So you’re moving to London | Hacker News Reader

So you’re moving to London

mikhanov.com

34 pointssmikhanov81 comments

I've lived for ~8 years in London, and ~8 years in Bangkok, a few years in Oxford, and a bit of time in some other random places.

The striking thing about London is that EVERYWHERE is an hour away, and that impacts your social life. Unless you live or work next to your friends, prepare to see them rarely. In both Bangkok and Oxford, social life was effortless - someone would SMS you in the afternoon, and you'd swing by some restaurant or bar on your way home to see them. Oxford, everywhere was trivially walkable, Bangkok taxis are virtually free, but London? It's an hour on the tube. Because of this, everyone is BUSY. Busy all the time. If I want to see my friends, I book 6 weeks in advance - and I live relatively central (Zone 2, Camden).

Summer in London is amazing - the parks are fantastic, there are some good bars ... winter is cold, rainy, and grey, and bluntly we're moving from London because we can't take another winter here.

Just my 2p.

I love London and lived there for 17 years. But in the end, the combination of most of our friends moving out of town, and the rest being friends by appointment only (sort of like you described) and commercial bankers taking over our neighbourhood and pushing cost of living through the roof, meant that we ended up leaving. Loved living there, not looked back and missed it.

I agree. I went to uni in London for a year - worst decision ever. It's not somewhere you can just meet up with friends who live somewhere else in London.

But then cities are generally like that - very lonely places swarming with strangers.

> .. winter is cold, rainy, and grey

Last winter wasn't. We barely had the heating on at all. Year before wasn't that bad.

I always find the people who care a lot about the weather to be rather idle-minded. Unless your main intellectual past time is playing golf i'm not sure how it can affect you. If you are busy doing something awesome the last thing you are going to care about is the rain.

Perhaps they detest building snowmen, cuddling up in bed when it's cold, drying off in front of an open fire after walking through the rain, that awesome thunderstorm with cool rain after a boiling hot day, the neighbourly camaraderie assessing the damage after a storm etc etc

I've never understood people who don't like the variety of weather and seasons. It must be so so boring to not experience, or enjoy weather.

Britain is a small island in the middle of a shallow sea with a warm current flowing roughly South to North and a cold jet stream flowing West to East at high altitude. Our weather depends on which way the wind is blowing and how wet the air is. Those from continental climates may find the variability refreshing!

PS: I live in the bit of the UK that isn't London. There is quite a lot of that.

> Those from continental climates may find the variability refreshing!

Continental climates have distinct seasons, (almost) by definition. That's certainly a kind of variability.

Certainly, but, in Britain, as anyone who has tried to organise a picnic or outdoor wedding or similar will know, the variability is on a time scale of hours rather than months.

PS we seem to be keen on silent downvoting again. Parent post makes a perfectly valid point that allowed me to clarify my comment (timescales).

A lot of people can't stand him, but I found Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes' autobiography, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, a big mental change in how i perceived weather as an inconvenience when I was younger. Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.

I think the obsession with "good weather" is very very unhealthy. Just think about the kind of people who move to the south of Spain to live in disgusting British ex-pat filled towns. Largely feeble minded grotesques you couldn't have anything more than a polite conversation with. Look at Florida for an american equivalent.

Further it would be interesting to see how productivity intersects with climate. A historical view on Europe's changing climate would be most interesting from a historical perspective.

I think you can also draw a lot of parallels between weather and emotion also.

It'd be amazingly unhealthy to be in a permanent state of "contentedness" for the rest of your life like some drugged up zombie. We need the bad days, the sadness, the anger, the whole range of emotions, so that we appreciate the other emotions, and feel truly alive.

There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".

Some people prefer seasonal variations in weather; this whole discussion of 'sunny year round' preference is something that people hitched themselves on about 3-4 hierarchies up.

> There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".

That's a bad comparison. Some people have one kind of preference - sunny. Others both like to go skiing and to go water-skiing.

I don't think it is a bad comparison at all. You could say people have a preference for being happy. But being happy every day would be pretty unwise. After a while it would stop being happy and it'd be relentlessly normal. Then you'd need something to make you "super happy"!

Variation in all aspects of life is what keeps us grounded and gives us reference points.

But end of off-topic hijacking for me...

Some people are both happy going skiing, and going swimming at the beach (maybe even in the span of one day). Since both of these two conditions, made possible by climate/weather, elicit positive emotions, it doesn't really have any analogy to what you are describing.

> Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.

As an adventurer? The weather can be much more of an inconvenience to an "adventurer" (which I guess has something to do with being outdoors) than to the average modern, white/blue collar worker, person.

Too cold a weather might mean that you have to be very mindful of what you are wearing and adjust it to your activity level; wear too much while you are active and you get sweaty, which means that you in turn get colder. Wear too little and you start freezing. Even changing attire between activity levels can be difficult, since you sometimes have to undress partially in order to change attires, which might be enough of a room to leave you freezing. Too cold weather might mean that your equipment stops functioning because something froze. Too cold weather might mean that you have a hard time doing anything precise with your hands, because your wooly mittens don't lend themselves to that kind of work.

Then perhaps the weather gets milder; now you have to question whether you are able to cross that river on that ice. Also perhaps beware of snow avalanches.

A lot of rain might mean that you get, you know, wet, perhaps most of the stuff you have. Now you have to carry around wet tents etc. because you didn't have time to dry anything. Perhaps you even have to go to bed in a wet sleeping bag. Good luck trying to sleep.

That is just normal weather - not even going into things like storms.

Obviously preparation is important in extreme weather. That was kind of my point. In moderate weather largely deflected by a parasoled sheet of plastic it isn't the end of societal existence

> Obviously preparation is important in extreme weather.

None of what I described was extreme, really.

London doesn't get awesome thunderstorms. I used to joke about the annual thunderclap. This year we've surprisingly had a few already. Neighbourly camaraderie? Open fire? Walking in the rain? Walking in puddles of engine oil? You're describing the weather experience of living in the countryside of a tropics country, not London.

I'm talking about UK weather in general. I lived in London for a year, worked there for 4 and remember many thunderstorms. Not so much neighbourly camaraderie though. If you want neighbourly camaraderie live in a village.

Nope, London doesn't have thunderstorms. Maybe they're thunderstorms by UK standards, but not by global standards, not in the 13 years I've lived here. One of the things I miss most about living elsewhere in the world is the stimulating weather. Be it big blue skies, substantial snow, bone rattling thunderstorms, lightning displays, hail storms that bring traffic to a halt. London is wishy washy. Drizzle, enough snow to make a dirty slush, a thunderclap, a single flash of lightning, hail so small that it melts away on contact. Summer in 2004 (2005?) was two weeks long. Literally. Two weeks of sun. Dreary weather. I'm desperate for the European economy to pick up so I can leave.

Much of Europe has far more boring weather than the UK.

What a pejorative statement. If those awesome things involve being outdoors, then you care a lot about the weather. If you grew up in a country with an outdoors lifestyle, expect that to be severely curtailed when you come to London (or the UK for that matter). If you have kids, expect them to be playing indoors for a disproportionate amount of time.

For someone who grew up in a much sunnier climate (South Africa), it can be crushingly oppressive at times.

Wait until you end up someplace that actually has bad weather. London is considered pretty mild by most standards.

I grew up in one of the rainier and colder parts of the British Isles and I don't recall any such issues with playing outside. Sure I had to wear wellies when playing in the fields or local common green areas but I don't recall it restricting whatever it was I was doing. Perhaps it is the modern need to have adults oversee everything a child does which actually causes the restriction. I'd expect most children couldn't care less about the rain and bad weather.

Also I visit South Africa 4-5 times a year and I don't notice my daily routine change much from London apart from driving more. If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.

> If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.

Oh, so then the weather matters after all. Apparently it matters so much that it has affected the whole work-hour traditions of Spain. Huh.

"Weather" can be pointless wringing, and it can also be complaints from people who live in a climate that necessitates both air conditioning in the summer to avoid heat strokes on the worst days, and heating in the winter to avoid freezing (both themselves and their plumbing). It involves people who have to worry about changing tires on their car when the winter comes. It involves people who sometimes wake up and have to shovel 1 meter height of snow to be able to get out of the house. It involves urban inhabitants that have to worry about the level of pollution in the air which varies based on how cold the weather is and how much it is raining.

Where I live, the weather is probably mostly a slight inconvenience. For you, who lives in the British Isles? I'm guessing an oceanic climate, which even if it is pretty cold in the winter it is probably not frigid, no? And in turn, perhaps overall cool summers. So overall a pretty even distribution of temperatures over the year; seldom cold, mostly cool to slightly warm. Yeah, you're probably not inconvenienced by the weather, compared to a lot of people elsewhere.

To be fair about the weather: the M25 - one of the most important motorways in England (goes around London) was closed for over 24 hours by less than an inch of snow.

Public transport in London is often thrown into chaos by 2 or 3 inches of snow.

I was referencing the British climate in particular.

Apparently, you're not very aware that the weather can impact your mood.

Agreed - the time it takes to do anything is very frustrating.

There's an easy solution though: get a bike, and try and pursuade your friends to cycle too. It's rare that it takes me more than 30 minutes to meet up now (which equates to travelling around 7 miles on a bike).

> winter is cold, rainy, and grey

If you're comparing a British winter to a southern hemisphere "winter", sure it's not a great place to be. But for the mostpart, London is actually pretty good for it's winter. Yes you occasionaly get snow which is great for a day or two and then it turns to slush and ice and ends up being annoying, but really London is mild compared to the rest of the UK.

It is a big adjustment going from a southern hemisphere country to northern, so I don't blame you if you can't take it, but really it's not that bad here.

> It is a big adjustment going from a southern hemisphere country to northern, so I don't blame you if you can't take it, but really it's not that bad here.

Bangkok is not in the Southern Hemisphere. It's in the N. Hemisphere, though relatively close to the equator.

haha d'oh. I should know better since my partner is from that neck of the woods.

I'm from Norway, but have lived in London for 14 years. I actually prefer the cold and snow to London weather. The problem with London in the winter is that it is grey and wet and dreary. Snow and a clear sky, even with the sun up for fewer hours, still feels far more cheerful to me - the snow reflects whatever light there is.

You can always just move to the west coast if you end up missing wet and dreary. ;)

Thanks for this. Currently living in Oxford and my experience has been similar. Have put off a move to London because I was worried that what everyone told me is true: it takes an hour to see anyone. It takes me only just over an hour to get to London from Oxford! (Though granted, there's always onward travel once there.)

Now I find people I hoped to see regularly if I moved to centralish London are moving out anyway. They are moving further away into Kent, Surrey, so on.

Yes it takes about an hour from Oxford to London. But worse, a one-way ticket bought on the day costs something like 23 quid (US $39)! Trains in the UK are lovely, but the average price for a year of rail commuting to London is 3400 pounds (US $5770), which is absurd.

I live in Oxford and the rail costs are why I always get the bus. The "Oxford Tube" and X90 coaches run more frequently than trains, cost £18 return, have power and wifi, are comfortable, and deliver you to the centre of London in 1-1.5hrs (or assorted stop further out, plus stops from the ring-road through to the centre in Oxford). Usually less crowded and more comfortable than the train too!

Completely back this up - they also run frequently enough that a lot of the time you don't need to worry about their timetables (at peak time between both services - which are nearly identical - there are 8 or more scheduled every hour), and offer services at times when trains don't run.

Miss them very much now I've moved away from Oxford and living about the same distance away from London to the North, where trains are my only option.

"Everyone is busy" and "Too much distractions (low signal to noise ratio)" were the two main reasons I've moved away from London (and the UK) having spent 8 years there to a place where people can still enjoy slower pace, appreciate those "little things in life" and do not make the Saturday party over with the last tube train (departing slightly after midnight). (Yeah, I heard the tube will be running until 4am on weekends - it's just a shame many friends grown their families and had to relocate further with rail links. It's easier to have more quality time with them now going together on holidays rather than living in the same city).

Night buses suck compared to the tube, but at least they exist. Back where I grew up the party would have to finish at 8 if you're not staying over.

Basically, you need to treat London as a large region. "Moving to London" is too imprecise. It's like moving "to the North". Move to the "wrong" part of London vs your friends, and you might as well have moved to a different country. If you want to live near your friends, you need to move to the same borough, or at least along the same public transit corridors, and forget about the idea that London is one city.

I've lived here for 5, and maybe its just that most of my friends live fairly close to me, and that I used to live in Devon when I was growing up (where trying to meet friends without parental support was nigh-on impossible - no buses, couldn't drive, everyone lives miles away from each other), but I've not really encountered those problems at all.

Granted I tend to meet people centrally after work, since its convenient for everyone, but its not been too bad.

Sure Bangkok taxis are virtually free if you live on a London-salary. And I'm surprised you say Bangkok is a good city to move around in. Bangkok traffic is often a huge pain. As can going on public transport be.

It’s the city of Beatles

That would be Liverpool, 200 miles north-west :-)

or a two thousand year old city, London has no antique palaces or medieval streets

It's hard to say what "antique" is in terms of a palace, but I'd argue it has at least one: the Tower of London (officially Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress) was founded in 1066 and much of what stands today was the result of building in the 13th century. This is older than anything in Paris, say, but hardly on a par with Greece ;-)

For a casual stroller London looks like a loosely linked collection of small villages

It is. Even when my dad was a kid, even suburbs as far in as Kidbrooke, Blackheath and Lewisham were essentially considered unique places, often separated by greenery, and not physically joined to the larger conurbation. A lot of gaps have been filled in the past 50 years to make it feel like more of a whole. Heading south, I don't think you even see a field until you hit Coulsdon now..

That would be Liverpool

If you live in London, than you know that London is the only place worth mentioning, or even acknowledging, in England and thus if it happened in England and is worth mentioning, it must have happened in London.

On the contrary, actual Londoners give plenty of credit to the rest of the country for things that happened there. It tends to be ignorant foreigners who assume that anything in the UK must have happened in London.

Point taken. I'm one of those ignorant foreigners who only lived there.

Having lived in London 14 years by now have led me to think that "actual Londoners" are about as mythical as unicorns.

I hear they all drink at pub in the East End called The True Scotsman.

Being a Londoner born-and-bred who "escaped" 15 years ago, I wouldn't say that but I do sincerely empathise with your sarcasm as it surely doesn't fall far off the mark, sadly..

Actually the beatles thing was a recent point of debate because their carrear only kicked off after moving to London

By that measure the Beatles could be said to be from Hamburg, as that was also formative for their career. Even internationally, I would argue that 'Cavern Club' and 'Beatles' are inextricably linked and more famous than anywhere in London they were associated with.

Also old: Westminster hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Westminster#Westmins...), built in 1097 and still in active use today. I could care less for the rest of the Palace of Westminster, but the hall is absolutely stunning.

The best way to see the hall is to attend a public meeting hosted in parliament as it will be free.

Regarding the antique places; it's worth mentioning that vast swathes of London, in fact most of the medieval city, were obliterated by fire in 1666, with large parts bombed in the 1940's.

> This part of England has the same weather throughout most of the year

Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. We have seasons over here - clearly defined seasons. At the moment we're enjoying hot sunny days, rainy nights. We'll probably have some good snow in the winter, and a variety of things thrown in between now and then.

If you're a fan of weather, then the UK is a great place to live. If you don't like weather then somewhere like California is a better option with its relentless boring sunshine.

I actually think London gets a bad rep for its weather. It is certainly not as good as Stockholm, but not as bad as its reputation.

London gets a terrible rep. I come from Wales and the difference in the weather is quite dramatic. Back home in Wales, it probably rains 150 more days than it does in London. I have a leather trench that kept me warm in the winters in Wales, it now has me boiling during London winters.

Yes i agree London can get pretty grey, but it's nowhere near as miserable as people make out.

Dude, don't tell anyone! The real estate pressure is bad enough already!

People who complain about it have never lived in miserable weather. From what i've experienced, its actually rather nice and varied. Live up north, or even further up both then you'll get to experience miserable weather.

London is in one of the drier, sunnier and warmest parts of the UK:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.ht...

Weather is one of those things that everyone complains about, everywhere.

The only way to properly evaluate weather is to (a) figure out what you like, and (b) check the data on Weatherspark. Unless you're talking about the summit of Mt. Washington or Ben Nevis, the complaints will always be scarier than the reality. Take Seattle's notorious cloud cover and rain. Reality: 80% cloud cover in the winter, meaning 15-20 hours of sunlight per week-- not great, but not "constant overcast"-- and an hour or two of light rain on most days. Complaint: "you never see the sun in January and it always rains".

It's unpredictable how someone will react to climate (especially because even specific locales have good and bad summers and winters from year to year). I've lived in Minnesota and New York City, and I always had worse winter SAD issues in New York, not because of anything to do with the weather itself, but for the damn buildings. "Urban sunset" is 2:30 in some neighborhoods, in the winter. (That said, the benefits of living in New York more than make up for it.)

London's definition of "hot" is 20-25 C and mostly sunny. Personally, that's all the heat I need, but there are people in the US who hate the lack of a "real" summer (30+) in places like Seattle, London, or Paris. Most of the US, even in the North (Chicago, New York) gets summers that are very hot by European standards, and so some people get bothered when it's July and they have to wear a jacket in the morning. I don't. When I was in L.A. a year ago people were complaining about "June Gloom" because it was 22 C and cloudy. I couldn't believe it; I was like, "June is still spring, this is awesome!" It was probably a bummer to people who thought LA had year-round "beach weather", though.

> there are people in the US who hate the lack of a "real" summer (30+) in places like Seattle, London, or Paris.

But then they have AC turned up to full so it's freezing in their office! Funny old world...

A very touristy, and one dimensional view of London, and very different to my impressions of London.

The author has clearly only really tried to experience the food and culture of the very centre, and likely only lived there as well. The only thing that they've got spot on is that london is essentially a collection of loosely linked villages. For a permanent resident, that means that where you live (probably one of the "village" areas) is a world away from what the centre of London is like.

Exactly. For me, "going in to town" means going in to Croydon - a city centre with it's own large high street and multiple shopping centres at the outskirts of London. Croydon town centre again is at the centre of a collection of smaller villages within the borough, each with their own high streets.

I work near Waterloo, so I commute in to the centre, but outside of work I rarely see central London - it's pretty much a different city from my perspective.

I also found the mention of City curious. City is also pretty much a thing by itself. I guess it differs by what skillsets you put on your CV, but I've never worked with someone who has worked in City. I've only known one person who did. I don't come across recruiters trying to get me to take bank jobs very often. London is not defined by City any more than San Francisco is defined by its financial district.

>> "london is essentially a collection of loosely linked villages. For a permanent resident, that means that where you live (probably one of the "village" areas) is a world away from what the centre of London is like."

Any good resources for trying to pick the right area? I'm planning on moving to London but besides the names of some of the areas I know very little about them.

The best thing to do would probably be to ask people on places like r/london, as (like the article says) London can have great areas right next to less nice areas.

Thanks for the tip, never thought about r/london

This is an interesting take on London from an outsider. The villages point is important - to really get to know the town you need to get out of the centre and visit a few of the villages (Hampstead, Kilburn, Notting Hill, Camden, Kensington, Greenwich, Hoxton etc) - there's a lot of variety there and as the author says a lot of very mixed areas, each with their own personality.

This can make travel a chore, but if you have friends in the same area, you don't have to meet them in the middle of town, and some areas are very well connected. It also gives the city interest as there's always a new area to discover when visiting friends. Walking and biking round London is also rewarding if you like cityscapes because it varies so much.

Second, when a fast-food industry adopts some food type in London, it completely wipes away all other options to try it, leaving you only with a dull ersatz (this is what happened to sushi, for example). Just like with the music scene, the competition for a spot in a good restaurant can be fierce.

This is not accurate, though I can see why you might have that impression if you live somewhere sterilised by big brands like the centre of town or Canary Wharf where the only option is yo sushi. There are plenty of horrible chains for every cuisine catering to tourists, but there are a lot of great sushi places in town, like Jin Kichi in Hampstead or Inaho near Notting Hill. So this doesn't ring true to me at all - if you're eating in London there's no reason to entertain a chain restaurant, and thousands of alternatives, even if the most popular to get busy on weekends.

The analysis of financing rings true though - London does feel divided into those who work in the city (a different jurisdiction and a different world), and those who don't. Pay scales, careers and culture all change as you cross that divide, and unfortunately Canary Wharf is like an island insulated from the areas which surround it - most of London is quite different from that though. As the article says, funding for startups outside finance is not always easy (I'd love to hear contradictions of this).

The things I treasure the most about London, having been here for a decade or so, are the genuinely cosmopolitan and egalitarian culture, and the mixing of world culture occurring here in the last few decades. While some resent this change for me it is the redeeming feature of London, the part which makes it feel like a world city, not just the capital of a small nation shrinking in importance. Take a typical bus in this city and you might hear a dozen languages spoken in the space of a journey, from all over the world. Perhaps this is something we'll see more of in every city as the world continues to shrink.

If you want to work in tech in the UK but don't like the downsides of London, it's worth considering Edinburgh. The tech scene is really taking off here, with plenty of jobs (see this list of tech companies http://www.nobugs.org/deved/). There is much more an 'ecosystem' of tech employers than there was a few years ago. Maybe you will make 75-80% of a London salary (your mileage may vary) but your living costs are way lower. You can live in a beautiful 2 bedroom Georgian apartment in central Edinburgh for £800/month and walk to work. The annual cultural festivals bring some great music, comedy, theatre, film and art to the city. The only major downside (IMO) is the weather, consistently a few degrees cooler than London.

Living in London is to an extent, a young persons game. Many commentators are talking about being an hour away from people and home. I don't think that's a big problem. Sure it's not easy, I used to live somewhere where i was nevermore than 1/2 hours walk from anyone of my friends, now i'm generally on an hours tube journey.

It's not a big deal and it's about being in an area you like. I love my area in west London, I could have moved closer to my friends in East London, but that would put me out with friends in West, South West and North London. I'm in Zone 2, so cycling to the middle isn't a big deal, but nor is taking a tube to east London, or south east London. If you don't like commutes and being within busy places, it might not be for you. You'll make friends with people who live and work all over london. If you're good friends, you'll make the time(travel) differences work. It's one of those things people who live in London deal with. I do think it's about being under a certain age/having that mindset though.

I have lived in London for six years. The tech scene is very vibrant, but I struggle with the 'big city' aspect. Strangers are generally ruder in public than elsewhere in the UK (not a reflection on them, more a side-effect of nobody ever having personal space). The commute is miserable, and nights out in Zone 1 & 2 tend to be overly commercialised, tacky and unfriendly, with the exception of a few hidden gems.

It's not somewhere you can clear your head by going for a walk, even the numerous and beautiful parks are crowded with young families on a sunny day. Quaint, village-type areas are well known and swarming with tourists. "Going for a walk" means something totally different in London- you're not going to escape the bustle, and will probably end up spending money.

If you are somebody who can deal with a complete absence of personal space while outside, don't mind being herded around like cattle, and the constant drone of traffic/sirens, London otherwise has a lot to offer (good restaurants, museums and art galleries, lots of tech Meetups).

>It's not somewhere you can clear your head by going for a walk, even the numerous and beautiful parks are crowded with young families on a sunny day. Quaint, village-type areas are well known and swarming with tourists. "Going for a walk" means something totally different in London- you're not going to escape the bustle, and will probably end up spending money.

I beg to differ. Yes, of course a place like Hyde Park will be full to the brim on a sunny day. But I have never had a problem finding a quiet area to walk around in London. Even walking about 5 minutes south-west from Hyde Park around the side streets of South Kensington you will quickly find yourself to be the only person walking around the beautiful houses.

A nice park if you want some peace and quiet I can recommend is Richmond Park. It's massive and there's loads of space around to explore without being herded around like cattle or having to endure the constant drone of traffic/sirens.

> It's not somewhere you can clear your head by going for a walk, even the numerous and beautiful parks are crowded with young families on a sunny day

So go a bit further out (and consider moving further out). Bromley or South Croydon is full of actual countryside and the occasional bit of woodland with far fewer people, and still in London, for example. You'll find quiet or quieter parks dotted around the outer edge of London if you just look a bit. If you don't need completely quiet, there are plenty of quieter places closer to the centre too. Like the river walkway from around Imperial Wharf (on the north side of the river) towards Barnes, and further towards Richmond (Barnes and Richmond and the area in between also have plenty of quiet areas). Especially if you walk into residential areas instead of near the commercial districts.

The solution of going further out applies to pretty much anything in London: Avoid zone 1 and 2 unless you want big, loud, expensive and commercialised. It's fun now and again, but there are so many alternatives.

I'm in London (2 years in total) and it's really great. You can really complain about 4 things: - It is really hard to find a nice flat in a good condition (no mold etc.) with reasonable price. - Some good&services are overpriced (e.g. trains) - Taxes are a bit too high - Weather :)

It's in top 5 big cities to live in the world for sure.

I lived in London for three years as a student. I can't comment on the tech/startup scene but I can confirm that quality of living isn't great. Coming from Vienna, supposedly the city with the best quality of life, I am spoiled though.

I'm from Dublin and it pains me to say it but London is the best city in the world. I've lived here for over ten years at various times and my god do I love this place.

What I'd like to know is how to move there with 0 experience and without knowing anyone who lives there.

A suprisingly common question on r/london

Unless you're extremely enterprising and know you can meet people quickly, the general advice is don't.

This sounds negative, but framing it the opposite way has worked for me and many of my friends: visit London first to make some contacts, then move here once you've got a job offer.

I moved to London a year ago and only knew about 3 people here at the time. One of things that threw me initially the most (having moved from Lincoln) was that everyone here seems to plan everything way in advance, I missed the spontaneity of my former social life.

Anyway to make some friends I went to a few different meetup nights for technologies I was interested in. I joined an online dating site to try and make some friends; I had mixed results with this but it has resulted in some great friendships. I also made friends through colleagues and friends of friends.

A year later I have about 10 close friends who I see regularly, plus colleagues and other people who I see semi-regularly and I do feel like I've gone a lot social spontaneity in my life again.

All in all it was a bit lonely at first but I'm loving living here and really can't imagine wanting to leave any time soon.

I'm planning on doing exactly that in London in a few months. I've done it once before (although in Toronto - which is much further away from me). As a freelancer I was able to scrape by in Toronto and I plan on doing the same in London until I can find a job. I've had offers in the past from companies in London so hopefully it won't be too hard to find something. As for meeting people I'm planning on sharing a flat with strangers. In Toronto I got a 1 bedroom apartment and it was the worst decision I made. I feel like if I'm living with 3 or 4 other people (at least for the first little while) I have a much better chance of meeting people and assembling a group of friends.

> If everything above sounds like a description of city made for the rich, this is not the case.

...

>There’s one thing that all districts of London have in common though: they are all expensive to live in.

Make up your mind.

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