mixer so it didn't look the best in the end. 4 of Vero's friends came over for the supper after the lecture was over. They all looked at the soup as if it was something disgusting. Well, it looked greenish and was minced. They had never seen anything like that. Kinda funny to me. But then they tasted it and liked it really much. So most of the soup was eaten. And the cake- although it didn't look like the cake and was a bit more like a dessert, they ate it and liked it, too. Nice! We had a nice chat about psychology. Marwan, one Vero's friends, made a Cube test with me and the results of the test were pretty accurate for me. It was a personality test. I've been trying to convince the guy that he should study psychology instead of the civil engineering, but I haven't been effective in it, yet. After the people went away, me and Vero had couple of hours of sleep and then got ready to go to FND-Friday Night Disco. We met Marwan there and some of his friends. There was one guy who studies psychology on the second year. He had never met another psycho student from
another university. Sahr came to the party also. And there were many people. In the beginning we drank some ales and played billiard. When more people came, we danced a lot. The party ended at 4am. Sahr took me and Vero home after the party. Marwan was planning to go to Bath the following weekend so maybe I will see him soon :) I will probably go to Bath this weekend if he comes there. :)
On Saturday Vero showed me around in Bradford. I can say that it's the ugliest city I've been to in UK. Really, there is garbage everywhere. And the city itself seems to be industrial. I wouldn't want to live there for long time, but it's good for a visit. It's got a very active life going on over
there. There are very many Indian, Arabic and African origin people in Bradford. It seemed like a different country. I didn't hear any English that was similar to the accents in south. The place is very multicultural, but indian culture is everywhere. It's like another country inside UK. I saw Vero's university, the main square, some gardens. But the place wasn't anything spectacular. I liked the university, though.
Oh, and Vero's apartement- she has a small room (about half of the size of the rooms we had in our boarding school's old hostal), and there were two more people living in the apartement and
having rooms like this. They have a communal kitchen downstairs. It's nothing special, but I think I would even like to live in a place like this if I had proper roommates. But the area she's living in, is very dangerous. People have tried to break into the apartement of Vero already twice.
The time in Bradford went by so fast that I didn't even notice. It was so great to see Vero again. It felt as if we had seen each other every day in the past year, which we obviously didn't. As my marvellous time in Bradford came to an end, Vero sent me off to the station. I made loads of
friends in Bradford and will go back there as soon as I've got enough time, money and don't plan to go anywhere else (so it means that I will not go there in the next couple of months).
My trip back was a bit different to the one I had when I went to Bradford. I went through Leeds to Bristol. But the thing was that I had to stay overnight in Bristol, because the train came in very late in the evening. So... I did couchsurfing! I stayed at one guy's, named Pat, place. We had exchanged our contacts before and he told me on Saturday morning that there was another CS also staying at his place.
When my train was in Gloucester, Pat called me and asked if my journey was going well and how I was doing. When I go to Temple Meads, he and the another CS (a Chinese girl) came to greet me at the station. After that we went out to one pub near the library and the College Green where we had a beer and listened to some live music. It was lovely. When we got to Pat's place, we talked for a while. I told him about my plans to go to London in May and he and the Chinese girl (I can't remember the name- I have got a lot of difficulties with Chinese names anyway) gave me a lot of advice about travelling in London. As we were tired, we didn't stay up very late and went to sleep around 1:30am. The following morning Pat cooked us some omelette with croissant-kind-of thing which was very tasty. And after that we headed out to discover Bristol. It was really nice time. We went to the Suspension
Bridge and University area and harbourside and central. We basically saw everything that a person who visits Bristol, should see. We walked altogether around 7miles. During our trip out we talked a lot about Britain, living in here, accents and all kinds of stuff. It was really great time and I enjoyed it very much. I will definetely visit Pat again. He's like a CS master or something like that. He organizes Bristol CS monthly gatherings and hosts people a lot. He seems to be very devoted to give the CS-s the best experience possible when they stay at his place. I can tell, that I absolutely love CS. It's just a brilliant thing and the person who invented is one of my idols now.
But again.... The day came to an end very fast. I had to go library and the Chinese girl had to
catch a train to Cardiff. She was travelling around in the UK. She just came from London and Edinburgh and went to discover Wales. After that she is planning to go to Belgium.
After library I missed my bus to Weston and had to wait an hour to catch another one. I stayed at the waterfront and read the books that I took from library. Then, when I got to Weston, I discovered that the bus company had made changes in the bus times from today so that the buses don't go to Axbridge on Sundays after 15:52 anymore. Only to Winscombe. Gaye also planned to go with the same bus as me so we had a bit of a trouble figuring out how to get home. We called Petra, our mentor, because walking from Winscombe would have been too long
distance. After I got here, I checked the bus times and really, no buses go from Weston to Axbridge after 6 in the evening any more. This is ridiculous. I mean- this limits our travels so much because we have to be back at a certain time and if we go anywhere we basically don't have time on Sunday to look around. Which is stupid. I'm gonna write a complaint letter to the bus company about it. It's stupid. And there are loads of people who suffer because of this. Especially when the summer comes and people want to go out in the evenings or for the
weekends. I am really mad. This bus change will affect my life in here so badly now. I will lose a lot of travelling time because of that. As if I didn't have to think enough already about getting as cheap and appropriate tickets to different places as possible. Now I have to plan a lot more. And I hate it. Because travelling in UK is complicated if you want to do it as cheap way as possible.
But. Now I can practice on how to write a complaint letter. Good skill for life, I suppose.
