London Baby

2010-06-20T23:49:00.010+01:00

Live from London, this the new blog of the Spanish Rubia Liisa and her new life with two men, two cats and currently zero jobs, though the last of them should better change in the very close future.

Just a few formalities before I go on with describing my rather exciting trip from Jaén to Greenwich, London, and my first few days here.

Firstly, why the heck am I writing this in English. Well, I do have quite a few international friends after my 10 marvellous months in Spain who might be interested in knowing how I'm doing after my Erasmus year and who still – unbelievable as it is – can't understand much of Estonian, so it's all for you guys. Though probably I will make it a multilingual blog and write in English just when I feel nostalgic about Spain and am reminiscing about my Spanish/Erasmus life, wanting to complain how miserable life is everywhere else. Well, even though my writing skills are way better in Estonian than in English and I do find writing in Estonian far more enjoyable, I might benefit something from trying to write in English. And who knows, if I should feel exceptionally inspired I might even post something in Spanish.

Another problem is that it may turn out to be a very short blog; that is, if I don't find a job quickly and am forced to move back to Estonia (to find a job there, which seems to be an even more challenging task than it is here). So it can be concluded that it will either be a blog of Liisa's Complete Failures in London or Liisa's Great Success in London. But whatever it is, you're more than welcome to read and keep an eye on.

And the last relevant notice: the people most often mentioned in this blog will most likely be Paul, my boyfriend; Luker, our landlord/flatmate; Monika, my sister; Chris; her husband; and Tristan, their almost three-year-old son, who all live in London, the first two of them in the same house with me.

By now you're probably wondering why do I have to ramble on and when do I get to my effin' point. Well, get used to it. If I feel like writing I just keep going on and on and tend to post mile-long stories full of boring details; so just get your coffees and energy drinks ready and beware! An applause for the first one who will suffer it all through in one reading! So here it comes.

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My trip to London went incredibly smoothly. I did shed a few tears after I got on the bus in Jaén and saw all my best friends who had come to wish me luck and attack me with their last warm hugs in the bus station, just standing there happily, waving and smiling, and then I got it: it's over. Even though we will ~~probably~~ definitely meet again, I'll never get back my Erasmus life in Jaén. But these were not sad tears as I gave up crying for the things in the past a long time ago, but rather the tears of happiness as I knew that it was probably one of the most exciting years of my life and I was just so happy that I had this opportunity to live in Spain and meet all the people that I met.

3,5 hours later, when I was struggling with my two suitcases in Malaga Airport, I heard someone asking if he could help me with my luggage. Since I instantly took a liking to this guy I let him help me and we started talking. Before I even noticed we were still talking over a cappuccino in one of the airport cafes'. He's a German, living in the UK, a passionate traveller returning from his hitch-hiking trip in Portugal and Spain, who always has a hammock and an ukulele in his backpack. We talked about travelling and languages and everything and the time just flew by. His flight was before mine, so after he had left I still had some time to kill – well, actually to buy, to be more precise - and so I went for my quest to find a perfect watch. Since I still didn't have a phone, I didn't have a clock, but fortunately I got quite a nice one with just 15 euros and was pretty happy with it.

My past-midnight-flight, which in the end was one hour delayed, was boring as my flights always tend to be. I tried to sleep but it was so freaking cold in the plane, even though I had a lot of clothes on. By the way, having been used to travelling with Ryanair I found the Easyjet plane lavishly luxurious – you actually had some space between your legs and the other seat, you could choose between 4 toilets and didn't have to return the board magazine in the end of the flight, WOW! When we landed in Stansted at 3.00 I was happy to help a Spanish guy who couldn't speak a word of English, so I guided him around the airport and bus stops and functioned as his personal interpreter (pretty cool actually).

When I had finally boarded my Easybus to Baker Street at 4 a.m. I found myself being inexplicably happy. It felt so good to be on the road again, all alone, independent, having all the new adventures waiting ahead. Though I did admit to myself that London isn't such an adventurous/exciting place for me to go, as I've been here God-knows-how-many-times before and am quite familiar with the whole city. I was trying to remember my first days in Spain and realized that at the moment I've got so many more advantages here in London than I did have back then in Spain. I do speak the language, I've got my sister and few other acquiantances living here, but a little circumstance that I do NOT have the 4000 euros of scholarship in my purse makes a whole lot of difference and makes everything way more complicated than the minor problems like not speaking the language or not knowing anybody.

When I got to the Baker Street station at 5, I had to wait 20 minutes for the first train. As you can imagine I was the only person in the empty underground waiting for a train. I did see a mouse though, it seemed to be just as lonely as I was. It watched me, I watched it, then it went away, looking for something more interesting to look at. Then I sneezed and somebody from the speakers told me „Bless you“. Felt like being watched by a Big Brother or something. Kind of creepy, but so funny.

After taking 2 different tubes I finally got to Greenwich, South-East London, where Paul had arranged a living for us. He himself is not in London yet but everything was talked and settled with Luker, Paul's friend and the guy whose house we're renting the room in. I rang Luker's doorbell around 6.15 a.m and fell almost immediately down on the couch as I hadn't slept since I don't know when. I didn't sleep too well on his couch either, cause I still felt a bit cold and nervous and happy and sad and excited and anxious and tired and awake and everything at the same time.

After 3 hours of sleep I woke up and went to get acquainted to my new neighborhood. Greenwich is really lovely, really England, a really pleasant neighorhood to live in. The only con is the fact that it takes about 30-40 minutes to get to the centre, but hey, if you gonna live in London, you've simply got to get used to the distances and the immense expenses of travelling. I went to the currency exchange, bought an English SIM card (+447946261772), ate a sandwich in Greenwich park, just next to the Inigo Jones's Queen's House of which I made an art history presentation not a lot more than a year ago in Tartu (jesus, that seems like a past life by now!), went back home, where me and Luker both tried to carry on a forced polite conversation about some meaningless things, and then I was off again to travel to another side of the town to meet my sister for dinner. Welcome to England – you're actually making appointments to meet someone at 6 or 7 o'clock, not at 12 or 1 in the night like in Spain. That's just weird. But so normal.

Chris had prepared my favourite food; a wicked fish soup that is the most delicious thing ever! I played a bit with my adorable nephew, Monika gave me one of her old phones to use, some decent clothing for my prospective job interviews, and finally helped me brush up my CV-s and I printed out 'bout 20+ of them, foolishly thinking it might be enough. Got back to Greenwich around 10-11 p.m to find out that Luker had prepared the bedroom for me and he himself had moved down to his studio that he has built in the basement of the house. Come to think of it, I don't really know much about Luker. The things that I do know are that he's passionate about 2 things: music (he has a heavy metal/hard rock band and the house is full of guitars and all kind of music equipment) and food (you should see his/our extremely high-tech kitchen and his piles of tens and tens of cookery books). I guess it's emotionally quite difficult for him that he had to move to the basement from his own bedroom and that he's gonna have to share the house with a young couple after being broken up with the woman who he had built this very same house with, but on the other hand, since he had to find tenants anyway, then somebody he actually knows, trusts, and (probably) likes was the best and the easiest choice for him; as it was for us.

So yesterday I spent the whole day distributing my CV-s to all the shops/bars/pubs that I saw in Greenwich + sending them online through gumtree.com. Was doing the same thing the whole day today, and I just have to admit: it's way more stressful than I thought it would be. Everything in London is stressful, cold, plain, gloomy, boring, and my spirits are going more and more down every moment, especially if the main reason why I came here the first place doesn't seem to justify itself to the fullest. So I just couldn't help freaking out a bit this morning. Finally when I afforded myself a little break from job hunting, I went to a little shop just around the corner to buy a cider and a newspaper from a foreign cashier whose English I just couldn't understand at all. One might think that next to someone like that I should hold a chance, but no. In the end it's all about how much luck you've got.

During my CV-tour in Greenwich I got a bit lost and thanks to that made my first friend here. I stopped by a little art gallery that I even wouldn't have noticed if there hadn't been a woman standing on the door handing out flyers. I took a flyer and stepped in. After I had commented on the beautiful deep purples on one of the paintings in the gallery she smiled and thanked me and it turned out that she was the artist herself, running this small gallery. We talked for a while; she had this typical tortured artist's look in her eyes and a bit eccentric appearance, but she was extremely friendly and nice, and taught me few truths about curating and about the pyschological skills a good curator must possess. I asked her if she might need any extra hands in the gallery but unfortunately she said that she can't afford it at the moment but told me that she'll definitely need someone (like me) when she's going to Montenegro to paint in the autumn, but shoot, then I'm not going to be here anymore. She was really impressed by my background in the arts and the fact that I'm an Estonian (art business is probably the only field where my nationality plays to my advantage here!) because the art of the former USSR and the Eastern Europe is immensely valuable among the British buyers and collectors at the moment. She really seemed to like me and asked me to stop by anytime I like and have a coffee sometime together. Maybe she's gonna turn out to be my new Kruusamäe, but this time in English art field.

In the evening I went to Soho to meet Monika and her friends Kairit (Estonian) and Nadine (English) and the latter's friend Helena (Swedish/Finnish) for drinks and clubbing. After few years of hearing endless stories about how great Nadine and Kairit, Monika's best friends are, I finally got the chance to get to know them myself and I do have to agree: they really are as great as all the legends about them! We had Southern Passions and Soho Prostitutes, they all led to Sex on the Beach and it all ended with double and triple Orgasms. Then we went to a club (at 10 p.m, can you imagine that!!! it's still an afternoon in Spain!) that looked so much better than all the clubs in Jaén but the music was crappy (or maybe I was just missing my crappy Spanish music too much), all the women were ugly, all the men were gross and I really missed all my „regular“ dancing partners Pawel, Stefan, The Cute Guy From The Shop, Bastien, Roberto, Demi and the others (kinda weird to dance in a circle with girls after all my crazy dancing experience in Spain). But it was still so incredibly nice of Monika and her friends to take me out on my second night in London and show me some good time here. I promised them that when I get a job the next party is on me.

It may be London, but if you don't have friends nor money, what the hell are you gonna do here... Although I felt it was time to leave Spain and take up something new and take on lots of new challenges, I really do miss my friends in Jaén, and even more I miss my Estonian friends who I haven't seen for too long now. You guys are the ones who have made it all worthwhile, regardless of the country!

Londresa

London Baby