[WARNING: not everything in this post should be taken very seriously 
]
A couple of months ago, after the trip I had made to Treviso(visiting @ErmesT in my first EuroMiniMeetup) I suggested that there might be more EuroMiniMeetups. Now I can gladly announce that this âmightâ has changed into a âwillâ, as in fact the 2nd one has just taken place: the past few days I have spent in Manchester, visiting @AdrianLunsong
It was an amazing experience once again - that tends to happen frequently when local guides meet in person (which is by all means not a coincidence). Adrian and Stuart had generously offered me to stay in the guest room of their apartment and Adrian had actually contrived an entire schedule for the first 2 days to show me around Manchester. Thanks again Adrian for being the perfect host!
Well, perfect⌠thereâs always room for improvement of course. He had arranged perfect sunny weather for the first day (as you can see in some of the pictures) but had forgotten to mention to the weather gods that I was staying for 3 days. But, in his defence, according to the locals it is not all that uncommon to see rainy days in the greater Manchester area.
On day 1 we visited the Science and Industry Museumwhere we met fellow local guide @Johnbhewitt who works there as a volunteer. Not only did John share loads of amazing facts with us about some of the items on display and did he give a wonderful talk (as seen in the picture) , but he was also able to give us access to some of the behind the scene areas. It helps knowing local guides if you travel to an area 
We did a lot of city dwelling (it was a 20.000+ steps day), exploring the Christmas markets (as you can see in the picture - and, no, that is not coffee in the nice Christmas Market cup)
and some very interesting buildings, such as the Central Library and the Manchester Cathedral, where we met local guide and Guiding Star 2020 @PeteMHW , who is volunteering there. On that occasion I happened to be able to take this wonderful snapshot of 3 Guiding Stars
It was a good thing we met Peter, as Adrian had been telling me several times that day âthere is something interesting to know about that building/sculpture/street/etc but I canât exactly remember what it is. You should ask Peter, he will know.â And apparently the city council agrees that Peter knows everything about Manchester, as they have apparently decided to name a square after him (Rome must have been involved in that too, as he seems to have been sainted as well).
We ended the tour with a visit to the National Football Museum. If you think you know everything about football (for the American audience: soccer), please do visit the museum - and you will discover you do not. To my delight I discovered the fact that one of the items on display was the actual book where the rules of the game had been written down for the first time. Finally I was going to find out what exactly was the rule deciding if a player is offside! Unfortunately the writing turned out to be very hard to read, so Iâm still in the darkâŚ
One thing I need to share with you, dear reader, is that I was appalled to notice that driverless cars are already all over the place in the UK! In fact, most of the cars I saw were driverless! That is: in most cases there was nobody sitting in the driver seat, but all of them had someone in the passenger seat. Weirdly enough those passengers had been given a steering wheel for some reason. The programming for those driverless cars still has some flaws, though, as literally all of them were driving on the wrong side of the road
In the evening we had dinner at a place called Samâs Chop House, which turns out to have a permanent artist-in-residence, that is⌠a statue of local painter L.S. Lowry is sitting on a stool at the bar. I only knew him by name before my visit to Manchester, but I have come to appreciate his particular style of painting very much in the last few days, especially during my visit to the Art Gallery on day 3.
One thing which was not clear to me before the trip, but is VERY clear now is the reason why there was an image of a bee on the âLocal Guides Manchesterâ wristbands that Adrian had brought to a previous meetup. The bee is THE symbol of Manchester and you can see them printed/engraved/painted on nearly everything. Busy bees, those Mancunians!
Day 2 started off with a visit to the Imperial War Museum, with a short stop, on the way to the museum, at Old Trafford, the home of one of the most famous football teams in the world: Manchester United, where we expected to all of a sudden see local guide @TorM pop up out of a tunnel, as there was a sign suggesting a direct connection to Munich. Unfortunately this refers to atragedy with a plane crash that happened in 1968, so the reality was not so pleasant.
That also applies of course to most of the things we saw in the War Museum, which also had a temporary exhibition of pictures from Ukraine. The most touching object on display in the museum was the construction show in this picture. You could easily mistake it as some piece of modern art, but when reading the explanatory sign next to it, shivers went down my spine - it is a steel window section from the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York.
It was a similar experience to the one I had during the EuroMeetup in Belgium a couple of years ago, when I read the story behind a walking stick from a Belgian refugee on display there - you can reread that story in the recap post.
After lunch, at a very nice restaurant called Mackie Mayor(the selfie at the beginning of this post was taken there), where - according to Adrian - all hipsters have their lunch, so it was perfectly suited for us There was more city-dwelling before we picked up @PeteMHW who came in from Clithero by train to join us for dinner. By the way, if you want to see excellent food pictures from the meals we had, I suggest you follow Adrian on Maps, he took loads of them (also from the dishes I had).
What I definitely find very interesting about Manchester is the mix of old and new buildings, which is partially due to the rapid expansion that took place in the last few decades. And quite a bit of skyscraper construction is still going on right now.
To illustrate this mix, here is a picture of a medieval church with modern buildings on either side of it, and another picture of Manchester cathedral next to the Arndale shopping centre (you could see that as an old place of social gatherings and a contemporary one).
But that has apparently been going on for ages in Manchester, as you can see in this picture, showing (a reconstruction of) a wall of the Roman settlement next to a 19th century railway bridge.
For dinner (at Bundobust Brewery- definitely check it out when youâre in the area) two more local guides joined us: @ZoeOooe and @deadmanjones
After dinner we visited a couple of pubs and in one of them were introduced to a game called Shufl, something you could describe as curling on a table, with sand on a wooden surface instead of ice and - alas - without the frantic brushing. THAT WAS FUN! And we all scored an amazing amount of points⌠until we read the sign explaining the rules of the game to find out we had been counting incorrectly most of the evening.
On the third and final day of my visit, I said goodbye to Adrian and Stuart as they were heading up to Scotland for Christmas, so I had to look for alternative accommodationâŚ
Before going to the airport, I visited the Manchester Art Gallery, which we had popped in to very briefly on the previous day. Although there are no real âworld famousâ pieces in the collection, the museum is definitely worth a visit. As I mentioned before, especially the paintings by L.S. Lowry were an extremely nice discovery for me. I might try to find a way to get a reproduction of one of his paintings (the real ones will be slightly out of my budget range, I assume). Or I could use some AI tool to produce a work of art in the style of Lowry.
My final stop was the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Gardens. As I have been working in IT most of my career, this was obviously a stop I needed to make.
To finish off this recap, some service announcements for all local guides that plan to use (the well-organised) public transportation when visiting Manchester:
- Donât be surprised if you use the contactless payment method to see (the equivalent of) 22 EUR being deducted from your bank account. This is only some kind of reservation they make, and the actual amount (3 EUR or so) will replace that original payment the day after. By the way: I was able to spend the 3 days in Manchester 100% cashless, using my Belgian bank card to pay contactless everywhere.
- If you want to use the tram to go from the city centre to the airport, this will take about 50 minutes
. I am sure it is a great feeling to see unmanned cars. I am sure you have found the best guides to visit. The best thing to be in this forum is to be able to make natural friends. In the new year, I hope to travel more places and meet new guide friendsâ:smiling_face: 
or otherwise bring 
.
