London may be the capital of “cool”; trouble is, unless you’re with the in-crowd, you don’t know where to find it.
As a recently arrived international student, I envisioned London as an eventful city where everything is accessible and I wouldn’t have time to get bored. That idea was given to me by what I saw on TV and the internet, which always showed London’s best angles. But when I arrived, I soon noticed there are other, less flattering facets of this famous city.
If you’re in the right area, yes, it is like Manhattan with fancy billboards and tall buildings a-plenty. Go a few stops down the line, however, and you’ll find London has come down to the scale of any another European city.
Of course, behind this ordinariness the coolest things may still be going on. But how do you know, if you don’t already have some kind of connection to them?
What I saw on TV was the dream life of London as a series of fashion weeks and clubbing weekends. But as a student, life in London is not so exciting…unless you know where the excitement is. In this respect, London life is a lot like living in other European cities. The big difference is that however weird you want to be, it is easy to blend in and integrate in the culture of London, as opposed to Norway, where I come from.
On the other hand, London also contains more poverty and homelessness than I ever would have expected. This side of London rarely appears in the media, but once you set foot in the city, you realise how much of it there is.
I took it for granted that London would have all night public transport; but I shouldn’t have. At weekends the Tubes run after midnight, but mid-week it’s either an infrequent night bus or an un-affordable cab. Strange considering smaller European cities provide night transport.
In London, what you get to participate in depends on your social standing and your financial status. To that extent, it’s a lot like everywhere else.
