Blues of Central London

One of the not so good things about the place where I live now is that it is a nice and popular wine and dine district. Within 50 meters from my apartment I have four restaurants and one pub. According to the level of noise I calculated that the pub closes around 12:30 AM - 1 AM. Or maybe it closes at midnight, and then last men standing finish their drinks songs outside, and it takes them half an hour - I am not sure. What I am sure of is that almost every day someone has a birthday, and he or she is celebrating it at Lamb Pub. I also learnt that weekend starts on Thursday, sometimes even Wednesday and ends on Saturday. Because Sunday to Tuesday it's pretty quiet out there.

In general, Londoners like to have fun after work. On my way home from the office I pass at least one pub and from 6 PM it's full of people. The sidewalk in front of it is also full of people, and sometimes, half the road too. People are obviously on their way home, just like me. But unlike me, they do not hurry to the safety and comfort of their apartments and houses, but stay to relax, chat and eat in pubs.

But, back the Lamb Pub under my window. The echo of the evening's fun I get to hear in the morning, when, at 7 AM the garbage truck is going all over the city gathering garbage bags from the streets. Here they have a funny way of handling garbage. At least for commerces, shop and restaurant owners, maybe house and apartment owners and tenants put garbage bags on the street in front of the house in the evening and in the morning a garbage truck makes a trip around the city loading them from the streets into its garbage-greedy belly. So, pubs and restaurants have one very specific type of garbage - empty bottles. And they get loaded into the truck as well. I don't know how they do it, but it sounds like they just pour a stream of bottles into the metal womb of the car. And it is LOUD. So every morning I wake up from the sound of hundreds of falling bottles. To make matters worse, the weather is hot, so all my windows are always open, and there is no escape from this noise.
To be completely honest, last several days I do not hear them though: either I got used to it or they changed the schedule.

And by the way, I checked the pub's web page. And I am absolutely right: from Thursday to Saturday it is open until midnight. It actually has pretty good reviews on the internet. I can also assure you the public is honorable, no teenagers or drunks. So, if you happen to be in Bloomsbury, London, try a beer or two in this lovely place.  

Enjoying London

This weekend I finally found some time to look around and to see where I actually am. The weather has been really really kind to me. Looks like London is doing its best to look nice and friendly to me (yeah yeah, I know it's just a heat wave over the whole Europe, but I'd like to think this way :) ).

I live in Camden Town now and every morning and every evening I enjoy a pleasant 15 minutes walk down the busy streets of West-Central London. Some interesting things I have noticed which are new to me:

• People run to work. Meaning that they are dressed in sport shoes, backpack on their back, they actually run to the office. I guess they have their towels and toiletries, the office clothing and makeup stored in the office. Not a bad idea, and defnitely cheap, considering London transport fares.
• Small cafes open early. At 7 AM you can already get a coffe-to-go on your way to the office. In addition to that, probably, due to the high competition (or maybe just because it is fun) almost every cafe has something amusing to attract you. Many of them have funny and original signs, and one next to my current place has a board with a new phrase every morning. Today it said "Water is essential for your life, because you cannot make coffee without it." :)
• Drivers give way to pedestrians (unless you are jaywalking :) ). I definitely didn't expect such behaviour in a busy London.
• Some places of central London are actually quiet. And I was surprised to see lots of small and big patches of greenery, gardens in the center, some with huge centennial trees in them.

 

By now I found 3 friends here in London, all leaving pretty close, all from Estonia, having moved to London for various reasons.

Last weekend we went to Greenwich. The trip to Greenwich with DLR is a beauty in itself. You pass by a modern district with nice houses, tall shiny bank buildings, walkways, water pools and bridges. 

Then the train dives under the river and stops on the other side - next to a famous Cutty Sark ship.

Behind it - beautiful British Naval Museum, Old Royal Naval College, University of Greenwich and the park itself - open, hilly, green and beautiful. On the top of the hill there is a famous Greenwich observatory with its Zero Meridian, and a beautiful view to the eastern London.

  

Househunting

letting

ˈlɛtɪŋ/

noun

BRITISH

1. the action of renting out a property.

   "the renovation of houses for letting"

   • a property that is let or available to be let.

     "large houses were subdivided into multiple lettings"

Finding a place to live in London is a Mission Impossible. Meaning, that it is possible, but (remember the movie) it costs ALOT, puts you under stress and in the end there is still no guarantee that everything will be nice and sunny during your tenancy or when you move out.

The good news is, the city and the state are totally aware of the situation, and there's BIG money involved, so there is a System (The System) built around letting. There are laws, guidelines, leagues and associations for landlords, letting agents, Code of Conduct for Letting, London Rental Standard, Letting/Rental Deposit Protection Scheme, and various organisations helping those in need, like Shelter and Citizens Advice.

I am still in the process of paperwork and agreements. The funny thing is, when I visited a London Transport page today to top up my travel card, there was a huge background banner for a London Rental Standard site, which was born in June, 2014, and is an agreement, signed by letting agents, registered landlords and the Mayor of London about terms, conditions, letting and protection schemes for both tenants and landlords.  It provides a bunch of reasonable documentation with list of things to check before going house hunting, during the process, before signing a contract, after signing a contract and when moving out.

And banks even give out special loans to "buy to let". Serious business. 

Orientation

I promised to write a post about orientation, my first days at Google and in London.
The bad news is: I cannot say much about Google due to privacy policy. The good news is: I can tell you about my impressions.

Somewhere among the numerous info pages I found a nice picture:

Being relocated and starting at Google at the same time is like drinking from a hose. No less.
Moreover, in addition to that I felt like I am trying to jump on a treadmill running at full speed.

Now, after 2 weeks I guess I have adjusted the hose to swallow just enough to handle and redirected the rest of the stream into buckets that I am going to drink later (at nights, probably :) ). And, started running next to a treadmill, gaining speed, to jump on it, when I can.

I like my first impressions about my new work. The office is comfortable, people are great, and, indeed, everything is done in order for you to channel 100% of your mental and emotional energy into work.

Office was the easy part. London and UK in general is a bit tougher. Aside from the fact, that I had to register in Revenues and Customs office to get National Insurance Number (which is your unique ID in UK, tied to everything), I had to open a bank account, get myself a phone and a SIM, a travel card, and start looking for a permanent place to live.

Getting a mobile is easy. And even relatively cheap. Combined with Skype, staying connected to friends and family is easy. Bank will talk to you when you come with a Reference letter from your employer. They even issued me a credit card immediately, so that my credit history would start. Understanding London Transport fares took me a day of reading sites and an hour of talking to an estonian girl having been living here for 2 years. To all those coming to London - Oyster is the word you must know. Another thing to remember - walk more. :) It is cheaper.

Overall conclusions regarding transport so far:
- It is expensive. Tube is more expensive than buses.
- Tube is good. I can understand what I am paying for. It is most understandable, quick and comfortable transport so far. In peak times, of course, there might be problems with actually getting onto the Tube at certain stations, but just like a smart Tallinn citizen is supposed to time-plan movements to avoid traffic jams in Tallinn, so a smart Londoner considers times when he or she is traveling around central London by tube. Off-peak hours are cheaper too.

There are also bikes scattered around the central London, that you can take for a small fee to cycle from one "bike station" to the other. And lots of people are using them, I haven't yet.

One thing I liked about local life is ... shopping. :) On my first evening I went to a supermarket nearby and was pleasantly surprised by the huge selection of everything, not-so-high prices (I thought it would be worse) and.. they have 100ml shampoos and conditioners for traveling! This is one thing I really missed in Tallinn. Considering the fact that 80% of my travels I travel light, it is really important for me to have with me my brand of shampoo and conditioner and not some strange stuff stolen from the hotel room on my previous vacation.

There are lots of personnel hanging around the shelves, and they are really helpful. Cashiers are talkative and lively. In general, my impression (and a feedback from a nice estonian girl) is that people are really inclined to communicate. You can stop at the traffic light and a stranger will comment on a weather or a car or an event in the city. Even though it is a chitchat, sometimes it makes your day just a tiny bit better.

That's about it regarding first orientation in Google and London. I will write later (when it is successfully done) about the stressful process of finding and securing a place to live.
And tomorrow I will continue with my impressions on orientation trip to Mountain View, CA.

The world is small...

Skipping several days (will blog about them later), short sidenotes from my latest crazy travels around the world.

10th of July: I bought a plane ticket from Zurich, Switzerland to London, UK being in Dublin, Ireland.
14th of July: on a flight from London to San-Francisco in 10 minutes I met:
  (a) a man living in London in the same district I am about to live and having been to Tallinn recently.
  (b) my seat neighbour turned out to be a Googler from Mountain View.

Conclusions: the world is small. the Google is big.

Well-come to Dublin!

I didn't even manage to take a deep breath after the initial orientation at work (more on that later),  and on my second working day I flew to Dublin.

It is just a one hour flight from London, and it feels really strange, when the road from the office to the airport and the gate takes twice as long as the flight itself.

I didn't expect much from a country that resides on an island smaller than England and from a city lying more to the north than London. In my picture of the world Ireland was a bare terrain with a couple of cities with a few people and lots of tiny villages. I was wrong.

When we were landing the view below made me take out my "camera" and take a picture. Dublin suburbs were beautiful in the light of the setting sun.

A short drive in a taxi through the center of the city surprised me even more. Nice houses built from red brick, but looking quite modern, cosy gardens, trains running around, hills in the background covered in a bluish haze and a river (or was it a channel) here and there made Dublin look so romantic and relaxed.

 

I had a 2-day intensive training and didn't have any time to explore the city, but even a walk to the hotel in the evening was fruitful:

I was surprised to learn that Ireland also has left-side driving, just like England, and that Irish language looks more like French or Dutch, than English and is not actually used in the country. Irish people learn it as a second language in school, but mostly do not use it in their life. However, their pronunciation of English was different from that of English people, and, in general, the speech sounded more harsh.

By the way, do you know the distinctive features of a real Dubliner?

1. He/she complains a lot.

2. He/she speaks a lot about the weather.

3. He/she complains a lot about the weather.

Google office in Dublin

On my way back I spotted a funny service in one of the women's toilets in Dublin airport:

I cannot imagine a woman hurrying to her flight stop by to ... make her hair... for a euro.

We landed in London at 10 PM. Walking through kilometers of tunnels of Terminal 1 to reach the arrivals area I mentally agreed with all those people who told me the day before that Heathrow is large. I confirm: Heathrow is really large. 

The trip back from the airport to central London took an hour by tube, and then I had my first experience walking in central London alone at midnight. It felt safe: no drunk or stoned people on the streets, I met a policeman strolling down the street and a bunch of business people obviously having finished their business late-dinner and happily going home. 

It was not bad at all. 

Day Two. Barnet and Showers.

Sunday was planned to get a lot of sleep before the busy week ahead, chat with friends and family in Skype, go check the district where I planned to move later and meet a girl from the Estonian embassy in London.

I started with buying a travel card.

London Transport

London is not actually expensive in everything. Groceries and necessities are pretty cheap here, but property and transport are so provokingly expensive, that they make London one of the most expensive cities in the world. There are 3 main public transport kinds in London: the Tube (metro), buses and trams. You can buy single tickets at the Ticket Stations and in the automatic tickets' machines in the underground, or you can buy an electronic Oyster card and load money there. Every time you go in and out the Tube you swipe the card, the system fixes the beginning and the end of the journey, calculates the fare and deducts it from the card balance. Topping up the balance is easy and can be done everywhere, even online.

London is divided into 6 transport zones, which start from central London (zone 1) and then surround the center with wide belts (zones 2 to 6). The fare depends on how many zones you cross. There are different fares for peak and off-peak times, the minimum fare for one trip is £2.20, if you do not use monthly or annual "subscriptions" on the card. Now you see, London transport is expensive.
Buses and trams are cheaper and it doesn't matter how far you go (but one line doesn't go very far either). You pay when you enter the bus, so the more you change buses, the more expensive it becomes. One trip is £1.45.

Buses are still two-level omnibuses, the latest models look absolutely futuristic. This year is declared the year of the bus in London, and from 6th of July, buses are cash-free, it means you cannot pay for the ticket on the bus with cash, you must go and get yourself either a single paper ticket or an Oyster card.

Barnet

So, I went to Barnet. It is the farthest northern district of London, and is considered a good, pretty wealthy one. There are chinese, pakistani, russian, lithianian, indian districts and many more. People pick where to live also based on national preferences, and group together.  According to internet sources Barnet is a jewish-british-japanese district. Although, wandering down the streets in Barnet I noticed lots of other nationalities on the street as well, the majority of people indeed looked european.

If I am to give a word to Barnet, it is "a village". If I am allowed a bit more words, it would be "a quiet victorian village". Some streets are much older than the others - you can say that by the aging asphalt on the roads, others are pretty new, with new housing developments going on, but they are mostly victorian style two-storey houses with a bunch of greenery and flowers in the front garden.

 

Having walked two underground stations I took a train from West Finchley and went back to central London.

Showers

In the evening with met with Merje, who have been working in Estonian embassy in London for two years already. We met at Marble Arch, and planned to walk in the parks, but didn't get anywhere as it started raining. I would even say pouring, and Merje said it was very unusual for London to have strong showers. So we chatted standing with coffee cups in Pret-a-Manger filled with people hiding from the rain. In an hour it was sunny again and we could go home. Tomorrow would be my first working day.

Day One. It's not that bad.

One the 5th of July and I was sitting in Tallinn airport waiting for my plane to Copenhagen and then to London. Estonia didn't want to let me go: the flight was delayed two times and in the end we took off an hour later than planned.

London, on the contrary, was eager to take me in. Half-empty Heathrow, no queues on passport control, by the time I reached luggage carousel my suitcases were flowing right in front of me. The cab didn't get stuck in the traffic jams, and by 7 PM I was already in my temporary home in Central London. The apartment I am staying in for two months is in Bloomsbury, 15 minutes walk from my new office and in a quiet location.

First impression was confusion. Everything around is so ... foreign. Left is right, right is left, power outlets and electric switches look freaky, and the houses around are all red brick. Seeing English signs everywhere on the streets felt strange, people seemed, well, foreign, and the apartment was not home.
What am I doing here?!

In spite of all that I took a deep breath and went out to buy myself something for breakfast. The reception guy showed me the way to a supermarket and soon I was in Brunswick Shopping Center, and this is where my mood has gone up. :) I prepared myself for a long wandering among the unknown shelves and products in a foreign grocery store, but it turned out to be so easy to find stuff I needed, the shelves organized somehow so logically, that shopping was a pleasure (or maybe I just tricked myself into thinking so to cheer up :) ).

In addition to that at the end of the day the clouds disappeared completely and the evening sun filled my new home, so I thought to myself "It's not that bad after all." :)