When telling you’re friends and family you have swapped your $200 per book text books for a plane ticket and backpack, make sure you have a hole proof plan. Merely stating, “oh we’re just going to get the cheapest plane ticket and figure it all out when we arrive”, will not cut it, if you like myself, only had four semesters until you were to don the robe and walk out with a Bachelors degree.

The reaction I was met with after informing my closest family and friends of my swift departure from my dream course was what I would imagine one would receive had I just informed them I had decided to grow dreadlocks and move to Jamaica with my new Rastafarian best friends to start a band called ‘The Hemp Warriors’.

Although I wasn’t leaving on the next plane out of Brisbane airport with a one way ticket to Jamaica, Europe sounded so much more appealing! Dozens of vintage flee markets, as many berries and croissants I could stomach as well as authentic European Topshop and Zara stores, not the hand me down designs Australian fashionistas are gifted… the books would have to wait.

With little geographical knowledge of the European continent (I had passed off geography for pursuing fashion magazines in what was labelled as ‘textiles class’), the only way I could think of preparing for my impending journey across the seas was through the aid of cinema. If Roman holiday, Monte Carlo and James Bond were anything to go by, I was in for a hell of a good time! (I chose to conveniently forget the plot synopsis of Taken 1&2 during this study).