Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1982 by Manfred Pfluegl. All rights reserved.

Jul 9 - Aug 5, 1982

First Time Abroad

Language Course in Eastbourne

by

Manfred Pfluegl

Keywords: United Kingdom, England, London, Eastbourne, Brighton, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

This is what freedom smells like. This vibrant energy surrounds you. The blood rushes through your veins. A state of heightened happiness persists. What a great all-natural drug. It is the year 1982. I am 15 years old and I just received my very first passport. I am about to travel abroad by myself for the first time. One month without parents, without supervision, in a country some 1,500 miles from home. This spells freedom and has the air of adventure, girls and booze. This summer vacation is about to bring lots of firsts: first passport, first time abroad by myself, first time on an airplane, first time on a large boat, first longer vacation without my parents, first time on an ocean beach, first ocean swim, first travelogue, first travel photos, and first real-world experience with English. Undoubtedly these are going to be vacations to remember a lifetime.

And so it is. We are in the year 2003 now. On a recent trip back home to Austria I found old photos, photos from this vacation. Even without these photos I had vivid memories in my brain. I was infatuated, I loved the night life, I loved English, I loved the beach, I loved about everything on this vacation. By looking at the pictures certain subtle details were refreshed. During the four weeks of vacation I took a roll of 36 slides. Back then in 1982 that was a lot of photos to me and I framed the slides myself. Today I easily take 36 digital photos on a single day-outing. In 1982 the travelogue was not really a travelogue, just some comments scribbled on a piece of paper, and I wrote it in German. Today I don't bother with paper and do all my work on a laptop and I have switched to writing in English many years ago. Some of the photos are amusing, the old cars and buses, or the lack of advertising on the public transport. Many things have changed in the last 21 years, but one thing hasn't. These vacations remain vacations to remember a lifetime.

At the train station I kissed my Dad good-bye and hopped on the train to freedom. The train would carry me and other kids from Austria to Ostende, Belgium. It was a long train ride, some 18 hours including a full night. There was enough time to have fun and flirt with the girls on the train. When the girls of an individual compartment were not able to put up the convertible beds I jumped in like a cavalier. With the strong hand of a teen I had the problems fixed in no time scoring some brownie points with the three girls from Graz.

In Ostende we continued the journey by ferry which made the crossing Ostende-Dover under slightly rough sea. I had to be on deck to get the most out of this. I wanted to feel the wind in the hair, the salty sea air in the nostrils, and the shaky deck under my feet. I held on to the railing and watched the waves. This was my first time on a large boat and to me it was like a trill ride.

A handful of hours after leaving Ostende we sighted land, the famous white chalk cliffs of the English coast. We switched the mode of transportation again, and this time a bus carried us to the final destination: Eastbourne.

Eastbourne. It stirs up emotions. Eastbourne, some call it the "Pearl of England". It is a holiday town on the southern English coast, some 50 miles straight south of London. My reason to come here was to study English. My Dad considered English important and had booked me on an English language course. For four weeks I would live with a host family and during workdays I would have three or four hours of classes. This was the official reason to be in Eastbourne. The unofficial reason was to have fun, fun and fun and learn a bit of English on the side.

Arriving at the bus station in Eastbourne the local host families were awaiting their guest family members. Chance had it that I was paired up with a young couple. Nothing more than greeting them I already made a fool out of myself as I tried to get into the car on the driver's side, since I completely forgot that the Brits drive on the "wrong" side of the road and have the steering wheel on the "wrong" side of the car. I was lucky to be teamed up with a young couple. They were in their late 20s or early 30s and just recently had a baby. Being young they understood and tolerated my teen behavior from watching TV, going to discotheques to under-aged drinking of alcohol.

On the first weekend my host parents took me to the local beach for a family afternoon outing. We had a picnic on the beach, munching on the typical British fare: sandwiches and chips. I was fascinated. I had seen the ocean before from the distance on vacations with my Dad and my brothers but I never had the opportunity to actually be on the beach. This was great. The ocean wind, the salty smell, the sand between my toes: I enjoyed it all. As I stepped into the ocean I played with the waves. I went for a swim and I inadvertently swallowed my first mouthful of sea water. I was shocked. I knew that the ocean is salty but this kind of unpleasant taste I had not expected. Initially I even thought that the ocean water tasted strange here, before I learned that is the typical ocean taste.

From the partially rocky, partially sandy beach we watched the waves roll in. The waves were up to 5 feet high, forming a great toy. The Eastbourne beach stretches for miles and is the center of attracting of the town. The good weather and the beach are the top reasons why people come here. In summer the town explodes and based on tourism grows to twice its regular size. In winter the town is quiet and half empty. In the center of the long beach is a pier with three buildings, used as game halls and entertainment centers. At any time of the day people come here just for a stroll, to watch the fishermen with their rods, to lose a few coins in the slot machines, or at night to dance to loud, booming music. I came here nearly daily to do all of the above. I liked to watch the ocean from here, we used it as meeting point for evening outings, and I occasionally threw a few coins into the machines that push coins forward on rods. At night I once was asking for trouble. While moving to the rhythm on the dance floor the same guy in his wild, out-of-control dancing style bumped into me twice. My response was to tell him literally to piss off. He got offended and asked my provocatively "What did you say?" I repeated: "You heard me right: Piss off." Luckily this incident did not end in a fist fight.

The miles of beach are lined with a promenade, and dotted with a few landmarks like the band stand and the pier. The white cliffs just a bit to the south-west are called Beachy Head. The foot of these cliffs is adorned with a light house painted in traditional red-and- white stripes. From the town center to Beachy Head leads a trail that runs up a hill towards the cliffs and then follows the cliff line. Our school was somewhere on the middle of this trail. From there we had views towards the town and within minutes of walking we could gaze down the 500 ft (175m) tall steep cliffs of Beachy Head. and toward the red-and-white painted light house.

School started every day around 9 am. To my pleasant surprise I spotted the three girls from the train ride in my class room. I found out that their names are Angelika, Elke und Ruth. It is easy to understand that we 30 Austrian teens quickly formed a close relationship. We were all teens, all Austrians, all on our freedom and adventure trip. Instead of mixing with the locals to learn more English we stuck together like inseparable twins. We spent our whole spare time jointly. It was fast and easy to make friendships. From the guys I was hanging out a lot with Ronald and his close friend, both from a military school. From the girls of course I spent as much time as possible with Angelika, Elke and Ruth. Going out with one of them meant going out with all three of them as they never left each others side. Opportunistically I spent time also with a large number of other newly-found friends, depending on the activities and the daily action.

Breakfast was a family affair. The TV was running, which surprised me as I grew up with the custom to never turn the TV before the evening. Cereals like Weatabix were my favorites. Everyone was in a hurry during breakfast, including me. On foot I headed off to school. Separated into two classes we spent some easy and entertaining hours in school. These hours went by quickly and then we had the whole rest of the day to ourselves. For lunch we had a lunch pack prepared by our families which we devoured on the beach or at Beachy Head. In my Tupperware box I found every day a couple sandwiches, a small bag of chips and a chocolate bar. These sandwiches were my first experience with some strange or unusual examples of English cuisine. For once there is Marmite; a brown, salty paste that needs some getting used to. Certainly not food for the masses. I liked it as a novelty, but prefer not to have it too often. Then there is the typical pickled sauce. Again, this was a taste I had never experienced before. The flavor is salty, vinegary, yet with a touch of sweetness. The color was brown and little attractive but the flavor excellent. Soon this would be my favorite sandwich.

The afternoon hours we youngsters whiled away strolling up and down the beach promenade or tanning on the beach itself. We also used these afternoon hours to plan for the night activities. Who would go where? Cliques formed. What did you do? What did the others do? Was it worth while switching the clique for a night for better action? These were the key questions in our heads. The upcoming night was always well prepared. At dinner time we had to be home. We spend a tiny bit of time doing a bit of home work, spent an hour being with the host family. Trying to communicate any way we could. Our English was poor, but with signs, hand gestures and scribbling words on a piece of paper it was no problem to communicate the essential issues. I usually spent this hour in the kitchen trying to help out a bit while at the same time talking to my host mom to practice at least my English a wee bit. Dinner was then consumed in the living room and once every week we had the traditional fish-and-chips dinner. Fish and chips where bought in some local fish-and-chips stall and brought home hot, wrapped in old newspaper. You open up the greasy newspaper wrapping, place the fish and chips on the plate, add ketchup and - voila - you are ready to enjoy the meal.

After dinner the family stayed home to watch TV and I was off again to the pre-arranged meeting place of the day. On many occasions we met for desert at the crepes shop on the beach boulevard close to the pier. They had delicious hot, chocolate or marmalade crepes. If it wasn't crepes we went for ice cream. Having stuffed our stomach with extra calories we were ready for the late night activities.

Several nights a week we went dancing. Soon we knew most of the discos and dance clubs of the town. The hit song of the summer was: "Our House" by Madness. It was played wherever we went. And we were shouting aloud the refrain "Our house, in the middle of the street" under the strobe light on the steaming dance floors. After midnight the music went from pop to softer tunes. This was the chance to dance close under the ultraviolet light which favored white clothing. These were opportunities to make innocent moves on Angelika. But the threesome Angelika, Ruth and Elke created a slightly strange situation. It was difficult to tighten the relationship with Angelika, my favorite. Since they only went out together I had to take turns and dance with all three of them. So, when the DJ put on three slow songs, I more or less felt obliged to spend one with each of them. I was infatuated with Angelika, and any dance away from her felt like a thorn in my eye. Sweet innocent teenagehood. Most clubs that we frequented closed at 1 a.m. and we typically staid until the very last song. When I got home the house was quiet and I silently tiptoed to my room trying not to wake anyone of the host family.

Besides dancing, our other major pastime was relaxing on the beach at night, to be more specific I should say "drinking on the beach at night". In the afternoon we went shopping for alcohol in the supermarkets. We were all underage so buying booze was not so easy. We had no faked IDs, so frequently the checkout clerks refused to sell it to use. We went from supermarket to supermarket until we found one where they wouldn't ask and then buy some ten bottles of rum, whiskey, gin, sherry and wine for the whole group. Most of my friends had strict parents and couldn't bring home strong liquor, so I was usually chosen as the "storage" guy. I carried home two bags of bottles and squeezed as many as I could fit in to the family fridge. My host parents just shook their head with a smiling face while I assured them that I wouldn't drink it all by myself and that this is for all of us.

We then usually met outside my house after dinner so we could jointly carry all the booze and coke to the beach. There we made ourselves comfortable in the sand or some left over beach chairs. We drank, we chatted, we stared at the night sky, we stared into the eyes of the girls, until eventually we were tipsy and later drunk.

Beside our late-night booze excursions we also had more formal daytime excursion too. These were organized by the school and should bring us cultural and historical understanding of Southern England. But before we went on the first excursion we had a local bobby (cop) visit us at school to brief us on security. These were the heydays of the IRA terrorism in England. Two bombs recently exploded in London. Hence someone felt it is necessary to do some preventive police education to reduce any potential risk. It certainly would not be good for the tourism industry if a foreign school class would be affected by a bomb blast. One of the instructions was not to kick or touch any apparently empty coke cans since it could contain a small explosive charge.

The first excursion brought us to London, some 50 miles north of Eastbourne. We went by train and got off at Victoria Station. In London we toured the typical tourist highlights: Tower Bridge that was finished in 1894 and only took 90 seconds to open for big boats, the Wax Museum with the Dungeons, Hampton Court Castle, Buckingham Palace, the gilded Victoria Statues, St. James Park, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the 200ft tall Nelson Column at Trafalgar Square, and the Westminster Abbey which was formerly a Benedictine monastery.

Other day trips brought us to Hastings, not far from Eastbourne and famous for the battle of 1066. Besides the history the only thing I remember were the caves on the coast that used to be used by smugglers, but nowadays it is a disco. Also short distances from Eastbourne are Rye and Brighton. Brighton sports the Royal Pavilion which due to its strange appearance doesn't fit into England at all. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It is like a game castle and has Arab or Indian appearance. It was built after Indian examples by a mentally sick English prince.

The longest excursion brought us by bus to Canterbury, a beautiful town, dominated by the famous Cathedral which has not changed its appearance since the 14th century. Just a few hours before we got there the cathedral had to be evacuated due to bomb alarm by the IRA.

Every year in August the Red Arrows air show visits Eastbourne. The Red Arrows are the show team of the British Royal Air Force. It was quite impressive. The show takes place right over the beach. Nine red jets did their acrobatic show over my head with the ocean as a background. As they appeared out of nowhere, the sound, like an explosion, was surprising and stirring. After flying several joint formations like rolling loops they split up into two groups and did a handful of acts where the two groups flew right at each other. And by magic, they didn't hit each other while giving the impression of being real close. Each of the maneuvers has a fancy name, like "Quarter Clover Split and Cross," "Corkscrew," "Champagne Split" where the nine planes explode like a champagne when popping the cork, or "Heart" where two planes paint with red fog a heart onto the sky while a third plane dashed through the heart like an arrow spilling white fog.

Not much later I was on a plane too. No, not on one of these sporty Red Arrow planes, no, just on a plain and simple commercial airliner. But I was thrilled anyway. I never had been on a plane, so this was my first plane ride ever. We flew from London, Gatwick, to Salzburg and I shot my last two pictures from my roll of film from the air and the landed airplane.

These were great vacations. First smell of liberty, first smell of freedom and adventure. Now is 2003 and I look back at these vacations with nostalgia and sweet reminiscence. How happy, how innocent, how inexperienced I was back then. I haven't forgotten these vacations in the last 20 years and I am sure I won't forget them during the next 20 years either.