A little party in Notting Hill

Challenge 3: Go on lots of day/weekend/many day trips

The talk of the town in London this Bank Holiday weekend was Notting Hill Carnival. Not having experienced one before I began to imagine it was going to be like Portobello Market on steroids; tea cups and trinkets galore with an abundance of men who resembled Hugh Grant. I was definitely not prepared for possibly Europe's biggest street party.

In fact the carnival is a huge Caribbean street party with a parade that processes through the streets of West London. Large trucks pump out Caribbean music while voluptuous women donned in amazing costumes made with feathers, sequins and glitter dance behind them. To be more specific they follow the trucks while whining, a dance that involves the women twisting their hips while a man often gyrates behind them. Google it if you've never seen it, but all I can say is I didn't know whether to stare in awe of how well they move their bodies or book them a hotel room. I quickly discovered that I definitely can't whine, but regardless it was impossible not to smile and shake my pathetic white girl booty when surrounded by the sea of colour and music. Even the police couldn't resist busting a move with the beautiful partially clad women.

Off the main streets we found an abundance of jerk chicken stalls as well as other street food. After building up an appetite dancing we grabbed a quick bite and congregated outside a bar which was hosting one of the many parties for the day. The music from the bar spilt out onto the street, so armed with BYO wine and beer a mass of people began dancing on the pavement outside. Eventually a crowd began to form around one woman who was easily 75 years old had all of their attention with her old school dance moves. Delicately placing one foot to the side and then in front while holding her floor length floral skirt, she would lure in young shirtless men and relish in their attention.

Eventually we left our little street party and went in search of some colour. Feeling as though we were lacking the glitter required to fit in at carnival we headed straight for a little face painting stall. However, when we were informed it was going to cost 8 quid per face, we decided our money would be better spent pooled and we would nominate one person to take one for the team. When one of the boys announced that we all knew who it was going to be, I completely misunderstood where he was pointing and assumed he was picking on the youngest, me. High on the spirit of the festival my hand shot straight up in the air and I declared, of course I would do it. Unfortunately I had not realised that the deal was I didn't get a say in how my face was decorated. Imagining I would get a beautiful glittery butterfly across my eyes, I was mortified to see my friends flipping through the catalogue and picking out zombie faces. Eventually we came to an agreement, a koala seemed to be the most appropriate option for the loud mouthed Australians. This didn't bode well with the face painter though as it would have been time consuming so somehow my friends settled on a kitten.

For the rest of the day I was subjected to walking around the carnival with my face painted as a white kitten with big whiskers and a pink bow in the middle of my forehead. Luckily we soon found ourselves not watching the parade from the side lines like before, but smack bang in the middle of it. Surrounded by the amazing costumes I merely became an attraction for camera phones and had my picture taken with numerous strangers. It was amazing to be right in the middle of the crowd and to bump and grind our way down the street with the rest of the carnival goers.

After a long day of festivities my housemate and I decided to make our way home by bus. In my tired state I had completely forgotten what I looked like and was only reminded when I saw a lady on the street waving up to me. At first I began to look around to see who she was waving to until she began pointing right at me and waving. Possibly worse were to the two Rastafarian men sitting on the bus who started exclaiming 'what a silly face...look at the joy on that silly face'. They weren't wrong I suppose, it was a pretty joyous day even if I did get meowed at on the walk home from the bus stop!

Fork in the Road

Challenge 4: Introduce yourself to EVERYONE

All too frequently we make fun of people for having a whinge about their "problems"that stem from otherwise pretty good circumstances. Well, this post is unashamedly all about my mother of a  #firstworldproblem: getting accepted into The University of Cambridge.

At the impressionable age of fourteen I went on a family holiday around Europe. One of our stops was Cambridge and I was instantly in love with the beautiful grounds, gorgeous river and historic colleges. At the age of 18 I returned to Cambridge for yet another visit which only rekindled the romance. So, not being a girl that believes in playing hard to get, this year I introduced myself to the prestigious University and applied to study there. Admittedly I didn't actually believe I would get in, so it was a huge surprise to receive the invitation to go for an interview. One thing lead to another (as they often do in romance tales) and last week I received my acceptance letter...well, email into the Masters of Education and Psychology.

It all sounds peachy keen except that there were a few details I had grossly misunderstood. Firstly, I believed that on my British passport I would be eligible to pay local fees rather than international fees. This is in fact incorrect and I would have to have lived in the UK for three years to be able to claim that I am a local student. Secondly, I hadn't factored in that taking the place would mean giving up my place in a Masters course at home, a risk that could result in losing my spot in a course that will allow me to practice as a psychologist while the Cambridge degree is purely course work and research.

Looking back I think I was blinded by the romance of the place and believed that if, on the very off chance, I got in it would all work itself out somehow. Well, now that 'off chance' is reality and I'm left with a pretty large decision to make. If I close my eyes I can imagine an intersection with three possible ways that I can travel. To the left, I can go to Cambridge and spend a lot of time and money on something that would be purely for the experience and my ego (a fantastic option if money grew on trees), straight ahead I can stay in London for another 18 months and continue 'playing' granted I get permission from Uni, or to the right I can go home to Australia in February and decide to be an adult by starting my Masters and in turn, my career.

I'm not going to lie, I'm utterly petrified of making the wrong decision. It breaks my heart every time I tell people I don't think I'm going to take the Cambridge offer because the circumstances aren't right. Like a love struck stalker I made the mistake of Googling the college I got accepted into only to pine after how stunning it is (it was St Catherine's by the way). I suppose every good love story is about timing though. I know that now is probably the best time to galavant around Europe and frequent London pubs, as I'm still young enough to enjoy it without the pressures of life. Perhaps in the future the timing will be better for me to get stuck into academia and I can reintroduce myself to Cambridge. For now I just have to take comfort in the fact that I can officially say I'm smarter than I look!

I lost my heart in London but I lost my liver in Budapest

Challenge 3: Go on lots of day/weekend/many day trips (don't stay in the same place, explore, travel, wander)

I've never really been the spontaneous type, an impromptu trip to the pub is about as unplanned as it gets. However, when my Australian Tax Return and a voucher from STA travel came through in the middle of my six week summer break, I couldn't resist the calls of an old uni friend urging me to meet her somewhere in Europe. Purely based on dates, Budapest was the chosen destination for five days. Before I begin attempting to recap, I feel as though there should be some kind of disclaimer that this will not be a story about our cultured trip to Eastern Europe... 

The girls and I arrived in Budapest on Sunday to discover that it was the last day of the Sziget Festival, one of the biggest music festivals in Europe. Feeling a little sheepish that we didn't know it was on, we were almost resigned to the fact that we would be the only people in Budapest not donning a yellow "Lets Sziget Fucked" singlet and making our way to Freedom Island. However, choosing to ignore the "out of stock" notice on the website we went ahead and ordered the tickets anyway. Before we knew it we were printing them and heading off to Sziget. Simple as that! 

The festival was like nothing that we get in Australia. Not only did it have the main stages, there were circus acts, piercing parlours, traditional Hungarian dancing and bars galore. Due to our late entry the only act left on the main stage was David Guetta, so we made our way straight there. Amidst the laser lights, confetti, fireworks and gropey European men, we danced while Guetta pushed some buttons and did a lot of fist pumping. Sounds trivial but it was pretty amazing. The rest of our night was spent dancing to various DJs and exploring the island. Among the crowd we noticed that one girl had brought her mum to the festival. Keen to join in the fun with the young ones, 'mum' jumped on the back of a bike with a side cart, dancing in that unique middle-aged woman way. Unfortunately, she was so consumed by the attention that she lost her balance and fell backwards into the cart, legs straight up in the air like a cartoon character! I only hope I can embarrass my children half as much as she did when I'm her age!

The following day was spent eating ice-cream and enjoying the sunshine. I had planned on sleeping in, but was woken by my British roommates returning from the festival around 7am. They were very concerned that one of their trio hadn't come back, not because he was lost but because the girl he had gone home with wasn't very attractive. Trying to dig deeper into the male psyche I naively enquired whether their mate would get any kudos for picking up at all. He informed me that no, his friend would not as he would rather remove his genitals than engage in coitus with said female (but not nearly as eloquently as that). 

Once we had recovered from Sziget it was time to jump back on the horse, or in this case boat. Monday night's festivities consisted of a booze cruise down the river Danube. Despite the large bottle of champagne we were given (each) we were awe struck by the city which looked stunning by night, especially the beautiful building of parliament and the Chain bridge which lit up the river. There was a loose rule that whenever the boat went under a bridge you had to kiss someone. I now understand how my Nan feels at Christmas as all the kisses I received were on smack bang on the cheek. 

On Tuesday we took the opportunity to enjoy the heat at one of the oldest thermal bath houses in Europe. Lying in the beautiful ornate surroundings of the bath house with the Budapest sunshine peaking through the clouds was the perfect way to spend the day. The lovely warm water also did wonders for our aching muscles from all the dancing in the previous 48 hours. However, the best part of the baths was definitely the people watching. There were tattoos, piercings, six-packs, guts, breast on ladies, breast on men, selfies, cellulite and more hair than you would find on yogi bear himself. Perched on a sun lounge with my big sunnies on I was enjoying the display of the human species when we were unceremoniously asked if we wanted to pay for our sun lounges. Our bikini clad bodies lying on the ground must have been a pathetic site because the gentleman in charge of taking payment shortly returned to inform us that we could have our sun lounges back free of charge as long as we didn't tell anybody. 

By Wednesday we realised we hadn't been very cultural while in Budapest so we decided to take the walking tour of the city. We learnt that Hungarian is the second most difficult language to learn, a Hungarian invented the Rubik's cube and that Budapest is the largest exporter of baby hippos in the world. Possibly most interesting the the fact that Budapest has the third best bar in the world and it was just around the corner from our hostel. So of course that evening we jumped on a pub crawl and went to visit the famous ruin bars. These bars were decaying homes which have been emptied out and filled with an eclectic mix of retro furnishings and decorations and turned into very cool night spots. Szimpla is the one that has the top rating. It goes over two stories linked by winding spiral staircases. Fuelled with a little dutch courage from a hefty pre-drinking session, we went about meeting some new friends in the tourist-filled bars. As a result we encountered some of the most creative pick-up tactics I have seen in a while:

• Apparently, if your name is George you are in luck. With the recent naming of the royal baby this name now has some serious pull, as a 21 year old English lad discovered with one of my friends. 
• Also, lulling the girl into a false sense of security with quite camp mannerisms and studying fashion seems to (almost) work. Another friend of mine found herself sitting on a guy's lap for this reason but became quite confused when his hands started wondering up and down her leg. By the time he offered to buy her a drink she was out of there. 
• Or finally, if all else fails and you're Canadian and attractive, you can just grab the faces of three girlfriends and give each of them a cheeky kiss. You may even have the audacity to remind the girls of this the next day (well played "Canadian Dave").

Needless to say after a night of vodka shots, beer chasers and Baileys on the rocks my last day in Budapest was spent sleeping, eating and debriefing with the girls. On my way to the airport I met a Hungarian-born American who told me she had caught up with her ex-husband while in Budapest and had gone for a candle-lit dinner to "celebrate" their divorce 30 odd years ago. She seemed to think Budapest was a good place for karmic retribution. I just think it's a good vibes city and I was so sad to say goodbye.