A Day in.... Liverpool

Day 1

"Now this is how it feels like to be in a somewhat acceptable hostel. Interesting."
The Hatters Hostel close to the Lime Street train station is an ok hostel. I had a 12-bed mixed dorm, sadly it was really freezing cold and you couldn't close the door of the shower cabin. Which of course meant that a guy managed to walk in on me changing (or well, my almost naked back). Thanks for that....
The first evening we actually met a few French teenagers who had a limited English vocabulary before going out for a few drinks at a place called Hannah's bar. The most intersting part of the evening however was the little bar fight and the very long verbal fight that went on outside. Sadly we couldn't hear a thing, but the guys came back two times and worked up a rage that looked almost comical from the safety within.

The next morning, after having a nice breakfast, we decided to walk around for a bit, down a shopping street and then towards the Central Library. Right next to it are the World Museum and the Walker Art Gallery but we've seen so many museums this week that we stayed away from those.
The library is ok, it has an extremely modern feeling to it until you go into the old part that looks like straight out of Hogwarts.
I can't wait to go to University. I don't even know if my future university has this kind of old-fashioned library - I can't really imagine it - but I love the quiet that goes along with a place like that.

Speaking of which, our next stop was the University of Liverpool. At least we wanted to look at it from the outside. It's interesting how many different buildings there are, sometimes you couldn't even imagine them all belonging to one institute.
Tip: We were there on a Tursday and ran into a food market outside the Liverpool Guild of Students. Not only did I have a hotdog, but there is a stand with a fantastic cake diversity. We got one each and we had enough to save some for later.

If you are already there, you can also visit the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The building is modern and impressive, I can't even describe it. It looks a bit like a crown from the outside and is high enough to make you feel small without even having a look at the inside.
Inside the modern theme goes on. You can walk around the circular walls and look at pictures and statues. You can sit down and pray of course. As long as you look up at some point at the coloured windows that illuminate everything in a shining light.

And while we are talking about churches: Consider visiting the Liverpool Cathedral. Apparently the building is only about a hundred years old but was built in a Gothic style. Including the 'wildlife' surrounding it it looks like s place out of a fairytale. The first time you walk in you can't help but let out a small 'Oh'.  Hell, you will get a strained neck from looking up all the time, but it's worth it! That evening there was apparently a music event since a stage and lights were all set up and the musicians where beginning to sit down. In here we also met a nice guy who painted the Lady Chapel in the back. Nice guy, even though he seemed a bit disillusioned about his fame and the way the world works.

Now that was already a lot for one day, but we decided to go to one last stop: the Wharf. A lot of interesting museums are down there. We didn't want to visit one of them just yet, a little break at the seaside is a nice thing on its own. For anyone who likes the Beatles, there is a statue and a museum about the four Liverpooler there. For everyone else there are the Slavery Museum, the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Tate Liverpool and Liverpool Pictures. You could probably spent a whole day down here at the docks.

Now, one thing we notices throughout the whole day were people in yellow and black outfits. Only someone who doesn't look up from the pavement could have missed them to be honest. And for us Germans it was more than obvious what was going on. A football game between Liverpool and Dortmund - here in Liverpool! And of course coming all the way to Liverpool for a game means that those guys are die hard fans which was obvious in their behaviour and their attire. The most interesting one was a maybe 60 years old guy in a yellow-black skirt and a Pickelhaube, a spiked helmet that is typical for German history.
And they are really nice! As soon as they notice we are German they offered to take photos for us and visa versa. A bit of small talk about the upcoming game and why we are here (since we didn't have any fan clothes on) and about how we would wreck the Liverpooler (we didn't).
Of course, that also means that the three of us looked for a sports bar to watch the game. Instead of showing some patriotism we kept down our cheers at every German goal and our conversations restricted to English. Good idea as it turned out, the guys around us - mostly middle aged a bit drunk - got angry to a point where it wasn't funny anymore. I mean, having to take out your asthma inhaler because of sports isn't exactly something you joke about. Poor guy.
In the end we lost 3:4 and made our way back to the hostel after a few minutes.

Day 2

One thing about losing a football game is that you can see who exactly lost the very next morning. Where Dortmund fans were hopeful and optimistic the day before they were only sad faces and silence left. In moments like this I'm really happy I'm not a big football fan.

For our last day of the trip we wanted to take it slower than before so we went back down to the docks to visit the Slavery Museum. In addition to our group of three a guy who is English but favers German football clubs tagged along. Apparently he was in my friends room but was so drunk that he didn't find his bed. He pretty much came with us just to leave ten minutes into looking at info panels at the museum to meet a friend or something like that. Weird...
Since we did most of what you can do as a tourist the day before, we went for a little relaxing shopping tour - especially because I still needed a birthday present for my au pair host dad! - right after a stop at Subway for dinner. On the street you could still buy football scarves, even though the ones specially for the game the day before were gone.And again you could see sad German people walking around in their Dortmund outfits.
One thing I always considered weird until I understood that it is just pure sexism is how worked up everyone gets about sports, and that riots are almost normal when your team looses, yet we make fun of teenage firls who get excited when they meet their idols who might have unknowingly saved them. Honestly, middle aged men destroying private and government property because a few guys fucked up in a game is more acceptable then a crying 15-year old?! Wow.

Anyway, we made our way back to the hostel to get our bags and walk to the coach station to get our bus. Of course, something had to go wrong; in this case, it was that the original coach station that our GPS brought us to was closed down already which means we had to walk another 15 minutes to the actual pick-up place. We basically speed walked there only to discover that our bus was an hour late. I'm not even sure if I should be happy and not.
But god, ones it was there it was awesome. Sure, coaches are not as comfortable was a train, but the feeling to be on your way back home is all I needed after this holiday.
It was good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't perfect. Especially the sleeping places. And one week of sleeping relatively bad is enough to drain you of every ounce of excitement. Still, if you have a week of, this three cities are close to one another and worth a visit.
Thanks for reading!