July 7th, 2025
Another day, more hectic travel. Couldn’t sleep the night before I left ESA; instead I stayed up until midnight and got about 4 hours of sleep total before waking up at 5:00 and heading out the door. I’d already said all my goodbyes the previous night, so I basically just said thanks to the couple of people who were hanging around early and left. Travelling to and through Copenhagen Airport was easy; I timed from the train arrival to sitting down at the gate and it was only about 36 minutes.
Flew from Copenhagen to London Heathrow to meet up with a couple more online friends; figured I may as well get the most out of my time in Europe while I was here. Got to meet a friend and her wonderful boyfriend, who were gracious enough to drive me around the greater London area, all the way out to Reading to put down my stuff, then back to meet up with an Irish friend of mine who’s just finishing up his studies in the area at KEW Gardens. Got rained out for a few minutes, but honestly it just served to cool things down a bit, and had a nice walk around regardless and got some pictures.
Went to a nearby pub after and had dinner and a few drinks; my first of the trip, funny enough. 3 gin and tonics and I was spinning until I finally got some food in me, and I couldn’t pass up on a good chippy while I’m in the UK. It hit me on the way back to my friend’s flat just how lucky I am to have so many friends and acquaintences in so many places around the world; not only has it been good to have familiar faces in odd places, but it’s saved me quite a bit of money renting out hotel rooms as well. I was even able to wash my clothes and let them dry overnight, thankfully; some of them were getting pretty rank after a week of sweaty running around. After some early morning trains, I’m currently sitting on a 5 hour ride up to Scotland, and am very excited to meet up with my last acquaintence of the trip.
After getting some time to think by myself between not having cell service all of yesterday and having a slowly dying laptop battery right now, I’ve started to come to some conclusions on what this trip is. ESA was the front half; hectic and manic, constantly in motion and celebrating friends and speedruns and the little moments we get to have together. This back half of the trip in the UK is decidedly more low-energy, a time to rest and recuperate, walk around parks and sit on trains and just relax. But the whole time I’ve been around everybody I’ve met this trip, I’ve felt loved and appreciated and frankly just happy to be here, even as the exhaustion of constant social interaction and travel starts to get to me again. Watching the English countryside go rushing by, I can’t help but realize just how much love there is out in the world, and after being cooped up in a tiny office cubicle for months with little interaction with people outside of my family, it’s been good to get out there and experience it first hand again.
It’s a bit cheesy, but if you’re reading this, I love you. You deserve it and should get to go out into the world and feel it for yourself, and you should go make sure others feel it too.