Being here

Have you ever had the "new in town" feeling? If you did, multiply this by 10 thousand and 10 and then you'll have a clue about the way I've felt for the last 5 months.
A friend asked me if it was worth moving here. It certainly was under quite a lot aspects. It's just like you give yourself a treat everyday by enjoying things you knew anything about, things you never knew that could be so simple and so at hand. Things that people from here had since they can remember.
There are so many people back home asking me how is it like? It don't have a simple answer yet.

When you see how tidy the buildings and the streets are , how the roads are washed, and cleaned with some kind of a hoover, conceived to be able to take the dry leafs even on rainy days...
When at the post office you're treated kindly and politely (not more that normal, but in a way that you're not used to), when the trains are never late (well... there are exceptions, of course...), and when their shittiest train looks like our famous blue arrow, when you're not afraid to walk on the street all alone when it's dark, when you're not seeing beggars at every turn, when driving is not an adventure or a slalom among the road's hollows..

When buildings are not just grey and sad and stinking at communism, when you need to return something, anything, no matter that is just a blouse on a wrong size or a TV that doesn't fit in the room, and you're not needed to make a scandal at the store about it...
When the sales are sales indeed, and when you're able to buy with no more than 10 pounds an incredible Lee Cooper pair of jeans, when you don't find "made in China" labels on everything you buy (by the way, made in Romania it's quite a brand...)
When in the train you see more that 2 people reading great books and not just the news paper, when you're welcome to enter everywhere, not just by the signs, but by the people's friendly faces as well, when the guy from the “convenience store” near your place is asking “how are you today?” although he never saw you before and though you can't really tell him if you are sad...

THEN you feel quite lucky to be here.

But when the guy or the lady from the store asks me if I'm al right, I can't really share with them how much I miss my family, my friends, my home, my last job's atmosphere and my colleagues, I can't tell them all these things because they don't really want to be friends with me. They don't really care, they're just polite. They're like this because that's who they are, that's the way they were raised and the way their parents were raised..

BUT when it's so hard to find a job, when, if by any chance you get a temporary assignment and you go there with too high expectations and when you find people that claim that never heard of your religion, unless you mention them that is the same as in Greece, when they don't recognize your work experience because it wasn't in the UK (although there are similar tasks, and use exactly the same application system), when they say that your lunch smells, although is just fries and salad, bought from the building's cafeteria, or when they don't invite you to the Christmas party because you're just a temporary employee and they have no interest in doing something nice for you...

When you don't have a friend to talk to, other way than using the internet, when you have no friend to go out for a coffee or to look for a dress, when they claim they don't understand your “shitty accent”, or the way they look at you when you use movie instead of film or any other American words instead of the British ones, when you can't find anywhere Protex bar soap or the absorbent type that you used since ever...

When there are so many rainy days, that quots from the Minulescu's “Acuarela” spring to your mind all the time, when forgetting your umbrella is like forgetting your keys, when you see the sun no more than twice a week...
That's when you would love to fuck it all and just go back to were you've come from.

P.S. Why have I written my first posted text in English? That's just because I'm learning and I need to practice. Nothing more that this... :P