domenica 10 aprile 2011

Little Huge Pills of Happiness

Every day life is so stressful and days run so quickly that you hardly have the time to realize how much you are happy! But sometimes, when you are on the bus on your way home with your favorite music in your ears, here it is: happiness! And your heart starts thudding and you smile like a fool among the crowd...

Spring has finally come to London and all the trees are in bloom and all the royal parks are full of people! In these sunny days, in my spare time, I like going to Hyde Park; if you like nature and animals, you can find lots of hungry squirrels to feed there, especially if you're coming from Kensington High Street. You can sit down on a bench with your little bag of peanuts and all the squirrels come to you and sometimes they climb up your legs to get their food! so funny!

But it's also lovely spending a sunny day in Regents Park, going through it and its flowers, climbing up Primrose Hill and from up there, having a breathtaking view of London; then you can have a walk on the Regents Canal and get to Little Venice, with all those colorful boats on the canal.

If it's Sunday and you want to go to all these places you have to share them with lots of people, tourists or Londoners as well, but the City is so big that you can definitely find a little corner for you and your happiness!

sabato 19 marzo 2011

Where are the Londoners?

Ok, I came to London just two months ago, but if you walk in the streets, if you go shopping in some Sainsbury's or whatever, if you go to the park looking for a squirrel or if you are just coming back home by bus or tube, you hardly can find a Londoner close to you... It also depends on what you are expecting from a Londoner: I'm used to compare English people to the characters of some old Agatha Christie's movie, so if you are looking for a kind of old woman with white skin and red cheeks maybe you won't find it in Regents Street.

The streets here are full of restaurants and shops from all over the world and it's very hard to find the English style in them; even if you go to a local market or whatever, you can find almost tourists or people as me that decided to spend a part of their life here.

Call it globalization or whatever you want, but this is the situation when you live in a very big city; sometimes it helps you, for example when you need to eat something that remembers you your home, or when you totally feel a stranger.

And you feel like that a lot of times, for example when you need to go to the bank to open your account and everyone treat you as an E.T.. In a moment like that you wonder if you took the right decision, if your country was so bad and if you really needed to move to a foreign one.

Everything gets better if you take the tube and walk throughout the Thames, especially when the sun shines on you, and you look deeply as far as your eyes can see the House of Parliament or S.Paul Cathedral. Here you are, you finally realize that your dream has come true: you are in London, and not just for two or three days, but you are living here, on the Thames betweens strangers and, sometimes, a Londoner.