Erza goes East

Erza Goes East

An oddly specific name for a blog right?

The whole aim of this blog is to talk about travel in a really candid way. I notice with a lot of travel blogs it all tends to be very optimistic, and there isn’t anything wrong with that, but what about us downbeats? (looking at my fellow earth signers)

I love travelling, who doesn’t? And although I do sometimes just go travelling purely just the fun of it, Budapest for example, a lot of times in my life I got on a plane because shit had hit the fan. And don’t get me wrong, I am not an irresponsible person who escapes at the first sign of trouble. Far from it. I just think that the best way to tackle a problem is with a clear head and a short (or sometimes long) break from it all.

That was how I got the name for this blog. My dear ex-partner Daniel’s nickname for me was Erza (crafted from my middle name Erzsebet). He is so great at just creating nicknames for people, cool names just roll off his tongue, I swear! What happened was during 2018 my brother Theo, quite literally my brother from another mother as we’re half-siblings, was having a crisis. Without going into it, his mother was very ill for a long time before finally passing away in December. Fabien, his mother, was honestly the greatest person you could meet. She didn’t speak a drop of English and my French speaking skills are waaayyy below par, but she could make anyone feel so welcome and loved, no matter any language barrier. Having never had a mother myself, the loss of Fabien stung as she was the picture of a perfect mother that I fantasized about when I was a little girl. After spending the winter in Paris and giving our Fabien a beautiful send off, it was time for me to go back in January to return to University and I thanked the Gods I had stayed on top of my assignments (all top grades, thank you very much). And then disaster struck once again. Our mate Max was now very sick and it didn’t look good.

I knew that I would have to return back to France at some point to give my brother the support he needed as he now dealt with the illness of his best friend. So I immediately threw myself into my work to make sure that when I was bekoned to Brittany I could leave without much worry. The university was really helpful, honestly I am so proud to be apart of my university as it is one of the best in London in terms of student support and lifestyle, but the same could not be said of my friends. In October 2018, I had moved in with my friend Sabina and her flatmates. One of them was a little psycho (she stole from others, spread nasty rumours about others, even almost bullied a fellow flatmate to suicide- but we’ll discuss her in another post) but the others seemed okay. A little spoilt, I thought, but we all have our flaws (I could go on forever about mine!). Besides, I had a creepy older housemate that I wanted to get away from, so moving in with friends where I felt safe and much closer to my uni, seemed like such an appealing option!

Things went okayish when I first started living with them. There was movie nights, study dates at the library, going out to meals. All the good stuff about living with friends. The only times when there was a hitch was with the “psychopath down the hall” as my brother named her, who had spread rumours about me behind my back but given her track record with lying no one really paid it much notice. However, things really broke down when Max was diagnosed. Max was dear to me and Theo: He was Theo’s oldest friend from university, even sharing a room together to keep living costs low, and despite being his less cool little sister Max always made the effort to have just as good a relationship with me. This was the guy who would ask how I was, if I needed money or a car ride back to London from Paris, and it really hurt. Even more so as I knew that whatever I was feeling Theo felt 1000x’s more. However, after throwing myself into my work at uni and taking more shifts at work in preparation for the worst, I noticed no one was talking to me in the flat. There was no “how are you?”, “everything okay?” or “tell me about your day”. And it was kind of what I expected from the friends who I had previously stayed up till 3am just talking about them and working through their problems. I noticed they were fine when I asked them how their day went: they’d go into looong paragraphs about everything that had happened to them but would 100% of the time neglect to even ask me about mine.

It would be reasonable to critique me and say, “well, maybe you should have told them you wanted to talk?” I think I would have done if not for the fact that when Fabien passed and told my flatmates about it, there wasn’t really much of a reaction. They moved swiftly past it so they could talk about what happened over their Christmas holidays. And then, the biggest insult was when I first got the phone call from Theo about Max. He went into detail talking about skin grafts, how upset Max was and him having to move from Paris back to his family in Brittany (something I knew Max never wanted to do). I was in the kitchen with two of my housemates, Sara and Princess, who were sitting at the kitchen table playing cards. I immediately told them about the bad news. Or, at least I tried but was continously interrupted- “whats the rules to this game, again?” “you play it like this”. I gave up as I couldn’t even get through a sentence. I was visibly upset, why am I not worth more than a casual card game?

After speaking with Sara, I asked, why is everyone accusing me of ignoring them because I am a little sad recently? “You were ignoring me”, I disagreed. I had been studying (that thing you’re meant to do as a student) and didn’t have time to comfort them when they had their stuff stolen by the psychopath they should have thrown out long out before I even moved in, or when they accidently said their boyfriend had a small you know and made him upset (and actual thing I had to counsel one of them through). The only problem was that they weren’t getting the attention they were used to and so I had outlived my usefulness. Sara agreed. I immediately regretted the amount of time I had invested into my friendships with them. My friendships are the most important thing in my life- being an oprhan, I don’t have much family to bond with, and sodevote myself to my friends. And no sacrifice is too much to me- because I always knew that when times got tough, they would be there for me. A niave ideal past me had.

“Come to Brittany”, Theo said, “fuck them all. Fuck London.”

My bro is always full of pearls of wisdom. And I think this was one of them. I left on Thursday, making sure to pack all of my furniture as when I made the inevitable trip back to London to resume my education I sure as hell wasn’t going to keep living there. I got to see Max, and if anyone of you have had a sick relative, you know what someone looks like when they are deteriating in front of your eyes. I prefer to not remember what he looked like back then or the last time I got to see him before he passed away. I like to think about him when he came and stayed with me in London, with his fashionable clothes and slicked back hair, when he let me (for whatever reason) try to have his moustache off that he grew for Movember with a blunt shaver. I never felt more nervous in my life, lol.

I eventually came back to London and moved out of Sabinas flat within 2 days of getting there. They all knew where I had been, who I went to see and why, and yet, not a text from any one of them. I moved into one of my brothers friends place, and despite their hospitality and kindness, I was a little dejected. I put so much effort into building, what I thought, were valuable relationships and it was all destroyed within seconds of me needing support. There was a lot of self-reflection and questioning myself that took place. What if I had just hidden how tired and depressed I was?

And then I got it.

The phonecall. (Thats a good thing I swear!) I answered the phone and it was one of the most friendly and most upbeat voices I had ever heard. “We want you to be an angloviller!”

I would be able to go to Poland, live in 3 different cities, get a free TEFL qualification and make new better friendships that would waaay succeed the friendships I had just broken off. I get to go in July- July 5th to be exact and I am so excited! And thats why this blog is named Erza goes East. The east is looking to be so full of better things and better people, who could not name their blog after it?

What is your story and your heartbreak?

Wherever you go, go with all your heart

-Confucius