I'm back from two weeks in the UK and yet again I am staggered by the differences between my two – one childhood, one temporary – homelands.
I was back to go to my sister's hen do in London, complete with fancy dress, cocktails, a bar crawl and a big shiny double-decker bus. It was strangely liberating to be out with a big group of girls, drinking and dancing and speaking English in the way that is frowned upon in France and expect is not the norm in Romania.
We spent more in one night than I usually spend in a month here, and London was full of shops, bars, cafés, restaurants etc, all willing me to spend money. Normally I would be slightly opposed to this brazen capitalism but I do feel now comforted by what I grew up with as normal.
That being said, I did not like my first visit to the new shopping centre in Bury St Edmunds. It looks out of place in the quaint Olde Worlde town, and was so squeaky clean it was uncomfortable. So, maybe I'm not ready to become a WAG just yet.
After the hen do, comes the wedding of course. Which was lovely, if a little damp and chilly.
And then all too soon I'd waved good-bye to my family again and I was back on a plane to Bucharest. The weather here was decidedly not chilly – the taxi driver was in shorts. At half past 11 at night.
And when we crawled back onto out muggy street there was a party going on; not quite like the one I'd been at the previous night in a smart hall, in a park with everyone in their finery. One with people dancing on their driveway by songs sung by their uncle, not unlike this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-61EW799GkE
If only it hadn't gone on 'til sunrise, I might got some sleep!
