Who needs Cancun when you can spend spring break in Leeds

While the majority of my friends packed their bags with bathing suits and shades, I gathered every nice sweater and pairs of pants I could find and flew off to Leeds, England with two of my friends in hopes of getting a taste of the English college life.

This unusual spring break trip arose when our British friends, who attend the University of Leeds and were our co-counselors at summer camp last year, invited us to stay with them both in Leeds for the party life, and London for the typical tourist attractions.

Being only exposed to Binghamton University and other Northeastern colleges, I was eager to experience typical nights out with my friends in Leeds. And after my nights out in England, I can safely say that students there really know how to party hard and make the most out of their years at college. Even though I couldn’t get the cliché, shirtless instagram picture I was able to live like a British college student for a week and that different experience showed my friends and I that we made a great choice in choosing Leeds as our spring break destination.

During my nights out in England I noticed several similarities and differences between the night life of Binghamton and Leeds students.

Pregame

Most Leeds students live off campus in houses, essentially right next to each other and like practically every college, the night begins with a usually smaller group of friends in a room passing around different shots and mixed drinks. There aren’t many drinking games like we have here, instead there’s just a lot of predictions for the night and friendly “banter” where everyone makes fun of each other.

Transportation

Unlike at Binghamton, where you establish relationships with the cab drivers from the very first day and call them whenever you need rides downtown or need them to pick up alcohol for you, the students at Leeds predominately use Uber or other similar apps on their phones to get rides to other pregames or the clubs. That meant that we couldn’t pack ten to twelve tipsy people into each cab like we’re used to at Bing and therefore had to order several cabs.

No Greek Life

You won’t find the large apartment buildings filled with sweaty freshmen and all the familiar faces you’re used to seeing on a night out. Since there are virtually no frats at Leeds (except for AEPi, but that’s more of a social club and not like most frats in America) you either pregame really late at your house, or if you’re like us and you hang out with all the good Jews at Leeds, you occasionally go to the Hillel house with all the other Jews and pregame some more but this time with more themed events. A cool addition to this house was that there was a bouncy castle type arena in the basement where you can drunkenly fight your friends with large inflatable batons.

Finally at the clubs

Right off the bat one can tell that the club scene at Leeds is certainly different than the bar scene at Binghamton. For starters, the clubs at Leeds are more similar to New York City as in they are very big and centered around large stages for the DJs. A significant difference with them is that the Leeds clubs are way cheaper than NYC ones. You also have to purchase tickets to these clubs prior to arriving there instead of handing three bucks to the bouncer at the door. Once you’re in, the rest of the night is fairly similar to one at Binghamton. After downing your typical jäger bombs, you move together with your group of friends to the middle of the dance floor and see the usual scenes which include small groups of girls and then the usual creepy dude lurking around waiting for their attention. In this case, the creepy dude was my high school friend who was visiting with me. Another difference from these clubs and the bars at Binghamton is that there are a bunch of photographers with high quality cameras that go around the club and take pictures of you and your friends and then they tag you on facebook the next day so that you don’t have to settle for blurry, low quality phone pictures.

Post-game munchies

The night starts to wrap up at around 4 in the morning and everyone starts getting different fast food cravings. They don’t have a night owl on campus like we do at Bing, but there are countless amounts of fast food restaurants where you could order from or pick up. Dominoes and the supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s are local favorites.

Getting a new taste of college life in a different country was very eye opening and a unique experience. The trip reassured me that I made the right choice in passing up on a sunny resort for a different perspective on how other students live.