Coventry Revisited: A Changed Perspective After 23 Years

Coventry 2001

Between August 2001 and February 2002 I (Christian) spent six months in Coventry in order to serve a placement as an integral part of my studies. Especially the first weeks were very painful as I had difficulties to adapt to a different type of city than Amsterdam. I had just completed a year as student in Amsterdam. A year that I tremendously enjoyed in a very beautiful and historic city. I can truly say that until then it was certainly the best year in my life (looking back many more best years did happen though). 

Coventry on the contrary was a smaller city, rather industrial and was destroyed in WWII by the German airforce. Rebuilt after the war it looked particularly ugly to me. And I had grown up in Dortmund – a city where 85% of the buildings were also destroyed in the war. With no money in post war Germany it was rebuilt rather quickly with an unappealing architecture. 

But I did not only struggle with the city view of Coventry, I also suffered from a culture shock. For example, when going out to the bars I was rather shocked to see girls lying unconsciously on the floor at 11 pm when the pubs closed. I had only spent time in London before and there I had never felt that people were so desperate to get drunk as early as possible in the evening.

My placement at the University of Warwick Science Park itself was OK. I had a couple of lovely colleagues in our project called Techmark. Martina was a student from Austria and Carmel our PA was the good soul of the team helping me a lot to get adjusted and sorting out all administrative issues. Nevertheless, in my third week I was about to quit and trying to get a different placement in The Netherlands. 

But then, my uni friend Andrea called me with the news that she would move to London as she had found a placement with an airline there. From that moment on, London that I loved a lot, was my escape. Every second weekend I went down to London and crashed at her place. We discovered London and partied together in that amazing city. Every time when I stepped out of the train and my lungs filled with London air I felt alive again.

At the end of my placement I was very satisfied that I managed to overcome my initial struggles and found a way to cope and manage my life there and did not give up as was my initial impulse.

Coventry 2024

In October 2024 Michael and I returned to Coventry. As we wanted to see our friend Guillermo who had moved from Spain and now lived in Birmingham we flew there and took the train to Coventry. We wandered around the city center. It was certainly under redevelopment but many buildings I recognised from more than 20 years ago. Funny enough I did not perceive some of the 1950s buildings as ugly anymore as back then. We also visited a 12th century church that survived the German bombing: Holy Trinity Coventry.

Not far away we entered the cathedral ruins. The old cathedral did not survive the war and was rebuilt next to the old spot in a stunning 1950s architecture. An architecture that I remember having declared as being very ugly when talking to Carmel back in 2001 in the office! Michael and I were reflecting on that different perception and came to two conclusions: with more life experience you may look at things differently and secondly, we both have developed an interest in architecture during the past decades probably seeing buildings from different times in a different light than when we were much younger! 

We finished the day with a long walk to the WWII memorial park and also passing by my old house in Canley Road where I rented a room in those months! When we sat in the train back to Birmingham I suddenly had the feeling that after 23 years I made peace with Coventry.