Moving through space

Knowledge Collection Making a Living
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Living in London has probably been one of my biggest life changes one can imagine, and for anyone new to London, it can be both terrifying and exciting in equal measure, depending on where life has taken you before landing here. For me, I spent 23 years of my life in a small town in the North of England, so to go from there to London was a big change, and if I were to advise someone on moving to London, I would give them the following tips -

Have a “family”

I moved to London already knowing quite a few people as I spent a lot of time before making the move travelling backwards and forwards to go to gigs and visit friends so when I landed here somewhat permanently, I already had people around me to light the way. My actual family were over 300 miles away, so having strong friendships around me was absolutely needful. I gave myself six months in London, and there would be no shame in going home if it didn’t work out. Nine years later and I’m still here. It is tough living here, but the opportunities it has created for me has far outweighed any of the negative traits of living in a city.

Don’t be afraid

As I mentioned, a city (and specifically London for me) can be terrifying, and the last thing you need to be when moving to a busy city is timid. You need to get out and about as much as possible. If you expect a city to come to you and entertain you, or bring you opportunities, that isn’t going to happen. To create a life that’s pleasurable, you have to work hard to get it. There is a lot to be experienced, and you won’t experience that sitting at home. You need to interact with people, places and cultures, of which there are many in most cities.

Sort yourself out financially

I wish I was more financially savvy when I moved here! Cities are expensive places to live in, and housing isn’t necessarily for ever, unlike the place you may have come from. I lived in the same home for 23 years, so running headlong in to the renting sector was a shock to the system. Have your finances in as strong an order as possible, and try to save some money too for that rainy day - they do happen and mostly at the most unexpected moments.

Learn

Learn as much as you can from everything that’s around you. The experiences you will have in a city will be so different from anywhere else you will ever live, and it will prepare you for so much, like travelling internationally, communicating, and being aware of cultures and people.

I think a lot of these points could be aimed at any space in the world. If I were to move to the country (I wish!), my skills that I have gained here will have its uses there but again, I will have lots of different things to learn there as well. To move around the world, and space itself, you should always be open minded and enjoy every experience you can get. The world is a much richer place for open minded people moving around it and adding to it. Leave your mark.

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Serious financial shock through the system

I can imagine that looking for housing in London must be quite a serious shock through the system! It is an expensive place to stay. I tried to live there several years ago, and as a matter of fact, my finances did not survive this shock wave. I had to leave and abandon my dreams of living abroad. I come from a small town of under 100,000 people: I had never seen rent being paid by the week (because otherwise it would be too much of a financial burden), before I lived in London.

How do the fragile wallets of young people make it, nowadays, in this city? I lived in an attic, and even this was too expensive for me!

(For the cultural life, an A + ! It was my first time, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, played by completely naked males. And they kept jumping around too. Whoa…)

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Expensive, dirty, and generally a very unpleasant experience! If you find a lovely place in London to live with reasonable rent you hang on to it! I had never come across any kind of pest problem before moving to London so being faced by cockroaches and mice in some places is a further eye opening experience! More people = more waste = more pests!

Young people moving to London now will have a problem financially as jobs are very hard to come by with the market as it is. When I moved there seemed to be plenty of jobs. It helps to move here with some sort of rudimentary skill. You may be working in a job that isn’t your future goal, but if it keeps you in money, all the better.

As for your cultural life - woah - Can’t imagine seeing a Midsummer Night’s Dream performed like that, eye opening though it may be :slight_smile:

4

the speed of london

Hey, this fashinates me so much!

I remember my very first time in London, I was 21 and I was going to work as an au pair in a place not far from Wimbledon, I had no experience whatsoever and a huge luggage with me and once arrived to Heathrow on my way to the centre I was so struck by a sign which sayed something like ‘do not disturb the others with your luggage’.  The point is that everyone is in such a hurry that can’t bear being slowed down by your business. Coming from a small city in the south of Italy I was more used to the message ‘if you have a problem just stop someone and they will help’ (well, not on a sign but kind of implied). I had the impression that I could die in the street and poeple would just walk on me. It sounds awful but it is also liberating, I guess, in a way that only those who come from small places can understand. By the way still now that I know the city reasonably well and I have lived in the UK for years I can’t be good enough to take the tube ticket as fast as londoners in the tube. I feel very slow. Literally.

Oh one day I want someone to explain me London through the lenses of its speed. Such a city.

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Too fast

I have to admit I find it way too fast some days, but you get in to the speed of things eventually, even if you don’t want to.

People can be very self involved, especially when trying to get to work. An ex colleague decided to move away from London after seeing two grown men get in to a fight to get on the tube!! Considering most tube trains run every 2/3 minutes, that’s an extreme reaction to have!

There’s no real explaining this city. You either land on your feet, or you really don’t. My sister visits me regularly but she says she could never live here as she finds herself exhausted after a few days :slight_smile: and I do look forward to a day when I can move somewhere slightly slower.

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So lonely

Thanks for mentioning about your sister’s symptoms. Now that you talk about it, I had similar symptoms as well. In London, I kept tripping on invisible things and I remember doing a lot of falling in the street for no reason at all. That was totally embarassing! In Paris, I was getting tired quickly (like your sister). One day a week, I locked myself alone in the apartment without going out all day. This allowed me to maintain my balance.

Extreme reactions take place also in other major cities, not just in London. In Paris, I always feel that a revolution is about to explode in the minutes that follow. There are a lot of frustrated people in large cities. I wanted to order a drink in a cafe and the guy next to me threw a big fit because he thought I wanted to steal his turn, while I simply had not seen him. People's nerves are like violin strings, hyper sensitive! Too much frustration and dissatisfaction can lead to violence.

In Strasbourg last March, in the tramway, a man listened to a portable radio. He was talking to himself and having an imaginary discussion with the radio host. He was responding to everything that the radio host said.It is awful to be so alone that one has to talk to a radio! Everyone was uncomfortable and felt the tension in the car tram so strong that we could have cut it with a knife. In tramways, hospital waiting rooms, and just about anywhere, no one speaks to each other. People are standing very close to each other, but yet, everyone avoids the gaze of the other. The worst thing are elevators. I always feel like screaming in elevators. People look at the doors without paying attention to others around them. I watch the lights move and hope to get out of there as fast as possible.

The WHO has warned recently that the number of cases of dementia will triple and that countries seriously must prepare plans of action to deal with this reality.

Hectic urban lives tend to cause a lot of stress. There are billboards everywhere flashing in your face, few green spots, people either yell at you or ignore you. At the end of the day, all these experiences accumulate in the mind.

I would not want ot work on development and management of large cities. It must be a nightmare to manage traffic, and try to improve the quality of life of citizens.

What would help make life better?

Are there programs for community gardens in London?

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So many memories

I must admit that I could hardly focus on the Shakespeare play… my eyes were too wide open!

Cockroaches, yuck! Cockroaches and scorpions, I ABSOLUTELY cannot stand. I get a terrible nervous breakdown when I come face to face with such bugs. (I lose it.) I thought the overall infestation was in New York.

Valentina, what you wrote about speed is quite fascinating. Why would such speed be admirable? I do not care if others think I’m a ‘provincial’. After all, when we were only babies, none of us did hurry to gnaw on the rattle. What happens to us when we grow up? The things we do in large cities.…

When I was younger, skyscrapers and large scale buildings were like magnets. I enjoyed urban life as if I was eating caviar. I thought only about consuming (visiting) as many cities as possible, running over to another destination, visit more museums, have some more art. There was no way to quench that thirst.

I would have lived day and night at the British Museum. Trafalgar Square, the swans in the park, the pigeons flying over public spaces. The royal guards with their red hats, fantastic bookstores with art books up to the ceiling, the Royal Opera House every night. The double-decker buses, cars driving on the left side of the road, to be almost crushed while crossing the street because you forgot that cars drive on the left side of the road. The strange taxis. People in the pub at lunchtime, under a blazing sun. I do not know how they managed to withstand alcohol. People at the pub after work. I do not know how they managed to withstand alcohol. Apartments with beautiful ornemented fireplaces, Victorian architecture, etc. So many memories of a beautiful city!

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Am preparing a move to a new city

and it it both exciting and daunting. Especially the social aspects, making friends- yes building that family. How do you go about building those resilient ties?

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I honestly don’t know. I was lucky in the fact that I knew people to begin with, and I’m not exactly shy when it comes to meeting other people. When I moved here I met people via socialising A LOT, and whilst I’m not as social as I was nine years ago (I couldn’t go clubbing that much now! Don’t have the energy!!) the people I still have as friends all came from that time. You can’t be a shy and timid wallflower when moving here that’s for sure. One of my ex housemates was a little like that. We had similar friends, but she would rarely go out, expecting them to come to her but she felt that London had somehow forgotten she was there when really she didn’t really know how to live in London to begin with. You need to be as fierce as the city you find yourself in or it will swallow you whole.

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Simple and elegant

I like this! It is a simple checklist that anybody can go through when moving to a new city. I am giving you +50 reputation for great content.

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Thank you very much :slight_smile:

Sometimes a simple step by step process is the best way to get your point across.

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Ah, London, London…

I think that countries with a single overwhelmingly large urban capital have real problems. Finland, Iceland, Britain all have these huge singular attractor cities, and the result is absolutely insane property prices and a culture of struggling to stay in the center because the rest of the country is trying to move there too.

America has at least six “attractor cities” for different things - LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington DC and many minor cities with their own specific pulls, but there’s nothing like that in the UK or in much of Scandanavia.

Germany seems to have this multi-focal thing going on too, Berlin’s only 2m people!

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Relating smaller countries to larger land masses doesn’t help your argument though. The UK could fit in to Germany about 3 times over for example. It may not look that big, but it is well spread out with very different and interesting places to go to, so it is hard to pinpoint one place as being better than another. Berlin doesn’t really appeal to me but I have travelled quite extensively in Germany. In the UK you’ve got London and Manchester. Yes, there’s plenty of other cities, but not with the same pulling power, and when traditional media highlights these cities, of course people are going to go there for the high life that is suggested to them. I would LOVE to move away from London but have become accustomed to a London wage, so it will be hard for me to move somewhere else.

America is MASSIVE, so no wonder it has many more focal points than the smaller countries you mention. It would be hard for me to pick a city there as there are so many cities that offer me so many different things that would interest me. The same cannot be said for the UK.

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Hey MissyK8,

I would say

Hey MissyK8,

I would say thank you for this so practical checklist before moving city (quite useful for people like me who are at least once a year changing living place…).

Before going to study in London, my cousin who has stayed there for ages gave me a smart advice that I followed faithfully … “Walk fast and never say No”

Never say No: There are so many opportunities, chances, things to do in London that even if you do a full program you still miss some… It is the city that you really have to go out there and grasp experiences! You never know unless you do it!

Walk fast: Everything is moving so so so fast that at some point you will need to catch them! And the only way to do it is by walking fast! Even if you are a “slow walker” as myself before London, the city drives you :slight_smile:

But… unfortunately I couldn’t agree more with “sort out yourself financially”…especially for students is a very expensive city. On the other hand there are a lot of things to enjoy freely in the city.

15

I agree with your cousin

Your cousin gave you very wise advice! Particularly the walk fast part, both literally and figuratively - cities move at extraordinary paces, and you’ll miss an opportunity in a blink of an eye if you’re not fast enough. There is no wonder I get really quite bored when I go home to visit my family as to go from  near running speed to a crawling existence! Also walking fast helps literally - people who live in London are usually racing from one place to another. I used to work in an office in an area very close to the British Museum, and trying to walk down the street, surrounded by tourists who hadn’t picked up the speed of the place was a little frustrating - The Olympics is going to be great (huge levels of sarcasm!) :slight_smile: