It's my birthday & I'll sodding cry if I want to.

Last weekend saw me celebrate my twenty seventh birthday & I think it's safe to say, my hatred of birthdays is now well & truly set in concrete.  Why is it that birthdays are such a giver of joy when you're young & then they slide into this category of doom, once you reach a certain age.  I really can't understand it.

With one friend packing up to flit off to Vietnam for three months, another unavailable & the Swede working, it was entirely down to Katie to stop me falling into a deep depressive, age turning coma.  I give it to her, she tried her darnedest!  Unfortunately, by the end of the evening we'd gone way past the state of melancholy & had arrived squarely in the state of catatonia.

The morning had not started well & let's face it, a bad morning has a tendency to cause a ripple effect through the day.  Having set off on my bicycle to meet Katie in Prenzlauer Berg, I wondered what the peculiar noise emitting from my back wheel was, only to find that it was as flat as the pancakes I was craving. 

I was forced to retreat back to the apartment, tuck my bike back in the courtyard & take the dreaded U-Bahn, something I begrudge shelling out for on every level.  It's expensive, it takes longer than cycling & battling with crowds is nothing short of stress inducing.  It brings on the memories of my once daily London commute & that is something I am definitely happy to forget!

Attempting to stifle my growing sense of despair, Katie & I decided on a plan of action for the day, which was to finally go indulge in vegan chocolate crêpes, then head for a stroll around the Botanischer Garten, snapping the florals along the way & then finally ending at Bite Club in Mitte for dinner.  I really needed the day to improve vastly by this point.

In search of quelling my crêpe cravings, we headed over to OhLaLa (Mainzer Straße 18, 10247), the French vegan patisserie, nestled in Friedrichshain, which was the first place we frequented together, upon my original arrival in Berlin back in May.  Unfortunately, as it was a Saturday, they were only doing their brunch buffet & so my lust for crêpes was left to linger & we simply gave way to the food on offer.

There's something about buffets.  I feel as though they trigger off this knee-jerk reaction in me to over consume.  I think I had about eight miniature puddings & three platefuls of the savoury options.  It was nice, but expensive & unfortunately, it failed to satisfy the desires I'd been harbouring, in contemplation of my birthday breakfast.  Alas, we moved on.

Having been left without our wheels, it took two tube rides & a further two buses to reach the Botanischer Garten.  By which time, all notion of karma was out of the window & I actively encouraged Katie to probe for the student tickets.  Hey, we're enrolled in the school of life, that's good enough, right?

Thankfully the weather was kind to us, being nicely warm & sunny & we strolled around for a few hours, taking it all in.  Me snapping up some petals here & there.  Finally leaving the gardens, we hopped back on a bus, then onto the metro, followed by another bus & finally walked up Schönhauser Allee, to Bite Club for dinner.

To my disappointment, there weren't a great deal of vegan options.  I don't know if the venue in Kreuzberg is bigger, but the Mitte site is quite small & variety is limited.  I ended up indulging in a Taiwanese tofu burger from Bao Kitchen.  Served in a steamed bun, it was actually rather scrummy, so I may track them down again.

As the evening loomed, Katie cycled off to a party in Kreuzberg with her Californian calligrapher man shape & I, despite enjoying my day for the most part, had reached saturation point & solemnly walked to Eberswalder Straße station, attempting not to crumble into tears along the way.  Fucking birthdays.

The evening disintegrated further with some drunken Swede behaviour & some Rabbi rejection & by the end of it, I honestly just wanted to throw myself out of the kitchen window.  Poor mère received the brunt of my frustration through the power of Whatsapp, which I felt rather guilty about the next day.

I don't know what it is about birthdays that brings out this traumatising feeling of loneliness, that I seem to feel each time they come around.  In the past I have simply tried to avoid it by flitting off on holiday, but whilst I'm not exactly at 'home' in England anymore, I'm not really on vacation here in Berlin either.  So I found myself in a kind of limbo that forced me into the submersion of all these unwanted feelings.

Thankfully by Sunday morning, after baking & subsequently eating an entire tray of brownies, whilst watching a film, I started to regain some feelings of normality & emotional balance.  All I can say is, thank the heavens I only need 'celebrate' my birthday once a year!

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{Insightful Sunday} Self-Belief

There can be a very fine line between self-confidence & arrogance.  Trying to manage the perception of the former, so as to avoid appearing to be the latter, can often prove difficult, especially when you have invested a lot of that confidence & self-belief into something others simply either don't understand, or can't see to be viable.

Often in life, we fail to aim for the things that our heart desires, because we are surrounded by people who tell us that we are being unrealistic, either in our approach, or our goal.  They perceive that what we intend to achieve is nothing short of impossible, impractical or overly optimistic.  They are the naysayers & the fearmongers, who like to hold us back, so as to keep themselves content, in their own state of lacking.

Sometimes it's important to separate yourself from others, allow yourself to be in your own company & ask 'am I being unrealistic.'  If when asked the question, you feel a gentle, but distinctive, buzz of excitement in your gut, that feeds your desire to prove those who would doubt you wrong, then the answer is no.  It is that very grumble of energy that lets you know, you're on the right path.  As difficult & unrealistic as it may sometimes appear.

Believing in yourself is one of the key elements to succeeding in anything.  No one can see your dream as you do.  Even if you were to describe it, down to the minute detail, you would find that others conjure up different visions to your own.  It's also important to recognise, that everyone is on their own journey, having reached where they are by varying paths.

These different experiences are what individually feed us & our drive for something, but equally so, it can be those same differences that pull each other's ideas & dreams apart.  We must remember that each of us reach our destination via different methods & routes & to respect & accept those differences, we help to encourage other's objectives & aspirations, instead of tainting them with criticism, based from our own experience.

There is not one solution to every problem.  There is not one road to every destination.  Our journey is as individual as we are & we should remember that when faced with opposition.  Remember, if you don't believe in yourself & your direction, then it's likely that others will doubt as well.  This is not to say that it is easy, especially should you choose to set yourself up with a seemingly impossible task, however, it is that same self-belief that fires up your dogged determination, which in turn is what picks you up & pushes you on, when everyone is telling you to give up & life itself is throwing you a curve ball or two.

Of course, self-belief comes with confidence & if you are meek & timid & find yourself unable to speak up, you will most likely be lacking in it.  There will no doubt be that grumble hiding deep inside yourself, but where is the confidence to let it out.  It needs to be fed by your belief in its ability to turn from a simple grumble, into a seismic roar.  You may be afraid that you're unable to be as ferocious as you need to be, but believe me, your fear itself is the only thing to be afraid of here.

When you want something enough, when it's all that fills your mind & excites your soul, then you must trust that you are capable of achieving it.  You must believe in your ability to create that which you see in your mind.  You must have the confidence to stand against the people who will doubt you & know that you can prove them wrong.  Don't waste another second doubting what you already know to be true.  Believe in yourself & the rest will happen.

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One year travelversary!

Well, here we are, it's the 25th July 2014 & one whole year has passed since I listed my life on eBay, packed a bag, closed the door to my house for the very last time, having said goodbye to Mr Pig, my beloved Frenchie & tearfully hopped on a plane, rather clueless as to where I would end up.

Never did I imagine that twelve months would pass & I would find myself living in Berlin.  Paris yes, but Berlin had really never even crossed my mind as an ending point.  In all honestly though, I left England in a bit of a rush & with nothing more than a couple of flights booked, I didn't much know what I would be doing in a month's time, let alone twelve of the buggers.  The fact that I'm still in one piece, with a couple of pennies still in my bank account, is really a bit of a miracle!

It certainly has been the best of times & the worst of times!  I like to compare it to the sensation of being pulled through a hedge, backwards.  I left England feeling numb, completely adrift & entirely dependent on those around me.  I had become inherently needy, disgustingly insecure & unappreciative of everything that was on offer to me.  Essentially, I was useless & wasting my life away.

The past year has seen me lose everything I didn't know I didn't need, in order to gain a world of riches, that money simply cannot buy.  Through twelve months, five countries, twenty four towns & cities, two islands, numerous meltdowns & fits of hysteria, I am proud to say I have finally found peace, perspective, some amazing new friends & been fortunate enough to have had the most wonderful experience.

In one year, I have - stood in Sicilian fields, beating carob out of trees with bamboo canes, whilst bare faced & sweaty in dirt covered denim dungarees & leather sandals, faint from the thirty five degree heat.  Sailed on a yacht, in the Mediterranean, feeling a combination of awestruck & deathly nauseous.  Over-indulged on daily servings of sickly sweet gelato & mountainous portions of pasta, later resulting in some sauna self-loathing.  Had the joy of hand picking olives & seeing them go from press to bottle, all in the same day.  Learnt firsthand how to make fresh ravioli.  Experienced the warmth of the Italian hospitality.  Done sixteen hours on a bus from the sunny west side of Sicily to the dank cold of Rome.  Spent two hours a day meditating & finding my inner balance in a Buddhist monastery, in an Italian forest.  Learnt to communicate in hand gestures & basic conversational Italian.  Realised that my French language skills are now non-existent.  Fallen in love & then rapidly back out again.  Met some people, who have become like family to me & others who were simply passing on by.  Been to places that sucked me in & made me terrifically sad to leave & others that I am satisfied to never visit again.  Gotten lost more times than I can count.  Nearly ended up in dire straights, after making the fatal error of accepting a lift from a stranger, an early mistake I'd hasten to add.  Accrued more maps than I know what to do with.  Had some of my money pinched from my wallet & spent more than I care to think of.  Been crap at keeping in touch with everyone & entirely failed at sending a postcard from every destination.  Missed my friends more than I could express in words & missed mère & Mr Pig more than my heart could take at times.  Been elated & hopelessly bereft, all in equal measures.

I have stored up thousands upon thousands of other little experiences & tales that I have still yet to share & may never find the time to.  Maybe one day.

Overall, I may have never learnt to pack light, I still get ridiculously stressed before having to take a flight/train/bus & I never did end up living in Paris, or finding my brown-eyed bearded husband, but, I think I did alright.  So here's to the next twelve months!

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