First steps

Friday, 8th of April 2016

Deciding to come to London is the same thing as deciding to go to a casino, spend half of your money and wish for the best. And I say that simply because London is not a city made for people who donˋt have money, of course you donˋt need to be rich but you do need to have savings or else is going to be even harder for you to start building your life in this city.

One of the first steps is to find somewhere to live, well here you have many possibilities, such as: sharing an apartment/house with other people, choosing a studio with a shared bathroom, a self-contained one or even just renting a bed in a shared room. This all depends on what you feel comfortable with and how much are you willing to pay for accomodation. 

To me this was an extremely important step. I started my search back in Lisbon using websites like Gumtree as a tool to find affordable places but is was only when I came to the city that I was able to start the real search. I made the decision to get together with a real estate agency called Flatland and with their help I was able to explain what I was looking for and get in contact with landlords easily. In one day they were able to schedule three apartment viewings and that was all it took for me to find my current studio in Notting Hill Gate.

For people who never lived in the UK before, you have to be careful when it comes to the rent because here is usually charged weekly and not monthly so when you see an add saying it costs 80£, it really means you will be paying roughly around 320£ a month. Also most places are not including how much you will have to pay when it comes to water and electricity, this last one you normally have a device installed in your wall where you need to put coins to make it work, something I had never seen before in my life. Despite that you will have to pay council taxes if you are not a student and even a tenant fee. So has you see what it started as 320£, can be over 400£ a month.

Living alone was my own choice, I like to have a personal space where I can just relax after a long day and have my alone time. Unfortunately, that also means rent is higher but I really wouldnˋt tradded it for anything else, mainly after seeing an add saying that rent was free if you were a female between 18 and 25 and wanted to share a two floor house with a 50 year old man.

When I moved to my new place I almost wanted to cry when I saw the "raw truth" for the first time, sure I had seen the place before but when it is always different when you actually examine everything you need to do to make it your own. I was overwhelmed with the weird noises, with the fact that the curtains do not cover the all window, that the actual window canˋt close all the way down but mostly with the overall dirtiness that surronded everything I touched. 

After a while of feeling sorry for myself, I pulled myself up, found the closest store, bought several cleaning products, put on the new gloves and started to scrub everything from top to bottom. I didnˋt stop until I felt like I was almost passing out from all the chemicals.

The last thing was making the bed and when I finally layed down my quilt, the one I hold in my heart so dearly because it was bought in Bamberg and a dear friend of mine as the same one (we chose it before even knowing each other), I looked at it and just smile seeing that the studio was becoming a home.

Sincerely,

A girl in her new apartment.

Mariana Fidalgo