23rd March - 4th April. Korea collides with Yorkshire

After all those exciting tales of trips to European destinations, I needed bringing back down to earth, and what better way than with a trip back to good old Yorkshire with my Korean friend Hun-gu. As regular readers will no doubt appreciate, he was totally psyched for his first visit to the land of Top Gear, and I was secretly shitting it about disappointing him with the Yorkshire reality of pessimism, heavy drinking (of both beer and tea) and sheep.

We all love sausage rolls

It didn't get off to the best start - my mum was a bit nervous and started using funny little English expression like 'you have to drink tea here on pain of death', which no doubt made him feel totally welcome and at home, and possibly wondering what my true motives for bringing him to England were. However, the fresh air was a big hit, and gave him the idea of filling it up in bottles and selling in Dortmund. I think it'd go down a storm. My motives for bringing him to blighty were partly to show him that England isn't just grey and miserable, and that our food isn't all so bad, hence he was taken straight away to Gregg's. 1-0 to England there. The first night was spent down my local, The New Inn, where we got a mixture of strange looks and 'aww's. Guess it makes a change from being called Shinji Kagawa (well-loved Dortmund Japanese player) all the time.

Appreciating the tea cosy

The rest of the time in Cononley was spent walking up Pen-y-Ghent, which almost killed Hun-gu since he was wearing 5 layers after all my warnings about English weather, only for it to be sunny and actually warm (20 degrees in March!!!). Pub quiz on the evening left him totally dumbfounded, and eating fish & chips in the blazing (for March) heat the next day was a bit of a set back for the joys of English cuisine. Thank God we'd made a fried breakfast that morning and introduced him to the wonder that is baked beans. He spent the rest of the day asking for the recipe. The highlight of the North Yorkshire trip had to be explaining the Yorkshire walkers greeting code (say "lovely day!" to everyone you see), and attempting to explain the humour behind the response "aye, not bad for August" that we got from one witty chap. Typical Yorkshire humour which I love, but not easily translated into German.

20 degrees?! You didn't warn me about this!

On Friday we headed for Sheffield to sample the joys of the student drinking and other types of 'culture'. It won't surprise any English readers to learn that this involved lots of cans of continental lager, drinking competitions, my friend Bradshaw being forced to (and failing to) lick a lamppost, and then a lot of sweat and arm in arm singing in Propaganda. God knows what Hun-gu really made of it all, but he joined in with the Bradshaw-mocking, which is the main thing.

Note the clear daylight between
tongue and pole

The rest of the time in Sheffield consisted of lots of Top Gear watching, winding Welsh Dan up during the England vs Wales match, a nice traditional English curry followed by a similar night out to the one before, but this time in Pop Tarts (amazing cheese-fest of a night) in the Student's Union, Wetherspoon's Sunday lunch (only the best for my guest), running through the Peace Garden fountains (yes, it was still warm AND sunny!), and a night of English and Irish folk music, with plenty of real ale of course.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

So that was a lot of Englishness packed into only four days. No doubt it was quite of a very foreign culture for one man to take in, but I think I gave a pretty good account of my country. The only 'disappointment' was that it didn't rain once the whole time he was there, in fact the weather was perfect throughout. I made it very clear to him that that part of the trip was NOT typical English - I wanted him to understand how we suffer with our weather and don't spend the whole time casually sipping coffee on outdoor terraces and frolicking in public fountains.

The whole experience, including the time after Hun-gu left and I went down to see my brother and sister in Bristol, was just ace, and reminded me that there's a lot to be proud about being English. Especially introducing your little island world to someone who'd never been to England showed me how many stupid little things I love about England. When you get super excited about a trip to Greggs you know you've been away too long.

So at that stage if there'd been a way to avoid going back to Dortmund and the land where cyclists don't say hello to each other and you have to explain every time you make a joke, then I'd have taken it, but I have another semester here in Dortmund to honour of course

I'm so behind with this blog that it feels like the ending of each post is like serialising my own life. So come back next week to learn how I adapted back to life in Dortmund, and began to rebuild my social life after the loss of my foreign friends. I'll sell this story to Take A Break yet...