London calling

september 8

I´m sitting in a coffee shop in Camden right now. The sounds of the city paint the soundtrack to me reminiscing about the past days. I´m drinking tea, ginger, to be precise. It´s my last day here, I´ll fly back home tomorrow very early in the morning, my flight is at 7, isn´t it? Wait, let me check.

Yeah, 7 am. I´ll try to sleep early tonight, let´s see how that goes.

Anyways, this trip to London has been very spontaneous, tho I might have been subconsciously manifesting it. I´ve been wanting to go to London for a while, even tho, I didn´t think it would happen anytime soon - I just spent my vacation time traveling around Romania for three weeks. But when the chance to purchase a ticket for a sold out concert that I really wanted to go to appeared, I couldn´t resist booking a last minute flight. And I´m so glad I did.

I tried Fries and Vinegar for the first time (don´t know if I like it or not tho), did some sightseeing, walked a lot (like, a lot!), felt like home when seeing on of my favorite band live again, browsed through lots of record stores, watched the sunset off Primrose Hill and walked around Abbey Road pretending I´m one of the Beatles in 69.

Record Store Recommendations:

All Ages Records

Rock n Roll Rescue

september 12

It´s been a few days, I didn´t end up finishing writing when I was sitting in that coffee shop, but it doesn´t really matter, so I´ll continue writing from home.

The trip was chaos in its best form - my favorite way of traveling. Somehow I thrive off things not going as planned, in the middle of a chaotic, unplanned trip I feel most like myself.

The biggest gift in London was the weather - they always say London is grey and rainy (it probably is) but I had nothing but sun and warm, summery weather. The biggest issue I had were bedbugs in my 24 people hostel dorm, which led me to almost not sleeping for three nights. I did get a full refund on the hostel, so I spent that money on overpriced matcha, CDs and food.

The reason for my travels was a concert. It´s a little ironic I´m going to London to see a band that´s from my home country, but that´s that. The concert was incredible, as expected, the opener was TV Smith which I knew a handful of songs before, but I was blown away from the second the band stepped on stage - their energy, their stage presence, I loved it. As for the actual concert, I think it´ll go into my top five concerts ever (and I´ve been to a lot of concerts, I work in concerts so I see shows every week, so for a concert to make it to my Top Five list, it needs to be very special!)

Getting home after the concert was a little pain, I had to wait quite some time for the bus, and the area my hostel was in felt a little sketchy at night, so I ran from the bus stop all the way to my hostel, just in case. I probably would´ve been fine walking like a normal person, but I didn´t feel like testing my luck that day, so I chose to run (plus, it did get quite cold and I was wearing shorts).

The next day, the tube started a strike so London was in chaos - busses were running, but they were packed. I chose to stay in walking distance of my hostel, and had the best day ever - I strolled around second hand record stores, looked around vintage shops, explored Londons grocery stores (underrated travel activity in every country!) sat in said coffee shop where I started writing this post, and ended up walking all the way to Primrose Hill to watch the sunset.

My flight back home was really early, I had to get up in the middle of the night and walk to a sketchy bus stop in said sketchy at night area, but I was fine and there were other people waiting for the bus as well. I started my period the moment I set foot into Stansted airport, which was unfortunate, but excepted. I had to sacrifice my breakfast when going to Security (it´s the same food I always have when traveling and brought with me through Security multiple times) so I had to buy an overpriced sandwich for 10 pounds at the Gate. Period cramps started setting in which led to me crying in the bathroom, and then getting upgraded when boarding the plane (I asked the flight attendant if it would be possible to switch to an aisle seat so I could stretch out a bit because of my period cramps, and got seated in first row with so much space for my legs instead). Ryanair might be known for being very strict and greedy, but this was a really pleasant experience. I told this story to some friends back home and no one believed me, apparently no one has ever made a positive experience with Ryanair before, so that´s that.

Now I´m back home, normal life has settled in again, and I just finished editing a little video I made off some random clips I took with my digi cam.