A tour around 'toon'.

The 4^th week of teaching is already over and I realized I have not written a single word about university, the campus, or anything really, that has happened since teaching started. To be honest, I was so busy trying to get used to my schedule, the classes and student life around here that I didn’t even get to write anything. The first few weeks flew by so fast and there is so much to tell that I don’t even know where to start.

How about starting with the end? ;) My Masters’ thesis aka dissertation. I was very delighted to find out that I will NOT have to produce one single document as a dissertation at the end of my studies. Instead, what I have to prepare for my programme of study is a “research portfolio” which consists of three individual research files which are prepared and handed in at different stages throughout my studies. This makes me a lot more relaxed about the assignment. Since the individual research files are a lot shorter than one dissertation would be, I can work on it a lot better without worrying too much about getting a low mark and therefore a bad degree.

Another thing I really like here is the university staff and how they position themselves in relation to the students. It feels like the student-teacher relationships are much more on a personal level than what I experienced in Germany. Beginning in the first week, for example, one of our lecturers told us to please refer to him as ‘Peter’ rather than ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr S.’. He even said we could come up with other nicknames for him, as long as they are not too insulting.
 

Let's come to the campus. Since my main programme (Cross-Cultural Communication aka CCC) and my specialised pathway (international business management) are each organised by different schools, I have to move around campus a lot. The CCC lectures and seminars, which are managed by the School of Education, Communication and Language Science, take place in the various buildings on main campus, whereas the lectures for the business modules are managed by the Business School, which has its own building a little further off. The Business School is located next to the football stadium of Newcastle and is only a 6-10 minute walk away from the main campus, so luckily it’s not bad at all. The only thing I don't like is that although there are so many bus lines in Newcastle, especially in the city centre, I cannot use a single one to get around campus a little faster. None of them connect the parts of the city I need to get to, so it's always faster to just walk.

 

To give you an overview, here's some visualisation:

Newcastle Upon Tyne City Centre Map

main campus

Business School

As already mentioned above, I have most of my classes on the main campus, and exclusively so in the 3 buildings on the north-west side in that circled area. When looking at the old castle-like buildings of the main campus area, I sometimes feel like I'm in Hogwarts :)

The Monument

China Town

On top of the Grey Monument in the city centre stands Charles Grey (the very one we know today for his Earl Grey tea). The bus I take to get to university every morning goes right by the monument. When I have to go to the main campus, I get off the bus at the monument bus station and have to walk the rest of the way. Only when I have classes in the Business School, I can wait 2 more stops, because the bus passes the Chinese arch, the Business School and the football stadium. The Chinese arch marks the beginning of China Town, which has many Chinese shops, supermarkets and restaurants.

Millenium Bridge

standing on the bridge at night

The Millenium Bridge is a bridge only for pedestrians. It can be tilted to let ships pass through, which uses about as much energy as would be required to boil water in a kettle. At night the bridge glows in beautiful changing rainbow colours.

We went to the Theatre Royal last week to watch Shakespeare's Hamlet. Our German flatmate told us that the Theatre Royal here in Newcastle offers special cheap tickets to get more young people to go to the theatre. So for people aged 16-25 they reserve 25 tickets per show which can be bought by these young people for just £5 instead of the regular price of £25. Too bad I'm 26 already, I had to pay the full price :/ But even for that price it was definitely worth it. It was played by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which seems to perform quite often in London and Newcastle.

The last point on the map I'm going to mention here is the Goose carvery. It's a restaurant near university campus which serves lunch. The special thing about it is that it is comparatively cheap and the quality of the food there is way better than anything else you can get for this price anywhere in the area. Students pay £3,77 for one type of meat of their choice (usually they offer gammon, turkey and pork) or £3,41 for battered fish or meat pie. Two slices of the chosen meat are then cut off the whole piece in front of them and additionally there is an all-you-can-eat vegetable buffet with round about 10 different veggies and potato variations to choose from. This is clearly the first surprisingly positive experience I had here so far concerning food. Other than this, most of the food here, even from supermarkets, is more expensive than it would be in German supermarkets, and this even though very often the quality is worse. But there will be more on food on my facebook page pretty soon. ;)

All this should give you a pretty good overview of 'my Newcastle', or 'toon', as geordies would pronounce 'town'. Just one more little thing for those of you who are bored enough to watch a bus ride from Byker metro to the monument. I filmed this one for fun, just to show you how bumpy such a bus ride can be over here and what it looks like when sitting in the top front of a double-decker bus, which is where I usually sit on my way to university.

UK vs. Germany - first impressions

Getting settled over here, I noticed quite a few things already that are different here from how they are in Germany. For some of them I prefer how they are here, but even now I already miss a few things from home.

There is for example the quality of houses, or rather the quality of the materials houses are made of and how well these are put together. (English houses could use some quality “German engineering” :P ) The house I live in now, for example, has extremely thin walls and floors. I can hear every step anyone takes anywhere in the house. Having two levels in the apartment doesn’t help either. Even though there is thick carpet on the stairs and on the corridor of the upper level, it’s still noisy every time someone goes up or down the stairs. I feel a little bad for the couple living in the downstairs bedroom, it must be even louder there. :/ But then again, I’m glad I’m in one of the upstairs rooms.

But the most important difference is the tap water. Since Hamburg has excellent tap water quality, I grew up and lived all my life almost exclusively drinking tap water. Here that’s just not possible because there’s too much chlorine in it. My solution so far: using a filter and buying bottled water. Filtering tap water twice or three times seems to make it acceptable to drink, but it’s still not very tasty. Plus I’m not convinced that it’s the healthiest solution. Bottled water tastes better but creates extra costs and is heavy to carry home from the supermarket. We’ll have to see which one is the better solution for me.

 
 

One thing I really like here is electric showers. Both bathrooms here have a tankless water heater, which basically means that we always have hot water in the shower. This is very useful, if not a necessity, seeing as there are 7 people living in one apartment. And since we all pay a fixed price for rent, no extra utilities, we don't have to worry about creating extra costs for everyone if one person takes longer than the other. I especially like this because I was afraid I might end up paying a lot more for heating during the winter due to bad isolation. Luckily this won't be a problem now.

Something that seems to be a very consistent custom over here (I've seen it in Scotland, too) and is also different from usual habits in Germany, is how to behave when using public transportation. More specifically: buses. Here, people form a queue to get onto the bus. They really line up in the order they arrived at the bus stop. If you get to a bus stop and people are standing there already, you always get in line behind the last one... and don’t try to stand around somewhere else and jump the queue! It’s not appreciated at all. When the bus approaches, you briefly stick your arm out to the side and into the street to let the bus driver know that people want to board. I don’t know if this is specific to areas like Newcastle, where so many buses come by one single bus stop that this is necessary, or if it is a general UK thing. It’s just something that sticks out because it’s different from what I was used to in Germany. Also, when getting off the bus, every single person thanks the driver before exiting. Since buses only have one door, which is in the front, everyone comes by the driver anyways.

In general, people seem to be very polite and friendly here. I noticed this the first time when I was at my local supermarket. When I came around a shelf and someone else came from the other side, we were standing in each other’s way. The other person just said “sorry” and walked around. The first time this happened, I was a little confused, because in Germany people would just see that there’s room to walk around, maybe exchange a look and walk on. You’d only say “sorry” if you know that you did something wrong; if there was something to feel bad for. Maybe it was your fault for blocking the way, so the other person couldn’t pass. Not here, though. It’s not a matter of being right or wrong, of faults and errors. It’s just a way of being friendly and polite. And I like it ;)
Another example for friendly people I already met here is a guy from the local gym. Matthias and I showed up there last week to look at the facility and maybe sign up for a membership, but we didn’t know that we showed up just at closing time. We were prepared to go back home and come back the next day, as any German gym staff member would have told us. But this man just told us to wait a minute for him to fetch his keys, so he could unlock the doors again to show us around. We were both surprised and happy that this man was so nice to take these few minutes out of his own time, when he was supposed to be heading out already.

And there is one more thing I have to mention when talking about first impressions and differences between England and Germany. Traffic lights. Basically, traffic lights for pedestrians are completely redundant. They are simply ignored. Just look if there’s a car coming and walk whenever you think it’s safe. Even policemen do it. Since I saw that, I at least don’t have to feel guilty any more crossing the street at a red light myself. A UK student told me “they are only for children. At least that’s what I tell myself.”

But enough for now... I’m sure I will soon notice more differences between German and British customs that I can tell you about.