Celebrating your birthday away from home

I love celebrating my birthday and even when I try to make it as small as possible, it always turns into a big celebration! I see my birthday not only as an opportunity to celebrate another year, but to bring friends together and enjoy the time with those closest to me.

I’ve been living abroad for nearly 2 years and rather than heading home to London for my birthday, as I did last year, this year I decided to spend my birthday in Frankfurt, the city I relocated to.

Why did I go home last year?
To be honest, I didn’t want to spend my birthday in Frankfurt last year. There was something that just made me feel that I wouldn’t be as happy here as I would if I went back to London. I wanted to be surrounded by my closest friends and family and didn’t quite feel like I’d reached that point yet with a lot of people who I’d met in Frankfurt. There was almost a fear that if I stayed in Frankfurt, I could possibly be disappointed and I therefore chose to head home to where I knew I would enjoy myself. Not all expats are able to do this with such ease and I felt lucky to be able to book a flight to London for just a few days.

What’s different this year?
This year, however, after already travelling to London in April, May and June, I decided that heading back to celebrate my birthday in July would just be too much. So instead, I was going to stay in Frankfurt. And plus, this time I actually wanted to.

Did you enjoy yourself?
To put it simply, yes. But what I most enjoyed is that I realised how much I have grown as a person. I had plans for the entire day, and even had friends fly over from London, but top of my list was to ensure that I had some ‘me time’, seeing that it was my day after all! So I woke up early, headed to the gym and then took myself out for breakfast on the river. I would never have imagined doing this on my birthday two years ago, but as I ate my pancakes with a view of the skyline, I honestly couldn’t have felt happier.

And the rest?
But of course, breakfast in the morning and a quiet dinner in the evening wasn’t quite enough for me. I headed to the other side of the river to enjoy a few drinks as the sun set over the skyline and celebrate with some people I have met during my time in Frankfurt. It’s crazy; this time two years ago I combined my birthday celebration in London with my leaving for Frankfurt party and now here I am, thinking about how much of an amazing birthday I had with friends I couldn’t have even imagined I’d meet. Whilst I would have loved to have had my friends and family from back home here to celebrate too, I had the best first birthday abroad and it’s definitely made me realise how happy I am to be in this city. Here’s to spending my 27th year in Frankfurt!