Recently, I finished a nearly four-month abroad semester in Portsmouth, UK. I wanted to ramble on about my experiences in more detail. While I already have to write a report about my experience as part of the ERASMUS program which funded most of the trip, they aim for 'at least 3 pages' and my first draft exceeded that by nearly 200%...   ## The Trip My trip to Portsmouth went surprisingly well. German trains are usually known for their delays, but both the EC towards Cologne as well as the ICE to Brussels were pretty much perfectly on time. Taking the Eurostar was a weird experience. Having to go through security checks is strange, both because the UK *should* still be in the EU (it was such a strange and honestly pretty terrible decision to leave) and because I was boarding a *train*, not a plane. The checks were quite quick though, just a scan of the luggage, then a passport check, and then it's off to the waiting area. You're only allowed to board the train about 20 minutes before departure, but you must arrive to the security checks at least 30 minutes ahead – 90 minutes are recommended, and it's honestly probably a good decision to come earlier. The waiting area did not have *nearly* enough seats for everyone, but it was fine. For my trip, I bought an Interrail ticket. They have tickets specifically for ERASMUS students that allow you 4 or 6 days of travel within 6 months instead of just one, but you're only allowed one outbound and one inbound trip to your home country. The ticket is great because it gives you complete freedom over which trains to use **except** the Eurostar, as you *must* book a seat in advance. Those cost 32€. The good thing is that you have a safe seat. It's important to book somewhat early (2 weeks prior is probably fine) and manually pick a seat, as the system can place you on a window-side seat with no view. The Eurostar trip was quite pleasant. Less pleasant was the ride from London St. Pancras to London Waterloo, for which I took the Northern tube line. I needed to switch branches, so I had to take the tube the opposite way to Euston before switching over to another train headed towards Waterloo. Kind of annoying, but it didn't take overly long. The last train of the day was the Southwestern to Portsmouth. The ride was fine, though crowded (it departs from London, after all), though I dislike how a lot of British trains have a 3+2 seat layout; within a single row, there are 3 seats on one side, and two more on the other. Since the trains aren't any bigger than they are in Germany, the seats have to be narrower, and the walkway between them is smaller as well. If you have someone sitting right next to you, both of you will be very cramped, even if you're slim. It's an all-around uncomfortable experience. So, my train rides were fine, right. Everything went well. Except the very last part of my trip. After 12 hours of train travel, I was preparing to take the number 13 bus that runs to Langstone campus. This bus, however, departed mere minutes before I arrived. At least partially at fault were probably the ticket gates (that the UK likes to place at a lot of train stations (despite the fact that staff does check tickets on board)) as well as the bridge that was awkwardly fenced off and required a longer walk as the ticket gates were obviously retrofitted. What did I do after missing the bus? I walked. As the 13 runs hourly, it didn't make sense to wait. Given how that walk went though, I kinda wish I had waited. For the entire 40-ish minute walk, during which I of course had to carry my heavy luggage, I had to bear the UK's terrible infrastructure. Sidewalks that were crooked and constantly pulled my rolling luggage towards the street as well as traffic lights that effectively penalised walking by delaying on-foot traffic made the trip quite miserable. No lie, I was already regretting the abroad semester by this point, and I hadn't even made it to my flat yet. ## Student Housing I lived in Langstone West. The housing was decently nice, but the first impressions were quite bad. I was first greeted by a rather dilapidated campus. Green patches were interrupted by uneven foundations that have seemingly been rotting away for years. An array of shipping containers blocked the view to the north end of the campus. Worst of all was the tall-standing building, the *Barnard Tower*, which looked as if it had been abandoned for a decade. I was mentally preparing for the tower to be my home for the next few months until someone let me know that the student halls were actually further north on the property.  When I arrived, I met a security officer at the reception who handed me my keys and led me to my room. Weirdly, the literal second I turned my back on him as I tried pushing my luggage into my room, he left. This felt pretty unfriendly and was quite surprising considering the actual reception staff was nothing like this. They were genuinely so nice and understanding and forthcoming about everything you mentioned to them. They greeted you when you passed them, they were up for chitchat, they were just super friendly. One time, our microwave broke, and they literally handed us a new one on the spot. Never had issues with them. The accommodation was the second-cheapest available (cheapest with individual bathrooms), so I was worried what would await me, but to my surprise, the flats were actually pretty nice. We had a big kitchen with two ovens, two fridges, two sinks, a big stovetop and a lounge area with a TV. The rooms were decent too – pretty small (around 10m²) but you had everything you needed for the short stay. The walls were not very insulating, which was quite noticeable in winter when the nightly temperatures dropped near freezing and the cold crept into the rooms overnight. The electric heaters were good though; you could tune them by the degree and even program them so that they would turn on and off at specific times. Something that I found odd during my stay and especially once I returned to my flat in Germany was how the room inventory seemed fit for smaller people. The chair was much smaller than my IKEA Markus (which, when I first sat in it after my abroad semester felt as if it hugged me); the desk is set very low and crossing my legs beneath it was near-impossible (often cut off my blood flow because of it); the mirror in the bathroom hung lower; the shower was smaller; even the ceiling hung lower than at home! ## The Environment Living at Langstone was a mixed experience. The most impactful negative aspect was that there were no supermarkets nearby. A Premier store was at the southern end of the campus, but it's a really tiny one, and Premier isn't exactly a place where you can go to do your shopping – in my mind, it's just a shop for alcohol and snacks that for some reason also sells household items and vegetables. The next Co-Op was a 16-minute walk away; Lidl, Tesco, Aldi were almost half an hour away on foot. I also think that there wasn't a lot to do at Langstone? There was nothing noteworthy nearby. Milton Common was the nearest thing to a park, and aside from that, all you had was residential area. Both the university as well as Commercial Road and Gunwharf Quays (meaning virtually all shops) were on the far end of the island. However, a 20-minute walk brings you to Eastney beach – a great spot for when you need a quiet spot outdoors that offers a pretty view at the Solent with the Isle of Wight on the other side. It's a rocky beach (pebbles instead of sand). In fact, all along Portsea Island's perimeter you had some very nice beaches; South Parade Pier was quite nice with the Rock and Rose Gardens nearby, and the waterfront area at Gunwharf Quays was quite pretty too. The beaches are currently being renewed; Portsmouth is reinforcing its sea defences, and while doing that, they're going a step further by redeveloping waterfront areas. It's quite nice and well worth the visits. If you want to party and don't mind noise, you may want to look for another accommodation though, as Langstone itself was quite a serene place. It's a quiet place where you can really live a stress-free life. At least that's the experience I had, and I quite liked that. ## The City    ## The Trouble With Buses Something I really didn't like about the UK – and that I have, in great detail, already told many people about against their wishes – was public transport. Firstly, ownership of the transport companies plays a big role. It sounds odd, but for example: my city has a 100% stake in the public transport company running out trams and buses. This allows them to have their say in how public transport is ran, which is important since the politicans (ideally) want good transport options for their citizens.  In the UK, however, the buses are almost always privatised, and so it feels as if the bus companies are weighing profits too high and customer care too low. I found it particularly strange when cities have more than one company operating their network, especially since these companies usually don't exactly cooperate. Portsmouth had two – First Bus and Stagecoach – and it's just such a mess. No one publishes a proper map for their services, all their apps are rubbish and of course don't help you for services provided by other companies, the tickets are different between providers and have different validity areas, timeframes, lines you can take... ugh... Trying to learn the routes was so annoying because no one provided a half-decent map. Stagecoach publishes one of just their services but without individual stops listed. The city of Portsmouth provides a combined map of all services, but it's extremely hard to read as all lines are coloured green, so they effectively mark streets where buses run on, but not the stops they actually serve, which is nonsensical because some lines run routes that suggest you can change over to another service, but they don't actually stop anywhere near the crossover section. One of the worst offenders for this is the 18, which runs on the roundabout between Pier Road and Duisburg Way where it crosses the lines 23 and 25, but it **just runs straight through with no stop!!** What fucking idiot came up with this?? Stagecoach runs all of these lines themselves! Oh and, First Bus can't be arsed to provide *any* map whatsoever. None at all. They should genuinely be embarrassed. The services operated really weirdly as well. I saw many instances of bus lines from different operators directly competing for passengers. And as if that wasn't already bad enough; buses compete for passengers with other bus lines and with **trains** too!! Portsmouth had this too, with the First Bus X4 and X5 lines to Southampton as well as the Stagecoach 700 to Chichester. Serving stops in-between major train stations is important, sure, but the trains stopped really frequently anyway – almost as if they were genuinely viewing the buses as competition... I was particularly badly hit by the lack of good public transport options. Langstone Campus was served by only two lines: the 13, and the U2. The 13 ran hourly, but it felt as if the timetable was seen as a recommendation, given that it liked to show up 10 minutes late or even 5 minutes early, and you can never really predict what it'll be. The 13 fucked me over particularly with its early departures, which meant I frequently had to wait for the next 13 – in an hour – or walk. Plus, the 13 didn't run at all on some days during the holidays. No service whatsoever. Apparently, however, this is a normal thing in the UK and even the **LONDON TUBE COMPLETELY STOPS RUNNING** around Christmas! How one of the biggest cities on this planet can handicap itself this badly, I will never understand. Run a reduced service, of course – but **NO SERVICE, WTF??** The U2 was even worse. It was free – but I wouldn't have wanted to pay for a service this atrocious anyway. First off, it ran every 50 minutes. *Fifty!* For one, this was insanely inconvenient. Also, this didn't even line up with the university timetable, as all lectures (as far as I could tell) started on the hour.Considering the U2 is a **university bus line**, I cannot grasp how the university can willingly pay to run a service this awful. Having a lecture at 14:00 was the worst, because it meant you'd have to take the bus at 12:50. That's 70 minutes before the lecture starts, for a route that takes 19 minutes. And if your bus didn't show up, as had happened to me – tough luck, you're missing your lecture. As an added bonus, the 50-minute frequency meant that layover times at the end stops were too short to catch up with the frequent delays, or just give the drivers any kind of rest, really.  Seccondly, the bus was terrible. They always ran with the oldest bus First Bus had, which would *vibrate heavily* and loudly all throughout the ride. It was also woefully undersized for some of the crowds, especially considering the U1 got electric double deckers running every 15 minutes despite the fact that *almost no one was using them*. Having only a single door where everyone had to scan their ticket made call times at certain stops extremely long too, as you'd have to wait for everyone to get up – which in Portsmouth they apparently don't do until after the bus driver has opened the door – then leave, then everyone has to get on, scan their tickets... Thirdly, the bus doesn't have announcements! Or at least it didn't. After I wrote a *very* long e-mail to the university estates team about how genuinely awful their bus service was, they pretty much ignored everything I said, *but* they silently introduced announcements! I was shocked when I saw and heard them on the U2. A standard feature on literally any bus, literally absent from this bus, but finally no more? Kind of. In the end, only like a third of the buses had the announcements. They also hardly worked. From day to day, new issues would arise where the displays skips stops or even introduces new ones that aren't actually served by the line.  Oh and, the buses didn't run at all during the entire holiday period – a *month*. The last bus of 2025 ran on the 19th of December, and the first bus in 2026 ran on the 12th of January. It seems that no one at the university cares about the students living in halls during the holiday period. I was very negatively affected by this, since Langstone campus is *so* remote; the nearest supermarket is a 25-minute walk away. It genuinely felt as if the university either didn't care about its students, or they are trying to get rid of the buses. The latter I definitely think to be true; apparently it's normal in the UK to have students pay for the university buses (such bullshit). Portsmouth is the exception, but even they are giving up on this, as staff now has to pay for the Portsmouth university buses. Plus, the uni's estates team complained about the cost of running the buses when I contacted them (duh, how about don't build a campus on the other side of the island?). I'm assuming they are trying to actively reduce ridership so that it sinks to a level where they can 'justify' cutting the service entirely.  My experiences outside of Portsmouth weren't exactly great either. Cardiff charged me nearly 3€ for riding five stops on the line 6, and even London's Routemasters weren't that great. I only took one on the line 68 to get from Waterloo to St. Pancras International, but the ride felt representative of the London bus experience. For example, the driver wasn't unfriendly, but definitely quite impersonal. When I asked him whether my tap-on had gone through, he only communicated in hand gestures, ending with a thumbs-up. Although I guess that was all the information I needed, so it can't have been too bad. The interior of the bus was worn, not at all how I'd expect London's premier buses to look. Functional, but not a super pleasant experience. It was also a double decker, of course... Okay, not sure if this is a hot take, but I dislike double decker buses. I do think the concept is quite cool, and I do like sitting up top for the view. However, they're inaccessible, they lengthen call times at stops, and it's just really hard to get up or down, especially when the bus is moving! I found them to be an even bigger issue in Portsmouth, where I frequently saw double deckers that were completely empty on the upper deck, with everyone sitting downstairs. A significant chunk of ridership in Portsmouth is seniors – probably because a) the buses are unattractive for anyone needing reliable transport, and b) they can ride for free – and they quite literally cannot access half the bus. I did appreciate the flat £1.75 fare on London buses though – probably an incentive to take some pressure off the tube, I imagine. Way better value than Portsmouth's £3 "capped" fare. ## The Return Trip After being away from Germany for so long, was I glad to see ICEs and other German trains again.  What's crazy is how positively I raved about German public transport. We are *by no means* perfect. There are lots of issues especially in rail transport, and there are a lot of improvements to be done in local too. But in comparison to the UK, it's literally night and day. Like the fact that the bus right in front of my house runs every 7.5 minutes from 6:00 to 18:00, and still pretty frequently outside of those hours. Or that, if I don't want to take that bus, I can take the tram that's right nearby as well, and in a year's time, there will be a second tram line running here. Or that we have the '[Deutschlandticket](https://deutschlandticket.de/)' that allows us to use virtually all of Germany's public transport without trying to figure out ticket validity zones and whatnot. Or that we have way more than just buses – trams, S-trains, underground trains – and they're not just reserved for the capital. Even our damn ferries are cheaper by orders of magnitude.