Professor Yeti

Americans love London. Maybe it’s the millennia of history that’s lacking in our own country, or perhaps it’s just the accent. Either way, it’s impossible to get through a day in this city without hearing an American accent. American tourists flock to London in droves (I’m constantly giving them directions); hundreds of American university students descend on London every six months to study (their Nalgene bottles give them away); and vast quantities of Americans, who probably at some point in their lives were either tourists or students in London and fell in love with the city, end up moving here (guilty as charged).

So far, I’ve really enjoyed living in London. Many of the things that first sparked my love affair with the city — the history, the architecture, the cosmopolitan feel — still resonate with me. But I would be lying if I said that the romantic ideas I had about the city and how perfect my life here would be all came true; with the good came some unexpected and some bad. The truth is that London is an unwelcoming, difficult city to live in, and getting settled here requires massive amounts of energy, patience, and self-motivation. If you’re not completely sure this is where you belong, you could be in for some tough times.

Although the city did come together on the day of the July 7th bombings, London, in general, is a city of highly independent people. If lost, Londoners would sooner die than ask for directions, and when it comes to helping others, they will not volunteer information unless explicitly asked. It’s not that Londoners are unfriendly; it’s just that they value their space and privacy and prefer not to get involved other people’s affairs. While this is a cultural aspect I’ve actually grown quite fond of, I must admit that it does make settling into the city (especially as a foreigner) incredibly hard. Getting the necessary information out of people — such as immigration issues, registering for the National Health Service, opening a bank account — requires asking very specific questions, as the person behind the counter will usually assume if you didn’t ask about it, you already knew it and will not provide you with any extraneous information. Moving here, you must be prepared to do your research and constantly ask questions, which is exhausting — especially after life in America, where all information is generally given to you upfront. But here, if you don’t ask, you will never get the help you need.

Without a doubt, though, the hardest thing about living in London is the expense. Yes, yes, everyone knows London is expensive, and tourists and study abroad students do get a taste of that infamous blow to the savings account when they’re here. But, you don’t really know just how expensive this city is until you live here. Rents, utilities, transportation costs, even cups of coffee, are all absurdly expensive. Low salaries and high taxes don’t help matters, either. And while there are perks to the high tax rates — the National Health Service, for instance — it is difficult watching your paycheck melt away into taxes and basic living expenses. Unless you’re earning pots of pounds, you really have to budget your recreational activities, which can be incredibly frustrating after a while — especially so for the activities you are passionate about. Fortunately, many Londoners live the tight-budget life and are clued-in to the bargains, so it’s easy enough to find someone to commiserate with and learn from.

In addition to the expense, London’s sprawling size and difficulty of navigation can be hard to adjust to. With winding roads, narrow backstreets, and no concept of a city block system, learning your way around the city takes some time, and no matter how street-smart you become, you can never leave home without consulting a street map first. This was an especially difficult adjustment for me to make after being spoiled by the smallness of Washington, D.C., where everything is easy to find and only an inexpensive 20-minute cab or Metro ride away. And while I love big cities and the fact that you can live in London for years and still be discovering new things about the city, London’s sprawl does get to me; I do sometimes wish things were closer together, and that it took less time and energy to get across the city or commute to work.

Indeed, London’s size and crowdedness can make going out an exhausting, logistical nightmare. Taxis are ludicrously expensive, and the buses are too slow if you are in a hurry, thanks to the gridlock that never seems to dissipate, no matter how high the Congestion Charge (a toll for driving in Central London) rises. That leaves you with the Tube, which when it works correctly is fantastic, but when there are problems (which is the case more often than not) can cause massive delays. The Tube also closes at midnight, which can put you in a bit of a bind if you haven’t thought ahead to which buses run after midnight and which routes will get you home. Factor in waiting for the correct night bus and having to hit all the stops, and it can easily take up to an additional hour to get home. The amount of effort it takes just for a simple night out can definitely be a deterrence to one’s social life.

Lastly, winter in London is a depressing time. Not because of the grey weather (the weather here doesn’t discriminate — it’s grey in the summer, too), but because of the shortness of the days. In the deepest months of winter, London only gets about nine hours of daylight, with the sun rising around 7:00 am and beginning to set by 3:30 pm. And by 4:00 in the afternoon, it’s almost completely dark. Sitting at work and watching the horizon start to darken at 3:30, knowing that you still have at least two to three hours of work still ahead of you is a terrible feeling. What’s even worse is if you decide to sleep in on the weekends, as the later you sleep, the less daylight you get to enjoy (although it is excellent motivation to become a morning person). The payoff, though, is that in the summer it doesn’t get dark till around 9:30, which is indeed a wonderful thing (and can really throw off your dinner time). But, I’m not entirely sure it’s worth it, given the months of feeling like you’re living a double life as a vampire.

Nothing is ever quite how you imagine it will be, and the vision of what I thought my life in London would be versus the reality of living here is no exception. In addition to the troubles above, there are cultural issues that I’ve struggled with as well — the relaxed work ethic, the emphasis placed on alcohol, and the importance of social class in British society are just a few of unexpected cultural differences I didn’t initially think would bother me, but now do. Yet, despite my complaints (what’s an American without complaints, anyway), I do feel at home here. And for all my relatively minor criticisms, there’s so much that I love about London and English culture — the internationalism and cultural awareness, the arts, the sense of humor, the socialist/liberal ideals — that the good really does cancel out the bad. The London I envisioned in my head before moving here doesn’t exist; but the London I’m living in now isn’t bad at all.

Jesse Alter (jesse@professoryeti.com) recently calculated just how much he spends on the Tube in a year: £856. Yeah, London’s frekkin’ expensive.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.