After 10 amazing weeks in Budapest, I find myself, once again, on the road. This time, I’m ever so slightly more reluctant to be going somewhere. Life in Budapest is very good right now and my business is growing faster than I could possibly have imagined.
My trip began with a flight to London. The purpose of the trip was mostly business but I was also hoping to catch up with some friends that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Arriving into Gatwick airport, my first thought wasn’t the most uplifting of views about the UK. Major delays on the rail network meant we ended up waiting around an hour for a train into central London.
If you have never been to London, it is a city of tumultuous highs and lows, depending on your mood at the time. I got off the Tube and was walking to my friend’s apartment when I couldn’t help but feel the lowpoints hitting home – it was crowded, expensive and nobody seemed to be smiling. A few days later, I am on the rooftop of an apartment in Leicester Square overlooking Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. This is a city of glory, grandeur and magnificence, if you want it to be.
The eye of the beholder is really why so many people have a love/hate relationship with the capital. Everything can be wrong, but so very rightly so. Every woeful frustration can be an equally immeasurable charm.
Having been out of the UK for almost 2 years, I felt compelled to do copious amounts of shopping – both food and clothes. Lets start with the food. Nowhere on earth has such a high quality variety of amazing food in the supermarket. Sweet Chili chicken with Guacamole, yes please. The Tesco pumpkin soup has nothing on my own concoction however!
Then we come to the most awesome part, buying new clothes. As someone who is close to 2 meters tall, shopping in Asia was never a joyful experience. Budapest has some good shops, but London is on a different level. I had a clothes budget specifically marked out for this trip. I swiftly spent it all, and then some. The Abercrombie + Fitch store was an interesting experience. Very clever branding setup and full credit to them, the store was packed.
My ultimate favourite brand, however, is True Religion. They are relatively unknown in Europe but more addictive than crack. I don’t think I could wear any other brand of jeans now. While the A+F staff were clearly a little “try hard to impress”, True Religion just knows their stuff is awesome and doesn’t need to flaunt itself.
I took two side trips while in the UK. The first was to the land of Mordor, more commonly known as Birmingham. Not because Brummies are savages, but because at Birmingham University there is a very tall clock tower that was the inspiration for the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of The Rings movies.
Our company was giving a talk at the University about entrepreneurship and online marketing. We were supposed to stay at our friend Chris’ house, but he gave us the wrong set of keys so we found ourselves stranded in the middle of the suburbs at 1am at night. After stealing some wifi, we found a taxi number and after a bit of back and forth were able to figure out where we were. The taxi took us a nearby hotel where I braced myself for a rather large bill. Turns out a triple room was a near £33 per night in total…. AND there was a 24 hour bar in the hotel. Good times!
My second side trip was to Liverpool. For those who don’t know, this is the best city in the UK to go out at night. People are super friendly, all the bars are right next to each other and there is just a general atmosphere of enjoyment. Tequila shots are an unflashy £1 and milkbottle vodka cocktails not much more. The baked bean tequila, being a surprisingly good experience, set me up well for what rapidly became a very heavy night. We had to get back to London fairly early the next day and not even daylight savings time could stop us this time.
My last days in the UK are spent working like an ugly stripper. I’m having dreams about my business now and have woken up more than once in the middle of the night to the thought of work. Paris is the next destination, a city that I have never been to before so I am very excited at what lies ahead. That reminds me, I should probably book a hostel at some point.
The UK is my home country and I have spent the majority of my life living there. This is the first time that I really did not feel like home base. This isn’t something that worries me, rather a testament to all the travel I have done recently. Most of us define our home as the place we grew up, the place we live now or the place we spent the most amount of time.
I feel that the concept of home is more to do with where we feel comfortable. I feel equally comfortable living in Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and Hungary as I do in the UK. Like London, most cities are what you make of them. If you choose to make the most of them you will always have the time of your life. If you choose otherwise, no amount of moving around is going to make you happy.
