It's beginning to look a lot like the Olympics

The general sentiment around London is that no one can really be bothered with the Olympics (even though they start tomorrow). I seem to recall a very similar vibe in Vancouver before everyone got overthemselves and had an amazing time. In that vein (or to take the piss out of that sentiment), I've written a little song to the tune of Bing Crosby's It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Olympics.

In old London town.

Take a look at the tubes and see,

Commuter misery,

Transit strikes and signal failures: oh no.

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Olympics.

Flags on all the stores.

But the prettiest sight to see,

Is the troops from the army,

Guarding the front doors.

Gold Medals, good news, and team’s that don’t lose, is the wish of David Cameron.

The taxpayers purse and weather getting worse is the hope Ed Milband.

And everyone else can hardly wait for the tourists to go home again.

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Olympics.

Soon the cauldron will light.

But the amazing thing to see,

Is the spirit that’s set free,

Right outside your door…

Yes, it’s the Olympics, once, more.

Month Two?!

It’s almost hard to believe we’ve been here for over 2 months now, but, as they say, time flies when you are having fun. We’ve jubileed, museumed, danced, drank, roof gardened, walked, biked, trained, had a heat wave, and been soaked through to the bone.  Ashleigh has even made a quick trip back to Vancouver and then Vegas, and that’s just the last month. 

The work side of things has also been an interesting transition. On a whole, I think it’s safe to say Vancouver has a better work like balance than London (at least in regards to hours spent at work). But, at least people here do manage a solid amount of play (in the work hard play harder vein). The biggest loser in the entire equation seems to be sleep. It’s making me start to think that the whole city somehow seems to survive on 4-6 hours of sleep a night. 

The most difficult part of being here so far has been the weather (which sounds very strange coming from someone who called Vancouver home for 10 years). It hasn’t even been the rain that’s been bad (although it’s been one of the wettest May and June on record) it’s been the wind. We seem to keep getting pounded by windstorms, which makes going out in the rain a terrible experience. Ashleigh and would love to spend more time wandering around the city exploring different markets and areas, but it’s just not fun when you are fighting the wind the entire way. The upside of all of the terrible weather is that we have spent a decent amount of time exploring Museums and Galleries, which we may have neglected, had it been sunny.

I’d love to have a clear highlight of our move so far, but everything is blurring together into this new thing called our life in London. It’s a very different mindset to go out for an afternoon or evening and not just be looking for unique experiences that you want to take photos of, but also for your new favourite haunts. It’s reinventing yourself again, but in a very different way than I’ve experienced it before. Moving to a new city (and country) at 29 is entirely different than moving to a new city at 19.

Everyday London starts to feel more like home, and the city starts to make a little more sense. It still feels like I’m going the wrong way on the tube every time the train leaves the station, but navigating between areas and around strange turns of phase is becoming more natural each day. It still doesn’t quite feel real yet, but it is a great adventure.

It's been a month!

I've always had a pre occupation with England. Perhaps I watched too much PBS and CBC as a child (they always seemed to be playing British TV), but the UK has always held a bit of a mythical status. Being here over a month now the magic had yet to wear off. Walking around actually visiting place I'd only ever read about or seen on TV still leaves me feeling a bit giddy, as if I'm walking through a book I'd once read. It almost makes it hard to take certain places seriously when they have names like Piccadilly or Oxford circus. I’ve also caught myself having to do a double take on several occasions due to people’s unintelligible accents only to realize they are being dead serious. Thankfully, if I ever run into any trouble, I can always just play the dumb American tourist card.

In terms of day to day life, Ashleigh and I are setting in, getting lost far less, and although we still haven’t fully come to terms with the fact we actually live here now, are very much enjoying it. I also started a new job last week at a Digital agency called Holler, and am really excited about the projects we have coming up. The weather is starting to get nicer as well (meaning we’ve had a couple days where it didn’t rain) and preparations for the Royal Jubilee and Olympics are in fully swing so you can really start to feel a buzz of growing anticipation taking over the city.

On a more general note though, I wanted to take a second to reflect on a few cultural differences that still continue to confuse me.

The left side of the road: this one may seem obvious, but it isn't the traffic on the left side of the road that is tripping me up, it's the fact that left is the new right. Drives are naturally on the opposite side of the car, which is fine when you are riding in one, but it throws me when I'm waking down the street trying to cross the road. I look the correct way to ensure no traffic I coming, but when the oncoming traffic kindly stops to let me pass, I look to the wrong side of the car to make eye contact with the drive and nod. It doesn't seem like a huge thing, but at a quick glance it makes it seem like there is a ghost driving the car. Everything is else is also left first (except when its not), including pedestrian traffic flow patterns. So when you are going to go up an escalator it's the left side that goes up, not the right. Again, nothing major, but I’ve found myself trying to walk up the down escalator more than a few times.

The first floor: the first floor of buildings is not actually the ground level; it’s the floor above it. The floor you walk into is the ground floor, or in some strange instances, floor zero. This doesn’t really affect day to day life all that much except when riding in an elevator, but it also made looking for a place to live a little more confusing. Speaking of elevators, the elevator in our building is extremely polite. It actually apologizes to you if it takes to long to arrive at your floor. I feel like the elevator programmer may have read the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy one to many times.

The cost of living: Everyone says London is an expensive city to live in, which it is, but since arriving here we have been pleasantly surprised that shopping at the grocery store is actually cheaper here than it was back in Vancouver. In particularly we’ve noticed that dairy (cheese) and alcohol (wine and beer) are sometimes half the price, even taking into account the exchange rate. Fruits and veggies also seem cheaper which is very handy if you can manage to get home early enough to actually cook yourself a proper supper.

Trash bins: Everywhere you go there are signs very politely asking people to throw any trash into the nearest bin. The problem with this is that unlike Vancouver, where trash bins are located every five feet, in London trash bins are like some sort of endangered species. The worst place to search for a trash bin seems to be at the underground station – which is odd because that is seemingly where you would need them the most. It’s almost as if the city is sub-coconsciously suggesting that the English are always looking for someone else to clean up their messes for them (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Breaking Radio Silence

Despite rumors to the contrary Ashleigh and I are still very much alive and kicking! I haven’t purposely been neglecting the blog; we’ve just been extremely busy running all over town. We also don’t have Internet in our apartment yet so I’ve been living out of Starbucks, Cruush, Nero Coffee, and Pret et Manger to get my web fix. But enough with the formalities, let’s get onto the misadventures from the last couple weeks.

London is a city of tubes, and in the last couple of weeks I’ve been on pretty much all of them. Undergrounds, overgrounds, spunarounds, bikes, busses, you name it, I’ve been on it. On the street level navigating still is quite tricky, but the transportation system has been incredible (and surprisingly easy to navigate). As for the reason to all of my transit travels, well, that has to do with finding a job and place to live.

Trying to find a place to live in London is both soul destroying and absolutely ridiculous at the same time. To start with, the flat prices, as most people will tell you, are astronomical. I went to see one place in West Kensington that was a “split level loft”, and with my arms stretched out from my sides could basically touch both walls at once. The “loft” part of the flat wasn’t any better in that once I ascended up the ladder to the upper level I was greeted by a 3-foot ceiling clearance. Helpfully, the letting agent assured me that this was a steal at £350 per week plus council tax.

Now, expensive flats on their own wouldn’t be that bad, with enough perseverance you can always find a steal. The real issue with renting a flat in London is the letting agents. The best way I can describe them is a cross between a used-car sales person and Internet spam service. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be anyway to avoid them, and their extra fees, as every property that is listed is through one of their services. Ashleigh and I also encountered issues around not having any UK credit or proof of income combined (as I didn’t have a job yet). The only real solution to this was to put up six months rent up front plus the damage deposit (six weeks rent). Once we’d gotten the money out of our Canadian accounts and into Ashleigh’s UK one (I haven’t been able to open up a bank account in the UK yet as I don’t have a job), we were finally able to secure a place. Up until we actually got the keys on the Friday night however, neither of us was entirely sure that it was going to work (although we certainly hoped it was as we had no where else to stay that night). Thankfully, everything did work out in the end, and we did find a place we really do like. We are staying in the Canary Wharf area (think Yaletown Vancouver meets Amsterdam), in a spacious 300 square foot studio.

Thankfully, our time so far in London hasn’t all been stress filled with just “real life” stuff. We’ve also gone on lots of walks around various areas of the city, visited the Natural History Museum to check out the Dinosaurs, gone to both the Portabello and Borough markets, and done a night bus tour along with some other much more fun touristy activities and accompanying photos. I would go into more detail about them, but I hope we will go back and spend more time at each again so expect more detailed posts in the future (in particular the delicious Borough market).

We’ve also visited a few restaurants and pubs and discovered that as long as you stick to the ethnic food on the menu, it is delicious! We even ventured over to Brick Lane for its world famous curries. The place we ate at was quite good, but the entire experience felt a little bit like Koh San Road in Thailand (lots of people yelling at you to try their food with seemingly little difference). Still we had a fun evening there, and I’m sure at some point we will be back as well. The wines and beers have also been a pleasant surprise both in quality and price. I think it’s safe to say both Ashleigh and I are both enjoying the “pub culture”.

On a whole, we’ve both been very happy with the move so far, and despite some hiccups, are excited to be settled into our new home. We can’t wait to get the last few ‘move-items’ checked off our list so we can completely embrace our new city and all of the fun that awaits.

That’s all for now, but hopefully the updates will become more frequent now that things are starting to settle down some.

Safe and Sound in London Town

The last month has been an absolute blur. If someone told me at Christmas that Ashleigh and I would move London, England, from Vancouver, Canada, with a little over a month’s prep time I would have laughed in their face. The idea as an abstract concept seems completely insane, and yet, Ashleigh and I are now sitting in a funky apartment in Hammersmith London. I guess the old expression of “Sanity is madness put to good uses” really is true.

In some ways though, I actually think our compressed time frame made the move easier. It forced us to be decisive and not over think things, and made sure our ‘to do’ list was as lean and focused as possible. Somehow in the last month we managed to renewed our passports, obtain our two year working visas, give notice on apartment, sell or donate the majority of the excess items we owned (including a bed and couch), book a plane ticket, arrange for a short term place to live, clean our entire apartment, and say goodbye to so many of our wonderful friends.

That’s not to say this process hasn’t had its hiccups. Or visas took longer to obtain than we thought they would, which caused a large amount of stress, and we didn’t finish selling off all of the big items in our apartment until the afternoon before we left. We were also still packing and putting the finishing touches on cleaning our apartment when our landlord showed up to take the keys back. Our taxicab on the way to the airport nearly got sideswiped and wound up scraping the highway divider. And, after finally making it to the airport, our landlord called to inform me that I’d filled out the last month’s cheque wrong.

Hiccups are to be expected however, and in the end, we made it. Our entire life possession’s now consist of five very full suitcases, four carry-on bags, two bicycles, and each other. And to be honest, we couldn’t be happier. Vancouver is a wonderful city we both love very dearly, but there is a bigger world to explore and experience. Yes, we’ve both visited many countries before, but actually living aboard is totally new and exciting.

We know we are going to miss our friends and family dearly, so don’t be surprised if you get a random phone call in the middle of the night (until we figure out the time change). We would also like to say thank you to everyone for their support, excitement, and kind words, over the last month, it’s been very much appreciated and made this whole process infinitely easier.

That’s it for now, but stay tuned for many more Crash Adventures!