10 things I've learnt about travelling

 /people who travel/I spend too much time on modes of transport.

1. Your luggage probably doesn't come with a neon sign attached to it, so sometimes people won't see it and will walk into it, this is your fault. 

2. Also sometimes if you don't come with a neon sign attached to you and you're small enough to be looked over, people will walk into you, this is also your fault. 

3. Seats on any form of transport are measured using tiny children, because there is no way even a small adult would have given the okay to seats that size. 

4. Seat reservations are to be taken seriously, and if you've had the impertinence to misread your ticket and sit in the wrong place you deserve to be publicly shamed through a collection of excessively loud declarations of your error and exasperated sighs as you get ready to move. 

5. Some people will crave human contact so badly they will sit next to you even if there is plenty of other space available.

6. Travel is the time to live your dreams. People who sit behind appear me appear to have dreamt of playing percussion (read as: you are not Keith Moon; stop tapping on my chair).

7. If you're carrying a hiking rucksack as opposed to a suitcase, you are obviously a student or on your gap year, and therefore less worthy of the respect or courtesy of everyone around you. 

8. Most children will be quiet most of the time, on the occasion they dare to make noise it is customary to exchange pained glances with everyone around you. 

9. Sometimes all the stars and planets align and you get two seats to yourself  for a whole journey-this is impossible to enjoy at the time however, due to the fear that will grip you at every station that someone might get on and sit down.

10. 99% of the time, everyone has a pretty firm grasp of social convention and knows exactly when it is a appropriate to make conversation and when it is not. That 1% is the worst 2 hours of your life.

But I had a really nice Easter and now it's moving into double figure temperatures (that's right, people of Britain, it's cold in other places too) we can do things outside and I know I've been really bad at this recently but I'll try and get better I swear.

Until next time!
xx

1 & 1/2 bits of good news and an example of how awkward I find life.

1- I've been asked to guest post! These are available at the links below if you want to read them, I'm personally just really excited about the fact that they're even there, and it's just crazy that something I wrote would ever look that good and professional.

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/taken-2-movie-2012-review-more-of-the-same-in-a-good-way/

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/28-days-later-2002-film-review/

...and 1/2 - The lovely people at Expatica wanted to advertise with me, unfortunately because of the way Wordpress is (i.e. free) I can't change the HTML set-up etc. etc. so this wasn't possible (it's like a you can live here but you can't paint the walls kind of deal), but it was very sweet of them to ask and I hope I get the chance to work with them in the future.

And the example of how awkward I find life:

This happened when I was going to a gig last Tuesday (discovered an awesome band, there will be a video below).

So I don't um, pay for public transport here, basically they just have machines on the street/metro stations where you can buy tickets but they don't actually check if you have them and it's expensive and I'm poor blah blah. I'm going to defend myself here by saying that I can only use public transport about 3 times a week max. and I walk everywhere else I need to go every other time. Although realistically I don't actually feel that guilty about it because I watch basically everyone else who gets on the bus/tram/metro do exactly the same thing. Sorry STIB/the Belgian economy.

But sometimes they do have people that check tickets, and I thought I'd spotted one of these people, so I stood up to get off hoping he wouldn't check me if I was leaving the bus, but whilst I was stood up it came to my attention he wasn't checking tickets, just asking people where they were going to so the bus company could improve their services. However, because I have absolutely no control over my social awkwardness I obviously felt compelled to get off the bus anyway because I'd been stood by the doors for so long that if I just sat back down it would look weird. So I travelled about 20 metres and had to walk the rest of the way, for no reason other than not wanting to look weird in front of all of about 5 people. I guess that's what you get for cheating the system whilst also having no social skills.

This is the band I was talking about, I'm not really a fan of the bees myself, but almost everyone I've shown this to (and apparently everyone on YouTube) has disagreed with me, so enjoy.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/a_bAQZATCTM]

Also a lot of people have been sharing this around but it's so good I feel I should do it too.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/8nif01WZ9aI]

Have a lovely last week of November :)

xx