Sender	Clara Stangier	Back to Inbox
Subject	New paintings and old carpets

Dear Excursion Group,

You all probably know how difficult it was to choose one highlight out of the range of great experiences we made in this week full of fun. Therefore I decided to tell you about my cultural highlight and one of my social highlights. I’ll start off by describing my cultural highlight, which was the Tate Gallery.

Some of you who have visited the museum yourselves might be a bit surprised. I have to admit that I was surprised by myself as well, because normally I’m not that much into modern art. But there were several things which impressed me in the Tate Gallery. First of all I liked the style of the Tate. In this light, clean and sophisticated atmosphere there is nothing that distracts the visitor’s attention. Furthermore I thought the idea of themes throughout the rooms worked very well. It was thus possible to compare different painters with each other, even for people who are not that familiar with those things.

But most of all the massive number of famous artists made a huge impression on me. In the Tate Gallery paintings by Picasso, Yves Klein, Pollock, Kirchner, Damien Hirst and even a canvas by my favourite painter René Magritte were exhibited. For me standing in front of such important works always feels like something exclusive, a bit like a privilege. I’m just happy then that I am able to experience such big art by myself. So maybe you can understand why I liked the visit to the Tate Gallery so much.

My social highlight happened to be on Saturday night. We came back from our day trip to the Lake District pretty late and everybody was really tired. But a group of about ten people still wanted to go out even though it was already late by English standards. So we all just pulled ourselves together and hurried up to catch the bus for the city.

Of course one of our staff members (I won’t tell any names) already had an Irish pub in mind where he wanted to have a pint. But when we actually arrived at the place called “Liffey” the pub didn’t look too tempting. To be honest it was just really shabby. The whole room was covered with old smelly carpets, it was way too bright, a musician played Irish music which I wouldn’t exactly call my favourite music and the other guests seemed to be as old as the carpets. Anyway, we decided to have a quick drink and then think about where we could go next. But everybody in the “Liffey” was so friendly and welcoming that we actually didn’t go anywhere else. Instead someone who likes dancing and cider just started dancing and after a while the whole group was dancing and singing along with the locals. It must have been such a fumy picture, ten German students dancing like crazy with those lovely English people to music played by a man who just made fun of us the entire time. But because it was somehow so unreal, this situation turned out to be so special. I knew and I think the others felt the same way, that this was a unique moment we were able to share in this weird place and which brought us closer together, at least for the moment.

I think it is always difficult to describe nights like that, but I hope that I made you understand why this night was a highlight for me.

Anyway I want to thank you all for this great week in Liverpool. I had so much fun and I couldn’t have imagined a better excursion.

Cheers, Clara