(Anyone who noticed that this blog was retired for about a month, forget everything you saw.)
I've now been abroad for just under three months - well, I left on the 30th of May and it's now the 20th of August. The plan to walk the West Highland Way this summer went out the window when I had to spend 50 euros on a taxi across Rome at the last minute (fuck you very much, WizzAir) and overspent in Greece and basically realised I couldn't really afford to fly home, and it made more sense to wait it out on the continent until my family showed up to drive me safely back to England.
Yeah, that's a pretty stupid plan, I know. I am now out of money. However, the next couple of weeks will be spent with various family members - the last couple of weeks, actually - and then I will have made it. Sort of. Back into my student debt and whatnot.
So far, I've spent a month working on my beloved farm in Greece, a month teaching children and living with families in Romania, and three weeks city-hopping with interrail which brings us to now - chilling out for a week in an airbnb flat beside Lake Como until we meet with parents. After bouncing from Suceava to Cluj-Napoca to Vienna to Prague to Berlin to Amsterdam to Brussels to Bordeaux to Lyon and finally to a friend's near Grenoble, this is a very welcome break. It's nice to be able to cook for ourselves at last, too - who knew you could get tired of eating in restaurants...
It has been a very eventful summer - I learned to drive a horse-drawn cart and a motorbike, stood in the way of a herd of galloping ponies, ate more meat than I have for ten years, got sick, swam in Lake Geneva while waiting for a train... there are more stories, and they'll get their time eventually.
When I get the time I'll be writing more about my Romanian experience (really the most apt word), my second summer in Greece and the adventures that followed. Until then.
I've now been abroad for just under three months - well, I left on the 30th of May and it's now the 20th of August. The plan to walk the West Highland Way this summer went out the window when I had to spend 50 euros on a taxi across Rome at the last minute (fuck you very much, WizzAir) and overspent in Greece and basically realised I couldn't really afford to fly home, and it made more sense to wait it out on the continent until my family showed up to drive me safely back to England.
Yeah, that's a pretty stupid plan, I know. I am now out of money. However, the next couple of weeks will be spent with various family members - the last couple of weeks, actually - and then I will have made it. Sort of. Back into my student debt and whatnot.
So far, I've spent a month working on my beloved farm in Greece, a month teaching children and living with families in Romania, and three weeks city-hopping with interrail which brings us to now - chilling out for a week in an airbnb flat beside Lake Como until we meet with parents. After bouncing from Suceava to Cluj-Napoca to Vienna to Prague to Berlin to Amsterdam to Brussels to Bordeaux to Lyon and finally to a friend's near Grenoble, this is a very welcome break. It's nice to be able to cook for ourselves at last, too - who knew you could get tired of eating in restaurants...
It has been a very eventful summer - I learned to drive a horse-drawn cart and a motorbike, stood in the way of a herd of galloping ponies, ate more meat than I have for ten years, got sick, swam in Lake Geneva while waiting for a train... there are more stories, and they'll get their time eventually.
When I get the time I'll be writing more about my Romanian experience (really the most apt word), my second summer in Greece and the adventures that followed. Until then.
