September + October 2025

It's been a long while haha... I am writing this from the United Kingdom right now, not somewhere I expected to be. Well I did expect it, I have been planning this trip for a long time, but it never really seemed like it would happen, and now I'm suddenly here! I didn't mean to neglect this site, but a combination of uni work, travel and other goals in life meant that it fell down my list priorities.

Where to start, where to start... Well, since around June, I've been travelling Europe! Travelled all over the continent, visited 16 countries over 90 days. I really didn't think this trip would ever end, but surprise! It did! This saw me move out of the university accomodation which I've spent the last two and the half years in, as I'm not moving back in once I return. It was weird. I remember being in my first year, and being careful with my words, never referring to it as "home", or to say "I'm going home". However, after 2.5 years, I can confidently say that it became a somewhat of a home. It was a little sad to leave, to know that I would never walk those halls as a resident again, never cook another 3am in quiet kitchens or watch anime in darkened tea rooms. However, in a way I had already left that accomodation months ago. All my friends were gone, merely a skeleton crew left to haunt these halls, my time spent between job and class outside those walls. I was but a phantom that haunted empty rooms, a ghost of a name once whispered under flourecent lights.

In June, I left on a school trip to study and visit the battlefields of the First World War. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, undertaken in the name of an aethiestic divinity core to the state, a once-in-a-lifetime trip not many would have had the opportunity to make. From the trekking the craggy ridges of Gallipoli, to wandering cratered ruins in the rolling hills of Verdun, or scaling the ancient walls of Ypres, I walked the footstep of those Australian soldiers who crossed the horizon to fight in the name of a far-away king. Throughout this journey, I tasted food I would never have tried, saw sights I would never have witnessed, and walked alongside those that I would never have met. It was a journey across three countries (Turkiye, Belgium and France) filled with delicious food (I had an unnamed local pastry in Lille, France that was absolutely delicious) and countless moments of comradeship and fun. From dashing through rainy streets, to singing our hearts out at karaoke, and gossip sessions in pizza restaurants, a series of days filled full of passion and friviolity under the burning European sun, voices carried afar by the western winds.

It was a sobering realisation, on that lonely final day in Paris, that I would probably never cross paths with most of those men and women again, nor ever walk upon that well-trodden path once more. It is funny isn't it? At the end of a tour across wonderous landscapes and delicious foodstuffs, the only thing that remained was a view of shrinking backs and ashy taste of time passing.