Greetings from a largely overrated teacher! ;-)

Thanks for the bundles of roses you're throwing at us (Fr. Prof. Spaller & me) and thanks for the great reports about your days and experiences. They are really enjoyable, if sometimes somewhat less eloquently stated than possible! ;-)
So, here's my report:
After not having had much time to prepare the trip to London with the class myself, I was happy to have a fabulous partner in crime, Fr. Prof. Mitter, who force-fed the students of class 7c with all the necessary information before our days in the UK.
After having arrived and witnessed several unpleasant shocks (where's our coach?, what the h*** is this room, it smells terribly, that's supposed to be our breakfast?) we ended up spending a magnificent time in the lovely capital of England.
And, despite the fact that some of you guys had been to visit there a few times already, I guess it was still a trip not to be forgotten in quite a while!
Cambridge and the punting, the walk with the "weird" man who sponsored some drinks and took us to Bleeding Heart Lane and past the "Kipferl" restaurant to see the place of Braveheart William Wallace's painful death through torture...
Portobello Market on a really busy Saturday morning, Camden Market in the rain, Covent Garden with its acrobats, ... I don't even want to know how many times you girls went onto Oxford Street to go window shopping! ;-)
All in all, including the afternoons in school, it has to be said that, even for me, it was a new and refreshing experience to be around some youngsters without (bad) attitude, with respectful behaviour and good manners who could take a joke and laugh about themselves (as well as others!). Another reason for going back as soon as possible. And do not forget that we did not see everything there is to be seen in London. The Tower, St. Paul's, a load of museums and musicals, Wimbledon, and so on and so forth!
London - a story to be continued... what do you think?
ERF

The Aquarium

Hi,

I'll tell you about my favourite day in London.
Paul and I were allowed to go on our own to the Aquarium. When we arrived there we recognized that we were about an hour too early. So we decided just to walk around a little bit. We wandered across Westminster Bridge and took some awesome pictures of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The reason why the pictures were that awesome was that it was the sunniest day during our stay in London.
When we came back to the Aquarium we still had some time left and so we went to McDonald's to buy some burgers. What a breakfast ;-).
When we finished eating we got into the Aquarium and it was more expensive than I had expcted, but when we had seen everything we both agreed that it was worth seeing. We even touched a cuttlefish.
After the Aquarium we went to Hyde Park, our meeting point, to wait for the others.

Here you can see one of the pictures of the Houses of Parliament:

Yours,
Georg K.

Some unforgettable impressions from our week ;)

Meli

HMS Belfast

On Saturday I visited HMS Belfast, one of the most important warships in World War II but today it is a museum ship. The ship has three heavy guns and each of these needs 27 soldiers to be used. Belfast also contains butcher, a dentist, very small sleepingrooms and two huge enginerooms. Today the ship inculdes an exhibition about World War II, especially D-Day, where HMS Belfast supported the land forces with naval bombardment.

HMS Belfast

Wikipedia HMS Belfast
Fritz Kliemann

Hop on, Hop off ! Sightseeing Tour through London ...

One day we joined a "Hop on, Hop off "Sightseeing Tour through London. At first we were on a typical red double-decker bus and saw a lot of famous attractions like Big Ben, London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and Tower Bridge. After a little break we went on by boat.

When we started our boat tour it was great to see London from another perspective.

On the river everything seemed so peaceful, there was no bustle going on.

I'm very thankful for this day because I always wanted to do such a tour through London.

During this week I got to know another side of London. When we think about London, we think about Oxford Street or London Bridge but London is much more. In my opinion London is one of the most tolerating cities I've ever been. In London there are so many different types of people but that's no problem because everybody is treating each other respectfully.

Yours,

Melanie

:)

Some impressions from our class and class room. Of course these pictures were taken during the break.
Stefan Gsandtner

Walk in Charles Dickens' London

Hi,

On Wednesday a weird man picked us up after school and so we joined the so called "Charles Dickens Walk". The trip took us about two hours and our funny guide told us different stories about strange happenings like the death of crusaders, doctors or authors. The man was very fascinated by ghosts, mysterious things and fairytales and so all stories he told us were based on these things. In the end of this tour we entered a hotel bar to have a drink. The highlight of this trip was when Georg took his camera and mistakenly deleted all the pictures :-/

All in all it was a very funny tour through London :)

to see a few pictures KLICK HERE

Wolfgang Schmidtgrabmer

Hi,

Talking about how to change a room in London is my topic.
When we arrived on Sunday, we were all exhausted and wanted to relax, but in the evening we changed our room two times because of paint smell and a missing bed.
Our room was quite good looking and so we went to sleep. During the night it was suddenly getting colder and colder and we wondered where the coldness was coming from in the morning. So some of us checked the window and I think Georg K. noticed a round clear spot in the window. Then he touched the spot and reached through.
Because of this fact we had to change our room a third time and we got a bigger, better placed one. All in all it was interesting how often you can change a room in London.
Thanks to Prof. Fischer who supported us a lot.

Fabian Spend.

ENGLISH BREAKFAST

Hi,

I want to give a small report about the breakfast we had in our youth hostel. At first, we went down in the breakfast room, our teacher gave us some kind of a credit note. With this we could order one slice of toast and we got some kind of orange juice or Fanta which was very disgusting. Fortunately it was for free!

So we have a slice of toast and Fanta…did I forget something? .. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the salty butter (which was not really my taste) and some kind of a red, purple and orange pudding…for those who do not know → this should be the jam and marmalade. It looked also very disgusting and so you have to ask someone else if you want to know how the jam tasted.

So some, or nearly all of my roommates (Slupy, Kirschi, Woifi, Georg and Alex) decided not to go down to the breakfast room anymore. We decided to provide for ourselves, so everybody bought his own favourite for breakfast (mostly croissants filled with chocolate). In the end everybody was happy again and nobody complained about the English breakfast anymore.

All in all I have to say that I really liked the English-Breakfast. ^^

In my last sentence I want to thank Prof. Fischer and Prof. Spaller for this great week in London. I think everybody had a great time! What a pity we are not able to do this again together.

Cheers
Stefan Gsandtner

The boat trip

Hi,
I enjoyed the week in London, but there was one day which I will never forget because it was so funny. It was the day in Cambridge when we made a boat trip on the river Cam. Stefan, Wolfgang, the two Georgs and I were in one boat and we could not manage to drive it properly. We drove from one waterside to the other in a kind of zig-zag fashion and because of this we - of course! - crashed into every bridge on the way and one time even into the shrubbery. We also crashed into a boat which was driven by a Chinese couple because they also could not manage to drive the boat. Finally we made it back somehow, but about 15 minutes too late and we had to apologise to the person at the boat rental service. Although everybody in our boat was wet and angry I am still smiling when I remember the boat trip, because everybody thought he could drive the boat better, but none of us was any better at driving the boat than the other.

Thomas Kneidinger

London Eye

It was a marvelous day when we reached the London Eye, which is a Ferris wheel and one of the biggest buildings of it´s kind. It was built in the year 2000, that´s why many people also call it the "Millennium Eye". I felt astonished, standing infront of the building and looking to the top of the attraction, realising the acutal height.





As the entrance-fee was included in the Madam Tussauds tickets, which we had visited before, we just had to join the quee. After ten minutes waiting, it was our turn. We had an enormous view from the highest point over the city. Everybody was stressed because they thought they couldn´t take enough pictures, except me because I had no camara with me. After all memory sticks were full, my class mates started to relax and also enjoyed the ride. It was an great experience and I´ll never forget this time.

Big thanks to the teachers for organizing this week. Michael Kirschbichler.

Amazing! I never thought that one single week could be so funny and outstanding. I mean London is such a marvelous city but with Prof. Fischer, Prof. Spaller and my classmates it was more than just an awesome week. Every single day was a special adventure and although I liked it very much, I had to confess that it was really exhausting because our day program was planned from morning to night. But Meli, Wolfi and I had a miracle cure. We used an anti-stress peeling to hide our wrinkles! We forced Wolfi to come along with us to the lady bathroom, where we covered his face with our crème although he was not very fond of this idea!! =)
Azra Dervisic

On Thursday most people of the 7c class went to the musical called "We will rock you". At the entrance we had to wait some time because it was sold out and we had to go through the crowd to reach our chairs in time. After the light had been switched off the music started immediately. All the audience was impressed by the excellent mixture of music and text. After the main plot everybody was screaming for encore which was offered to us. After the last song everybody of the members of the audience started clapping hands for a long time.
All my classmates and I enjoyed this musical very much and in my opinion it was one of the best things we have seen in London.
Alexander Slupetzky

Hi,
On Saturday a group of seven (Prof. Fischer, Paul, Georg&I, Fritz, Wolfgang and Stefan) tried to watch the football match at White Hart Lane. The Tottenham Hotspurs played against Bolton. Nobody knew where the stadium was. So Prof. Fischer informed on the internet by the madam at the reception. At our very curious trip Prof. Fischer had seen that it was a serious fault to ask a woman about a football stadium because the lady told him the completely wrong underground line. So we were suddenly at Wembley in the North-West instead of Tottenham in the North-East. Quarter an hour after the kick-off we stood in front of the very impressive stadium. We asked for some tickets but the match was completely sold out for more than a month. So everybody bought some Tottenham fan articles and we went into the next pub to listen to match on the radio. All in all it was a very beautiful and completely funny day.
Georg Reiter

Cambridge

Hi there,
I would like to write about our trip to Cambridge on friday. Our train started at the famous King's Cross station. There we saw the well-known “Platform 9 ¾” from the Harry Potter novels, which was unfortunately really disappointing. After arriving in Cambridge, we walked through the town at first. During our midday-break we were allowed to go shopping, which I really enjoyed =). After the break, we went to the river to make a boat trip. There we were separated in 5 persons for each boat and then had to drive it by ourselves. By the way, I have to thank Kirschi, who did really an awesome job ;)! We had so much fun, I can’t explain it in words. In the evening we went back to London. It was an amazing day, which I’ll never forget!
Sarah Ratzenböck

Harrods & Starbucks

Hey there!

Well... today I thought which story from our trip to London, I should write down here... so here it is =)

One day we wanted to go to Harrods...

...As we arrived there in front of the building Prof. Fischer already told us that we might not come in because of our large group. So we tried it but the bouncer said no. Everybody knows that people from our class are not thaaat stupid so we split up into small groups to get inside... almost every group at another entrance =)
Inside there Sarah and me were really impressed by the view. Everything looked (and actually was) soo expensive... we were kind of afraid to breathe and break something we would not be able to afford =D
We looked around, saw all that jewellery visited the Egyptian Hall and went then downstairs to the Food Hall where we bought some bread.
When we went outside Sarah and me were just so proud because of out Harrods-bag (see the picture - taken by Prof. Fischer).
Those days Sarah and me are dreaming of eating such a delicious slice of bread again =D

One important thing in London was also coffee. As everybody knows our trip was quite exhausting because of all that sightseeing and school, so Starbucks got our second home and we spent most of our money there on every kind of coffee =)


K.. that's it by now, hope you liked my little story =)

Cheers, Julia Nimmervoll

London

Hy!(:
Our one week stay in London was very exciting and we enjoyed it a lot. What I really liked best about this week was Madame Tussaud`s. Inside there was a young lady who took photos. When I went to Julia Roberts my way passed hers but she was still taking a photo. So I stopped and waited to move on. But she didn`t put the camera down and took a photo every five seconds. After some time I started wondering and suddenly I recogniced that this "paparazzi-lady" was a doll from Madame Tussaud`s.
I really enjoyed the time in London!
Gabi Lukas

There and back again...

(By the way, the title is in The Lord of the Rings (Bilbo Baggins´ self created name for his adventures in the first part, The Hobbit), and I thought it is the best title for this resume of our week in London!)

Hi everyone!
First of all I would like to thank the kids from 7c one more time - never have I experienced a more independent and reliable group on a tour like this! Well done, folks.

Secondly, the time in London would never have been as entertaining without my partner Christina Spaller, who asked many a question I would hear again only a few minutes later - so I was always well prepared!

So were the kids when they had their presentations about some of the sights we saw during our stay! Thanks a lot, Gudrun Mitter!

And, last but not least I would like to compliment and thank Lieselotte Sapp for her great guidance of 7c through their school life so far and I hope, they will be as well behaved and good in the last 1 1/2 years here as they were in London throughout the last week!

Well, back to the story.

On Sunday, early morning, we bade London farewell, hopped on the bus and went to Stansted Airport. We got there right on time and everything went just as swommingly as expected - phew! It was a great feeling when everyone was on the plane and on the way across the Channel - the relief for a teacher is really quite a big one! ;-)
Everyone was picked up by their parents or partners and so, most of the students were at home at around 5pm. Finally a proper shower, decent healthy food and some rest - alone!
I hope most of you made it to school today and everything will be alright with your chemistry test on Wednesday and the Hesse book your had to read in German!
At last, I also would be very happy if this blog continued to exist - but it´ll be up to you to continue writing in it - I will sometimes comment and so on, and I´ll putmy best pics on this - but it´s yours now and whatever you want to do with it you can do!
So, I´d better go, have bored you with my sentimentality enough!

Cheerio, see you tomorrow,

Ernst Fischer

Last day in London - say Good bye to Hollywood...

Our last day in London was an eventful one. From finding our way through the busy streets of Nottinghill and Portobello Market to the silence in St. Paul's Cathedral, from taking a peak at WW II warship HMS Belfast to checking out the Aquarium and the huge variety of fish offered to NOT watching a great football match and going shopping - the last day has really nicely finished of the experience of 7C here in London.
But... tomorrow it's good bye. At 9.30am we'll be picked up to be taken to our last stop here in England, Stansted Airport. There we hop on the plane at 1.25pm and, hopefully, our parents, relatives, friends, whoever, will pick us up at Linz Hoersching @ around 4.30pm, when we land with our Ryan Air flight from over here!
More pictures will follow soon, as everybody from the class will put some on here, and besides, as to be expected, there will be some reports written by the students as well... alas, it's time to say good bye for me. Cheerio, thanks for looking!
ERF

Friday... only 1 day left!

Our Friday brought an adventurous trip to Cambridge... here's the report:

At first we went to kings Cross Station to hop on the train, then had to walk into town from the station in Cambridge... that's about an hour and by the time we got there, many had already become quite nervous - well, their bladders had. ;-)

Then we went past several of the oldest university buildings in Europe, Queen's College, King's College, and Trinity College, group pic below:

Really magnificent buildings, filled with hundreds of years of history... but, our students were more interested in the street market that was going on next St. Mary's Church, as to be expected... girls will be girls. Alas, there was one student, who felt inspired by the spirits of the likes of Lord Byron, Sir Isaac Newton, Wordsworth and so on.... T' was Cherry, who halted to retreat from the busy world outside and turned to himself - thoughtful youngster, thou thinkest not in vain! (Shakespeare?) In the afternoon we had the chance to try punting on River Cam ourselves, thereby discovering the beauties of the surrounding colleges and halls of residence. Must be great to be a student there. Anyways, back from Cambridge we went to the London Eye, we had the tickets from our visit to Mme Tussauds - it only took 10 mins and we were underway, experiencing London from above - outstanding views, especially of the Houses of Parliament. See Julia's pics here:

After the London Eye Sight (who gets the pun?) we returned to our hostel and had a rest... after the rest, many of the students did not want to leave anymore. Everybody is getting very tired. Fabian sprained his ankle on the way down from the 5th floor and it's badly swollen now. But he is (pasta) cool about it, so hopefully it'll be better tomorrow.

Good night, London needs a rest! But it is amazing how fast paced life in London is... it's been 5 days already and we're nearly back home as well... what a shame! Nite!

ERF

Thursday in London!!!

Today's first stop led us to Camden Market. That's a street market in the north where there are many different shops and stands with cheap and fun clothes, jewellery, pictures, and so on and so forth... so everyone had a fantastic time wandering around looking at goods AND people - especially the girls went crazy, to be honest... ;-() Here's a picture...

Afterwards we went to the British Museum, a huge free national treasury... loads of historical souvenirs from the once so gigantic British Empire can be found there, and there are free guided tours as well, so Paul, Georg Reiter and Prof. Fischer joined one of them to learn more about the peoples of China - others went for food or checked out the whole museum... there's too much to be seen for one afternoon...

Now, during their last lessons at the EC London language school, the kids are doing more communicative games and tasks... oh, bz the way, the teachers are very impressed by their level of language as well as their pronunciation AND behaviour - very good!

Afterwards, it's back home for half an hour until everyone is off to go to the musical... apart from "Kirschi" and Herr Prof. Fischer, who are invited to the Globe Theatre by an old friend from their times at Benenden and three other students, who prefer going to the cinema to watching the musical "We will rock you"!

Click the different names for more information, and see you again tomorrow!

ERF

Mme Tussauds and the Ghost Walk

Today was full of exciting events for the students - at first, in the morning we went to Baker Street to go to Mme Tussauds. We did not have to wait for very long, normally there are crazy queues there, and got in at about ten... we took a lot of pics, some of them will be on the display underneath...
Then, after some entertaining lessons, where the pupils had to think of ways of "killing" their teachers and getting away with it, we did a Walk Of Haunted Places with an interesting London character called Chris. He showed us some really beautiful places

where terrible crimes once happened and where there have been alleged ghost sightings - it was a real laugh, to be honest, quite intriguing and fun. Here you can see Frau Prof. Spaller in front of the only Austrian restaurant in London!!!

Nice, ey?

He bought a round of drinks for us in the end, and then - after having dinner, of course - we went home to the hostel. A long but intense day has ended.
Tomorrow, we'll be going to Camden Market; there's a famous street market there with lots of cheap and interesting things AND people to look at. Then, in the evening, most of us go to see the musical "We will Rock You" - to be continued

First entry - Class trip to London I

Hi everyone, it's done! The blog of class 7C has come into existence! ;-)

The first couple of days have been ravenously mad but great fun as well, I guess, and the students will be here to tell their tales soon...

Ok, I'll leave, but I won't leave without leaving one pic on this site for today:

Tower Bridge, which we went over and past today, on a double decker as well as by boat!

Cheerio,
ERF