I miss London. I miss that big busy city with all my heart. Don't get me wrong, I love living in a small town in the Dutch polder. I love to wake up on a Saturday morning and hear absolutely nothing except for some chirping birds outside my window. Yet sometimes I find myself staring out of the window at the ducks in the pond behind my house and think: 'I miss London so much.'
I spent only a few days in London back in October, but every single one of those days was filled with awesomeness. The city is so alive compared to my sleepy hometown. I had to keep my eyes open the entire time; if I blinked, I'd miss something amazing. I'm not just talking about buildings or monuments. Actually I'm mostly talking about the people. I saw so types of people I'd never see back home and sometimes I really couldn't help but stare.

Stare like that. I have a creepy stare.

Things that would catch half the town's attention are completely normal in London. Drunk man yelling at inanimate objects? Okay, we'll just let him be, happens all the time. Guy at the stop lights who looks exactly like Jon Snow? Nothing to see here. Men wearing turbans? Plenty of those around here. School class full of five-year-olds in the cutest school uniforms ever? Yeah, we see that cuteness every day in this city. Oh, and a taxi cab driver who's reading a magazine while driving his cab through the crazy London traffic? Totally normal, why does that even surprise you?

Back home I don't see any of these types of people. Drunk men usually stay inside or fall over into some bushes on the corner of the street, where no one sees them. There's not a single dude here who looks like Jon Snow (and I choose to believe I actually saw the real deal that day in London). Seeing a man wearing a turban in the Dutch polder is as rare as finding a unicorn and school uniforms have never been a thing in this country. If a taxi drives through town, everyone is surprised and wondering what kind of fancy person is sitting in that backseat.

It's nice to live in a small town, but you rarely see any colorful characters. People leave their culture at home, cabs are for posh people and if you want to get drunk, you do it at home. It's almost like a culture shock when you arrive in London as a small town girl. After a while, though, if you keep your eyes open, it turns into wonderland. No matter how hard you try not to, you'll find yourself staring at all the people all the time. There's something awesome to discover on every street corner. Compared to that, my hometown is sleepiest place on earth.

Stay Awesome!

Source

Nothing much ever happens in my hometown near Rotterdam. Sure there are a few crazy people around: the paedophile from down the street, the mentally handicapped guy who likes girls a little too much and one or two violent drug addicts. But they keep quiet and if you didn't already know they where there, you'd never know.
How different it was in London, where the crazy people are impossible not to notice. I saw a man try to beat up a map of the Underground because he couldn't find out where he was. One man must've thought he was a tour guide: he kept pointing out invisible buildings to an imaginary crowd. One... one even wanted to kill my dad...

It was our last night in London and my parents and I where looking for an Indian restuarant. As we were walking down the street, a man came walking towards us. He had dark brown skin, dreadlocks, wore saggy pants, overpriced sneakes and an oversized shirt and sweater. You know the type I'm talking about, if not from real life, then from internet and movies.
This man kept walking straight at my dad. My dad simply refuses to step aside in situations like these. Usually the other person steps aside, sometimes shoulders bump and on this occasion, things went very wrong.
My dad and the man didn't just bump into each other's shoulders, it was a serious collision. If it had been me, I would've been flying towards a painful meeting with the sidewalk's concrete. My dad made an indignant noise and already started to walk away when the man started yelling at him. I'm giving you the uncensored version so yes, do expect things to get nasty from now on.
'Hey! Are you fucking blind or something? Didn't you see me or what? You fucking stupid man?'
Now here's one, no, two things you need to know about my dad: he's a black belt in karate and doesn't step down from a confrontation like this one. Never.
My dad turned around, looked the man straight in the eye and said: 'Sure, I'm stupid.'
I can remember thinking he was going to give us a karate demonstration. That nothing could go wrong for my dad. I was so naive.
'Yeah? You fucking stupid?' the man yelled. 'You want me to kill you or something?'
When I heard those words, I froze. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even think anything except for 'it's over, we're done'.
'I'm gonna fucking shoot you in front of your family!' Tha man, only a feet or two away from my dad, reached for something inside his pocket. I didn't want to find out what he was reaching for. Neither did my mom.
'Come on, let it go, let's get out of here,' she practically begged my dad in Dutch. I was afraid he wouldn't listen to her. He never listens to anyone when he's enraged.
'We're going,' he said in the same language while maintaining eye contact with the lunatic that wanted to kill him. Then, suddenly, he walked away, my mom and I right at his heels. I was terrified the man would follow us, but all he did was yell more threats and throw more F-bombs at us.

We never made it to an Indian restuarant. My mom was trembling with fear and I walked around like some sort of zombie. All I wanted was to go back to our hotel room. We ordered pizza and took it back to the hotel. It'd been a long time since I'd been that scared and it'll be a long time before I'll feel completely comfortable in London again.

Stay Awesome!

PS. Sorry for all those swear words...

A few months ago, when I was asked to review the first book in the Kitty Hawk series by Iain Reading, Amazon had one job: send me the first book in the series. You can imagine how surprised I was when I received the fourth book instead of the first.

I promised myself not to freak out and fangirl. I promised to behave like a responsible adult. I promised to look at everything with amused interest. I should've known better...

Yay for bad quality pictures!

Months ago, when my parents decided to go to London, I practically begged them to let me do the Harry Potter Studio Tour. My dad, stubborn as he is, decided that it was absolutely unnecessary to buy tickets in advance. By the time we arrived in London, I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to book a tour anymore. You can imagine how happy I was when I heard we could get a place on the tour just two days later. What I didn't know: I was also just in time for the Dark Arts feature!
Not that I knew about the Dark Arts feature... After arriving and freaking out over the Ford Anglia and the cupboard under the stairs I still thought I was going to have a normal day of awesomeness. It wasn't until after the introduction film that I heard about this extra piece of awesomeness.
"You can actually have your picture taken with a Death Eater,"someone from the staff told the group.
"Now who would want that? Death Eaters are evil" is what I first thought. Turns out, it was exactly what I wanted.

Once the doors to the Great Hall opened, I broke my promise for the second time: I started fangirling and didn't stop. Not even when I was threatened by a Death Eater.

"Yay a Death Eater that's... OH CRAP"

I think she wasn't amused, cause she followed me and tried to scare me. It only resulted in a huge giggling fit from my side. After that, everything became one big blur of amazing props and Butterbeer.

Butterbeer was like nothing I'd ever tasted before. I don't know what was in there, but I went from normal hyperactive to the extreme kind of hyperactivity that's susually caused by Mountain Dew. I'm not sure if it was caused by the Butterbeer though - it could also have been a result of Diagon Alley's creepiness and the Death Eaters stalking the street.

At the end of the day I'd seen so much, done so much and fangirled so much that I was completely exhausted. I tried putting pen to paper and describe the experience. I like to think I'm pretty good at that, but this time I didn't stand a chance. You see, when I was 15 and constantly going to hospitals, trying to figure out why I was shaking like and epileptic while remaining consciousness, Hogwarts was the place I went to so I could forget all my worries. After hearing I had extreme symptoms of hyperventilation, it was my safe place. Being a Potterhead became a huge part of who I am and seeing all the things and places I came to love so much left me speechless. I still can't find the right words to describe my day at the studios. I'll give it my best shot once more: it was simply amazing.

Stay Awesome!

I live in a country where almost everyone has been to London at least once. Teenage girls say they loooove London, in the same tone of voice they use to talk about their new shoes. London is the place where all the female hipsters and aspiring writers want to live as soon as possible. Some bloggers even claim that their lives aren't complete without their annual trip to the city on the Thames.
Usually I ignore such proclamations. They just make me wonder: all those people who pee their pants when they hear the name London, do they even know what London is really like?

I won't say I'm an expert on London. I'd only been there once, back in 2012 when the city was turned upside down for the Olympics. Not exactly every day London, I guess. And all those stories about shopping adventures or spending all your time in a coffee shop, I don't think that's every day London either. You see, I think every city has a soul, something completely unique. Last week I spent five days in London and I tried to find that soul. Did I succeed? I don't know, but along the way I saw thousands of little things that make this city so special.

Once you stop fangirling over London and open your eyes, you'll see wonderful little things that you otherwise wouldn't notice. Like sumo wrestlers taking over street signs.


London is like a maze. I've never been very good with directions (except in Rome, for some reason I knew exactly where everything was in Rome), but London... I was lost at least twice a day. It's worth it though. London isn't one of those mazes that has a reward at the end, but loads of awards along the way. Like people blowing gigantic bubbles.

London is like fiction come to life. Yes, I'm talking about 221B Baker Street, but also the countless other places that are described in so many of my favorite books. But yes, I went to Baker Street. No, I have absolutely no idea who that lady in the background is, but the one with the awesome Batman sweater is me, of course.

London is a bit like the internet: there's always something exciting going on somewhere. You might not even know it, like I didn't even know that the rugby world cup was taking place a few miles from my hotelroom, or that I was at the cinema where Vin Diesel would appear just a few hours later for a premier. I discovered that latter a day later, when I was reading the paper.


London is like my high school classmate Jasmin: extremely popular, yet she always had time for everyone and was kind to the unpopular kids. I've heard more people speak obscure Eastern European and Asian languages than English with a British accent. But that's all fine. Everyone is welcome in London. I like to believe that if the world was a high school, San Francisco would be the laid-back kid that's half stoned in the back of the class, Adelaide it's laid-back but not stoned friend and London, that would be the kid that welcomes everyone to its table at lunch. Even the Chinese president, who was welcomed by hundreds of lanterns in Chinatown.


Sure, London isn't all awesomeness. I've seen one if its nasty sides too and will tell about it later. But for now, let me just say that I do understand why so many people love London.

Stay Awesome!