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BIRMINGHAM

4AHWIMBetreuungslehrer:Prof. Zabini, Prof. Müller

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views

Sunday, 14 th June 2015

Arrival

The whole class met on Sunday morning at Vienna Airport. We

checked in and flew to Frankfurt where we had a short stop. From

Frankfurt we took our flight to Birmingham, where we arrived in the

evening. From the airport of Birmingham we walked to our Hotel.

We checked in and decided to look for a good restaurant. We went

to the Dragon Inn, which is a typical English restaurant. It was very

different to an Austrian restaurant, because in Austria it is typical

that the waiter serves you the food and the drinks. But in English

pubs it is typical that you go to the bar and order your food and

drink there. Then you tell the waiter your table number and he or

she brings the food to your table. Something that is also very

different to Austria is that the waiters do not take any tips, even if

you try to give them a small tip they won´t take it or they put it in a

box for charity. Before we went to our hotel, we visited a

supermarket where we bought some water and snacks for the next

day.

Monday, 15 th June 2015

The Birmingham Challenge and ThinkTank museum

In the morning we went to our partner school Aston University Engineering Academy (AUEA), and Mr. McIvor introduced us to the Birmingham challenge. It was very exciting and we started to communicate with the English students. We were divided into 3 groups which consisted of English and Austrian students. The rule was to take some photos of certain points in the city and to buy several items in the centre of Birmingham with a budget of 10 pounds by 11.30 a.m. As a result we got to know more about the city and learned many things about the lifestyle and food of Birmingham. We were proud of our English skills, because we understood almost everything that English people said, and they understood us, too.After we had finished the challenge, Mr. McIvor guided us to the ThinkTank museum. There we visited the planetarium and watched the documentary movie “We are aliens”. Afterwards we discovered the science museum on our own and had a great time in the exhibition. This improved our team spirit, because there were a lot of physical group activities.

Tuesday, 14 th June 2015

Newman Brothers Coffin Museum and Cadbury Chocolate Factory

In the morning we went to the Newman Brothers Coffin Museum and attended a guided tour. From 1894 until 1999 Newman Brothers produced high quality coffin fittings in solid brass, stamped electro-brass, silver and nickel plate. The coffin fittings were made by punching. The punching machine was driven by one single petrol engine. They also tailored the garment for the deceased.

In the afternoon we went to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. The company Cadbury has a very long history. In 1824, John Cadbury opened a grocer’s shop in 93 Bull Street, Birmingham. Among other things, he sold cocoa and drinking chocolate which he prepared himself using a pestle and mortar. Factory tours had always been popular but it would be impossible to run a factory smoothly if it had thousands of visitors. That is why in 1988 Cadbury began planning a visitor attraction to take the place of the factory tours – Cadbury World. Cadbury bought the world’s number 2 gum manufacturer, Adams, in 2003 and achieved its aim of leading the market. The move to Fairtrade had the impact of tripling the sales for cocoa farmers in Ghana under Fairtrade terms, both increasing Fairtrade cocoa sales for existing certified farming groups, as well as opening up new opportunities for thousands of additional farmers to benefit from the Fairtrade system.

Wednesday, 17 th June 2015

Stadium tour and Sea life

At 9 o’clock in the morning we went on foot to the Stadium of Birmingham City Football Club. St Andrew's is an association football stadium in the Bordesley district of Birmingham. It has been the home ground of Birmingham City Football Club for more than a century.

St. Andrew’s Stadium opened on the 26th of December 1906 with a league match between Birmingham City and Middlesbrough. The stadium consisted of one covered main stand and open terraces on the other sides, with an estimated capacity of 75,000 spectators.

The stadium got heavily damaged in the Second World War, but was soon rebuilt .St. Andrew’s Stadium was further redeveloped in the 1950s and 1960s. No changes were made in the following two decades, and by the late 1980s the stadium had slowly fallen into disrepair. Capacity had furthermore been decreased to just 26,000 due to safety measures.

Our guide was great, he let us visit the cabines of the home and guest team, and there are big differences. After the game the managers of each team go to the manager’s lounge, where they have dinner and speak about the game. We ran out through the tunnel towards the pitch like the players. Afterwards we had enough time to visit the fan shop of the club.

After the Stadium tour we went to Sea Life. The National Sea Life Centre is an aquarium with over 60 displays of freshwater and marine life in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. Its one-million-litre ocean tank houses giant green sea turtles, blacktip reef sharks and tropical reef fish, with a fully transparent underwater tunnel.

All was very well explained with signs, and everyone was able to understand their contents. We also watched a short movie in 4D about the pollution of the oceans.

Thursday, 18 th June 2015

Day at school, university and Lichfield

In the morning we went to Aston University and heard a speech about employability and the importance of soft skills, digital skills etc. We were asked about our workplaces in the last 3 summer holidays. The core question was, what we had learned in our 2x4 weeks of industrial placements.

After that we had a little guided tour by some AUEA-students through their new, very modern school. After this tour we attended a CAD-lesson which was arranged by some English teachers and their students. Each of us designed one side of a cube, which was cut by laser afterwards. Finally everyone got his own cube.

In the afternoon we visited Lichfield in Staffordshire. The first thing we noticed was the style of the buildings. We also visited St. Mary’s cathedral, which was built between 1195 and 1340. The cathedral is dedicated to St. Chad and St. Mary. Its internal length is 113 metres (370 feet), the central spire is 77m (252 feet) high, and the western spires are about 58m (190 feet).

The stone is sandstone and came from a quarry on the south side of Lichfield. The walls of the nave lean outwards slightly, due to the weight of stone used in the ceiling vaulting; some 200–300 tons of which was removed during renovation work to prevent the walls leaning further.

Lichfield suffered severe damage during the English Civil War in which all of the stained glass were destroyed. Nevertheless the windows of the Lady Chapel contain some of the finest medieval Flemish painted glass.

In the evening we all got together in an old-fashioned pub in the centre of Lichfield, where played darts and drank the classic earl grey tea.

Friday, 19 th June 2015

Black Country living museum

On Friday we went to the Black Country Living Museum, which is in the North East of Birmingham. We started our journey to the museum by bus at 9 am.

Black Country Living Museum is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings in Dudley in the West Midlands of England. The museum occupies 105,000 square metres of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard and former coal pits. It was opened in 1978, since when many more exhibits have been added such as an old school, an old-fashioned English pub, a bakery shop, a chapel and many more interesting buildings. We took a guided tour there, where our leader guided us through every house on the site. Right at the beginning we saw one of the first steam engines in history. It was originally built about 4 miles away from the museum and replicated on the side of the museum. It was pretty impressive to see one of those machines in real life and to understand how the inventors of the 19 th century worked. Our leader was dressed like a real engineer from that time, and he told us a lot of the buildings on the site.

At lunchtime we ate fish & chips at an old-fashioned store, while others of the class went to eat at the dining hall.

After that we visited the chain maker‘s store, where we saw live how the chains were made at the time of the industrial revolution.

At the end of our guided tour we visited the school and got some impressions what school life was like in former times. In the lesson we learned maths and English.

Saturday, 20 th June 2015

Departure

The last day of our one week study trip abroad started at 10 o’clock with the checkout of the hotel. We walked to Birmingham railway station and took the train to the airport. The departure of our first flight from Birmingham to Frankfurt was at 12:50. In Frankfurt we had a stay of 2 hours until our connection flight left at 17:50. We arrived in Vienna at 19:30 and had a great welcome from our parents.

On our daily trips we learned a lot. I think it was a great experience to communicate with English students and to learn something about their school system. It was very interesting to talk to them about the city and their school while we managed to do all the tasks for the Birmingham challenge. The communication with them helped me to improve my personal English knowledge in vocabulary and expression of different words. We were also allowed to attend a lesson at the Aston University Engineering Academy and worked together with the English students. This lesson gave me a better idea about a typical lesson at this school. In this week we also learned about the history of England when we visited the Black Country museum in Lichfield. We learned about the life in the 18th and 19th century.

All in all it was a great week and we had a lot of fun in Birmingham.