Brighton April 09

Well, the brits are suppose to be different. Obviously I am from abroad calling them brits...
They live on an island, they still have monarchy but when I went to Brighton to visit a friend I found one of the most beautiful places in europe with incredibly nice people.
I have to admit that first i was completely overwhelmed by the sweet british politeness and I had to relativize it: not everybody calling you sweetheart, darling and telling you that you are gorgeous truely has deep feelings for you ;-) I figured that out when the busdriver called me darling...I probably was not the love of his life so the meaning is not as meaningful as you might think.
Arriving at Brighton station on wednesday the first thing I heard were the seagulls and I felt almost home. I was lucky with the weather, the sun was shining and it was not too cold. That was a surprise, mentioning that it was april. We walked to Kemp town which is basically through the whole city uphill and downhill and uphill again. The choices of street names is actually really funny, calling a hill that felt like my personal Mount Everest Mount Pleasant;really appropriate.
I loved the fact that 4 students are living together in a house. This is something I am not used to only knowing flat-sharing communities in Hamburg.
In the evening we went out to the pubs for some drinks and ended in a lovely pub with great livemusic and got to know some people. Again really polite but stingy when it comes to cab bills as i found out later. We had a nice night out shortly thinking about going to swim in the sea but chickend out in the end.
The next day was basically designed for a bad hangover which we beat in the afternoon. Enjoying the sunshine and the shops we saw people on a treasure hunt. In Germany its a kids game, in UK grown-up men are on treasure hunts. As I mentioned above: they are a bit odd and weird...
Lucky me, my friend didn`t have to work so we planned the next days.
Brighton is a cozy city by the sea, really tolerant and relaxed. But if you go to Great Britain of course you want to go to London as well.
When I went to London the first time, almost 7 years ago, I loved it. It was busy, noisy and hectic and for me coming from a small town it was just great. Going from Brighton to London was shocking and no fun at all. It is still busy, noisy and hectic but not great at all. But I was living in Hamburg the last years so I don`t see myself as the country bumpkin anymore. Its a great place to visit but its so energy-absorbing that after 6 hours i was exhausted and just happy and relieved when we arrived back in Brighton.
The central theme of my stay in Brighton was going to pubs. It`s nothing unusual to see people in pubs at 2pm so we adjusted and went to many pubs as well at, for me, early times. Starting some kind of addiction to Bulmers cider we started to realize why they are drinking that early: because its so much fun!!!
We did some sightseeing including Brighton beach with the pier, looking like someone put something to a place where it doesn`t belong. It looks really weird, especially with this carneval thingy going on...
Brighton has some really nice clubs where you can get in contact with people easily. They play good music and everybody is just having fun.
When sunday came closer and I realized that I had to leave soon I truely felt sad and decided to come back as soon as possible.
4,5 weeks later I arrived in Stansted...