The Suzy Sharland Travel Scholarship is awarded each year to a Year 12 student studying Modern Languages on the basis of an essay of 800-1,000 words.
The financial award is to support travel to a place of their choice to learn more about its culture and language. To enter, students must write an essay in English about an aspect of the country they wish to visit, focusing on ‘unlocking culture through creativity’.
Suzy Sharland was an alumnus of NLCS, attending the School between 1972 and 1979. She studied English, French and Latin at A Level and went on to read French at Warwick University, graduating in 1983. She carved out a career in publishing with the private, quality art book publisher, Thames & Hudson. Her life was cut tragically short when she suffered a severe brain haemorrhage from which she never recovered. She died aged 59 on 23 October 2020. Married to Stephen, Suzy’s passions included languages, art, doing The Times crossword and travelling. The French prize and travel bursary are to commemorate these passions and her memory.
Congratulations to Jemima who has won this year’s award, and to Rachel, the recipient of the inaugural award in 2020.
Rachel chose to travel to Berlin and writes about her trip below:
In August 2021, I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Berlin after being awarded the Suzy Sharland Travel Award. I had never been before, so my dad and I planned a three-day trip, attempting to fit in as many iconic monuments and museums as we could.
The weather was beautiful, and it was a pleasure just walking the Berlin streets and appreciating the architecture, but there were a few highlights of the trip for me. The first was the East Side gallery, a section of the Berlin wall that remains standing, covered with meaningful artwork by artists of many different countries. The gallery shows a shared desire for freedom and peace, and it felt strange knowing that the decorated wall in front of me had once separated two contrasting states.
The ‘Tränenpalast’, or ‘palace of tears’ also stood out to me. This museum is located within a converted train station that was once a border crossing point between East and West Berlin. The exhibits contained biographies of travellers, along with open suitcases, and preserved signs, all conveying the gravity of a decision to cross the border. There was also a section on the Stasi, the East-German secret police, with information on how they used tricks such as examining ear and nose shapes to confirm the identity of travellers.
The Berlin Holocaust memorial was particularly poignant for me. It is located where a section of the Berlin Wall once stood, a short walk away from the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag, where the German parliament sits. The solemn blocks of concrete form a grid, with corridors for people to walk through. The blocks were taller than they seem in pictures, and standing in the middle of the memorial it is difficult to see the surrounding area. Across the road, within the Tiergarten, stands another memorial, to the homosexuals persecuted under Nazism. I found the location of both memorials to be striking, surrounded by bustling city life, one beside the German parliament and the other within a busy park filled with sunbathing families.
As well as these sights, we also visited the Reichstag, Brandenburg gate, Victory column, Checkpoint Charlie, and the TV Tower, and enjoyed a walk through the beautiful Tiergarten, and a boat tour on the river Spree. We naturally also stopped for food such as the well-known Berlin Currywurst, and warm pretzels from a nearby bakery.
Overall, I am so grateful for the opportunity to visit this fascinating city, with its striking blend of architecture due to its complicated history, and I feel that I gained a new insight into German life and history.
