“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscious; this is the ideal life” -Mark Twain
Welcome back, readers, to this week’s edition of Travel Tuesdays with Serena. The past few days have been both excitingly eventful and dreadfully uneventful at the same time. I thought once I got here I would be more than keen to go out and explore everything, especially being so close to the places I’ve been dreaming of visiting for years: Yorkshire Moors (the Wuthering Heights moors), the Brontë house, Jane Austen’s house and so many more. Although the thought of going to these places literally brought me to tears, this painfully aggressive jet-lag has got a strong hold on me, my sleeping patterns and consequently how I end up spending my day.
Here’s how I’ve spent these past few days:
I started my week exploring my new campus and shopping for essentials for my new room. I woke up from yet another broken and excruciatingly short sleep and got ready for a new day. For some reason, I’ve gotten a better morning routine now that I’m across the world than I did in my flat at UOW. Having absolutely no plan for the day really makes you want to get up and do the stuff you know you have to do. Make the bed, shower, get ready, clean up. You know, all the stuff you never want to do because you’re in such a hurry to get to your plans. That, or (like in my case) you’re just lazy. Anyway, now these are the only things that are certain to happen during my day, so I’ve been doing them nice and slowly, taking my time with every chore. If only I did this at home, my mum would be ecstatic.
So, I got ready and ended up staying home most of the day. With the campus already explored and the nearest shops and cafes already found, I thought that I could take it easy that day. Do some digging on my subjects and find out what I needed to do before classes began.
Obviously, being used to competitively choosing tutorial times on Sols before the good ones ran out, I thought that I needed to do the same here but with a bit more digging I figured out that they allocate the times themselves. I found it strange, however, that when I went to look for my personal timetable, it didn’t show up with my class times.
This confusion overwhelmed me so much that I decided to go for a walk. I thought, “I still don’t have any food in the fridge or any plates or bowls to eat out of,” so I went to Tesco once more and did a bit more shopping. I’ve been trying not to think too hard about my Apple Pay, because I still haven’t gotten an international card to pay from so every time I pay with my phone it takes a surcharge and I don’t even want to think about how much it’s costing me. My sister, however, said that she found a way to get a card online for me to transfer my money onto and pay without a surcharge. So, if that works I’ll let you know how I did it.
Anyway, back to the story, I made my way to Tesco and bought these really cute matching mug and bowl (I figured that should be enough for now, especially since I was walking and didn’t want to lug around a million bags full of stuff). I took a little walk around the clothes section and smiled when I saw three different types of beige coats – you know, the ones that detectives wear. Very London style coats. Once I finished paying, I took my bags and was making my way out when I saw the vapes shelf and did a 180º turn.
When I got home, I went straight to the kitchen to put my things down. Not only was it a longer walk than I had remembered but there’s also no elevator in my building. I tried my best to hide my huffing and puffing in case someone was in the kitchen. Thankfully there was no one. As I sighed with relief, one of the roommates came in. We had a nice chat and he invited me to go out to the pub with them later that night. I think my face gave away my excitement as I felt my cheeks raise to a huge smile. I started getting ready.
If I had known that he was going to knock on my door a good hour and a half earlier than expected, I wouldn’t have sat down to write my last travel column and instead I would have got a move on with my makeup, which in the end was half-assed and quite wobbly.
It’s a satisfaction to say that I felt perfectly safe walking at night in Nottingham. Although, readers, be careful. I have heard some horror stories about the towns around me so be sure to check how safe the neighbourhood is when researching your preferred exchange university. I forgot to, so it’s safe to say that I was lucky with my choice.
The bus ride to the pub was awe-striking. The bus itself was one like I’ve never seen before. Just imagine the two-story tourist-y red bus that you always see in London movies and photos. It was like that but blue and the inside was absolutely deluxe. The seats were leather and padded – unlike our Sydney buses with that horrible blue-patterned fur that always has some mystery stain on it. On top of that, some seats, in front of them, had this charging station thing for your phone. It was on a slight slant so that your phone could be placed facing you and when you place it on this stand it charges your phone for you. I don’t think Australian buses have anything comparable.
When we got to our destination, I saw the pub that we were headed to for the first time. The Rose and Crown. I don’t know if it’s just because of my limited knowledge of pubs and bars and the fact that basically the only ones I’ve been to have been the ones around Wollongong – you know, Black Cockatoo, La La Las, Bevanda, Red Square: all relatively small bars – but the Rose and Crown is possibly the nicest and biggest pub I’ve ever been to. And sure, I live in Sydney so I probably should know nicer ones but what can I say? I’m a sucker for familiarity.
Anyway, we got to the pub and one of my roommates was nice enough to buy me a beer and then we sat down. The whole night was only like 2 hours because I had been up since 3am and was exhausted to my core. But even so, we talked and I met some of their friends – granted they were all guys and I was the only awkward girl at the table the whole night, I think I did pretty alright for my first time out with them considering my condition and levels of self-consciousness.
By the time we got home, though, my levels of awkwardness sky-rocketed alongside my fatigue so I ended up not talking and just heading up to my room to sleep.
The next day, the girl roommate got to our accommodation after being at her own home for the holidays. I was so excited to meet her although I was also a bit sceptical. I really didn’t want to be stuck with one of those stereotypical chavs that you always see on TikTok. Luckily, I’m writing this 2 weeks into my experience and I still haven’t met any chavs. On the contrary, the roommate was super sweet and actually shyer than me which was a surprise seeing as the other guy roommates had talked so highly about her. I figured they all knew each other really well but in reality she barely comes out of her room.
So, we met the day after, in the kitchen. I don’t know if she knew that I was in the kitchen. I had decided to be brave and go do some work in the common area so if someone were to walk in we could have a friendly chat, so I was trying to be as quiet as possible to trick someone into coming out of their room. Well, obviously this worked like a charm and I had a very pleasant conversation with the girl. I thought that was enough forced socialising for the day and just went to bed after that.
It was a pretty chill couple of days as I settled into accommodation. I hope you enjoyed reading about my first week in a different country and if you did make sure to catch next week’s column where I’ll be talking about my first week of school and making friends on campus.