London, a quiet place

Since the last week I have the feeling that I’ve lived in a small town. This sounds very strange living in London, isn’t? Before moving here I had London in my mind as a very stressful city. But the reality has been very different. I might not be very objective because I live in a very central location and it might not representative of how London in general is, but the thing is that I feel more relaxed here than in Madrid since I moved here in July. Why? That’s because London is very much spread. There parks in everywhere, the buildings normally don’t have more than three or four floors that result in a lot of open spaces so in the end you never have the feeling that you are shut in, on the contrary, sometimes when you are walking down the streets it seems like you are not in a big city at all. Traffic is not so high except on the main roads like Oxford Street or Bayswater road. There is a little church besides my apartment that play its bells every hour the same as if I was in my parents house!

As I promised myself, I didn’t go out at night either last Friday or Saturday. I think it was a good disposal. In the end it was so calm that I almost didn’t leave my neighbour. Saturday in the morning I took the bus to go to a farmer market at Orange Square, corner of Pimlico Road and Ebury Street, SW1. http://www.lfm.org.uk/ I was talking with the farmers about cheese, meat, fish…I was queuing for fresh fish and I started to talk with two women about recipes, at some moment the grocer tells us “check in internet”. The funny thing is that she is telling this not only to me but also to the two women that are 50-something. Here, new technologies are quite popular! If you see the square, it could be a typical scene of a small town.

In the afternoon I was walking across Hyde Park. I’m drawn to come to this place almost every weekend. I was surprised because of the high number of people riding horses. Coming back to home, I cross Hyde Park Garden Mews, with the horses in the streets, and it seems like if I was in a small village. Looking at the entrance of the houses and at the little gardens I could appreciate the first flowers of the spring.

On Sunday, I organized a lunch at my apartment with an American girl, a New Zealander girl, a Spaniard and I. Very nice conversation and as usually when people don’t each other very well, we started to speak about trivial things like work, renting expenses, our countries but we end up talking about relationships. We hadn’t seen each other since beginning of December and all of us had something interesting to tell so that’s why after two bottles of wine nobody wanted to go home and the chat was still very lively.

Today I’ve had more social life in my neighbourhood. In Spain, social life at work is done at lunch time. In England is after work. “Do you fancy going to the pub? Already, it is only 5.30! Come on, let’s go to Victoria!” Victoria is a pub located only 200 m from my house so I couldn’t say “no”. “One of the best pubs in London” they told me very excited-. In addition, some English people came so it was a good chance to exchange opinions and views about our cultures. My colleagues were right, Victoria Pub has the typical warm atmosphere of the best English pub. They were speaking about the passion that English people have for team sports but they admitted that although they made up a lot of them like football, others have learnt to practice them better! “Dam it; it is incredible that we are not going to play the Eurocup!” “I have to admit the Cesc Fabregas and Torres are ones of the best of the Premier League!” After two pints of Leffe, Belgian beer that I’m getting used to having, I decided to go home, a little drunk to be honest. Instead my colleagues drunk at least 3 pints and they were fresher, how can they make it?

My neighbourhood is very nice but I’m thinking of making last weekend up by going out a little next weekend… !