ENGLAND. Memories of the Old Europe just moving around

England was one of those places people simply had to visit once. Back when I was growing up in a Europe that still existed before low-cost airlines, Instagram itineraries and endless top 10 rankings, there was an almost unwritten list of cities that mattered.

London, Paris and Rome formed something like the great European travel trinity. For people from Central Europe, they represented the West, the larger world, history, culture and the beginning of independent travel. I reached all three relatively early in life, mostly during the classic organised tours that today already feel like relics of another era of travelling.

My first London survives in fragments. Hyde Park, which I could enter almost directly from the hotel where we stayed. Windsor. Greenwich. A pub somewhere in the city, remembered through a few photographs and the vague atmosphere of dark wood, dim light and conversations that felt incredibly British to me at the time. Of course there were also all the obligatory landmarks, the places everybody recognised from television, films and guidebooks. Yet surprisingly little of that first journey stayed with me in a truly vivid way. Perhaps because at that stage it was more important simply to be in London than to consciously understand the city itself.

Still. form this first trip I remember how we crossed the Channel twice in different ways. One direction was by ferry from Calais, while the other was through the Channel Tunnel aboard one of the special shuttle trains carrying entire coaches and cars beneath the sea. I remember being fascinated by the whole process. The coach simply drove into a long enclosed railway carriage somewhere in France, and during the crossing we were allowed to leave the vehicle and walk around inside the wagon for a while. It lasted only several minutes, perhaps a little longer, but at the time it felt incredibly modern and almost futuristic. Travelling beneath the English Channel together with dozens of other passengers, vehicles and luggage was something I had previously only seen on television.

Near the English coast, probably while waiting for the ferry, I also saw the White Cliffs of Dover for the first time. They were already deeply familiar from films, documentaries and British popular culture long before I ever reached England myself. I think I may even have first seen them years earlier in old adventure films like Robin Hood. Seeing those pale cliffs rising above the sea in reality felt strangely cinematic, as if I had walked into a landscape I already knew from somewhere else.

That was also the first time I tried a full English breakfast properly. Everybody already knows about eggs and bacon, of course, but what I remember most vividly were the baked beans in tomato sauce. Normally I do not even particularly like beans, yet somehow the English version immediately became one of those things I associated with reliable hotel breakfasts while travelling. I also remember eating my first truly proper fish and chips somewhere near the southern English coast, probably while waiting for the ferry crossing. Not the simplified versions later served elsewhere in Europe, but the real British kind eaten near the sea, surrounded by wind, rain and ferry traffic. Somehow it tasted exactly the way England looked to me at the time – warm, simple and comforting against the cold grey weather outside.

The second journey remained with me much more strongly. This time the trip went further through both England and Scotland, and suddenly individual places, weather, textures and moods started becoming real memories instead of just stops on a route.

This time I travelled with an organised tour, although I modified it quite significantly. Instead of starting together with the group, I joined them somewhere in southern England – I honestly no longer remember exactly where. I flew to London on my own, took a high-speed train and then a taxi driven by a very friendly Indian driver, and arrived at the hotel several hours before the rest of my travel companions.

What immediately caught my attention was the sheer number of warning signs everywhere. Do not walk on the grass. Do not leave bicycles here or they will be removed at your expense. Private property. CCTV in operation. England seemed full of notices explaining what was forbidden, restricted or carefully regulated. Even today, that remains one of my oddly specific memories of the country.

By the end of the journey I separated from the group once again, and it was during that first truly independent arrival and departure through London that I found myself at St Pancras for the first time, with enough time to slowly wander through the station itself and the surrounding streets. Naturally, I also crossed next door to King’s Cross station with Platform 9¾ and the Harry Potter shop that at the time seemed to attract half of Europe.

Of other places I remember was York, with its cathedral and medieval atmosphere or Chester, with its black-and-white facades, wet pavements and endless rain. I still remember that city more through its atmosphere than through photographs, because many of the pictures were taken under an umbrella while trying to protect the camera from another wave of rain. England in summer looked exactly the way continental Europe often imagines it – low grey skies, damp stone, wet streets and people disappearing into pubs while another shower passed overhead.

I also recall the very specific colour of English brick. Dark muted yellow, never truly orange, softened by humidity and by the strange northern light that British cities often seem to have. Even today, when I think about England, I immediately picture rows of terraced houses built from those dark yellow bricks.

Liverpool also remained in my memory. A port city whose history always extended far beyond England itself. I remember the old docks and the newer districts that had grown out of redeveloped waterfront areas. I remember visiting the club where the Beatles began their career, which at the time was an obligatory stop for nearly every organised group visiting the city. But even then, I think Liverpool interested me less as the city of music and more as a place shaped by trade, shipping routes and the memory of the British Empire. Long before I fully realised it, I was already paying more attention to ports, railway stations, industrial waterfronts and transport infrastructure than to classic tourist attractions.

England returned to me later in completely different parts of the world. Perhaps most strongly in New Zealand, especially in Christchurch, which for years was described as the most English city outside England. That was probably the first place where I truly understood what British colonial migration looked like in reality. Grey stone buildings, schools resembling old British colleges, Anglican architecture and entire urban spaces built according to a deeply British understanding of order and civic life. Even the cathedral, later damaged during the earthquake, remained in my memory as part of that transplanted world.

What fascinated me there was not simply the architecture itself, but the idea that people had travelled to the opposite side of the world and tried to recreate a version of Britain so far away from Europe. Not perfectly, not completely, but recognisably enough that the connection was still visible generations later. Walking through Christchurch often felt less like being in Oceania and more like stepping into a strange parallel version of Britain shaped by distance, migration and colonial history.

At one point in New Zealand I also found an old cemetery of British settlers. Quiet, slightly forgotten, standing somewhere away from the main tourist routes. Some of the graves still had photographs attached to them. Faces of people who had crossed half the world many decades earlier and built lives in a completely unfamiliar landscape. Later I became curious enough to start searching for their history and eventually managed to find photographs of some of those people while they were still alive. Moments like that change the meaning of travelling. A journey stops being simple movement between places and becomes something much closer to following human stories across continents and generations.

England kept returning afterwards in small fragments – through colonial history, museums, architecture, transport and literature. One of my strongest English memories is not actually connected with sightseeing at all, but with St Pancras station in London. I liked the station so much during one journey that later, while travelling in France, I deliberately returned to Warsaw through London simply because I wanted to take the Eurostar. The route between Paris and London felt like part of a larger European story about travel between the great capitals of the old West.

Even Heathrow became part of that story. At one point, after one of its major modernisations had been completed, I deliberately chose a much longer return route from Singapore just to transit through London and see the airport from the perspective of an international passenger. It added several extra hours to the journey, but I have always been fascinated by airports, stations and transport spaces as places where entire worlds briefly intersect.

Today I look at England differently than I did twenty or twenty-five years ago. It is no longer high on my personal list of destinations. Perhaps one day I will return to London for the British Museum or for places I never had the chance to experience properly and calmly. But Europe itself has changed. There are cities where years ago one could walk freely with a camera almost without thinking, while today they inspire more caution, especially when travelling alone. London and Paris have both become symbols of that change for me.

Perhaps that is why England now exists in my memory more as part of the old Europe than as an immediate travel destination. The Europe of organised coach tours, wet streets, pubs, ports, giant railway stations and the feeling that simply reaching those places already meant something important. A Europe that felt slightly more distant, slightly less accessible and perhaps therefore more memorable.

And although today I often search for the world elsewhere, British traces still continue to appear along my routes. Sometimes inside a museum in the Netherlands. Sometimes on the opposite side of the planet in New Zealand. Sometimes in a railway station connecting Paris with London. And sometimes simply in the memory of rain falling endlessly over Chester.

Queen’s Garden at Windsor Castle | Jardin de la Reine au château de Windsor | Der Garten der Königin am Schloss Windsor | Ogród Królowej przy Zamku Windsor | 温莎城堡女王花园 | 윈저성의 여왕의 정원 | ウィンザー城の女王の庭園

And of course there is also that one photograph. I took it during my second visit to Windsor in 2015. I have actually been there twice, yet I surprisingly do not have many photographs from either trip. From the first visit I barely have anything left, while during the second one photography inside many parts of the castle was simply forbidden. Visitors could freely photograph some outdoor areas and, naturally, the changing of the guard, which was clearly staged with tourists in mind and looked impressively ceremonial in real life. But many interiors and sections of the complex remained completely off limits to cameras.

That particular photograph happened almost by accident. I remember standing on tiptoe and lifting the camera above a stone wall without even properly seeing what was on the other side. I simply pressed the shutter and hoped for the best. Only later did I realise how well the image had turned out. Eventually I gave it the symbolic title Colourful Garden. Even now I still associate that photograph with the atmosphere of that second journey through England – with grey skies, organised travel, quiet moments between sightseeing stops and the strange feeling that sometimes the best travel photographs are the ones taken almost unintentionally.