Oxford Road

There is a street in Reading named Oxford Road. It's located very close to the Town Centre and, a wile ago, when looking for a bigger and nicer house to move to, it seemed to me the perfect street from this whole little nice town. Mihai never liked the idea of moving there, he always said that it's a very "dodgy" street and pretty soon I gave up the idea myself, but without being too convinced about the ugliness of this neighborhood.

Three weeks ago I started a "very part-time" job, and the office was on a street parallel to Oxford Road. When finishing the day, I decided to walk back home and to take a look at this (in)famous neighborhood. I was amazed. It's like the twilight zone. The streets seemed to have never been cleaned, unlike any other daily cleaned street of the rest of this town. The aspect of the shops is so untidy and repulsive, the people seem so poor and unhappy that for a while I had the feeling of being back home, in a different world.

Pretty soon I found out the explanation. Here live a lot of Polish people. They have their own shops, their own pubs, they've lived here for three generations or so. They've managed, it seems, to have brought "home" to this foreign country, with all it's aspects, including those too specific, that are still representative for Western-Europe and that they wanted to get rid off in the first place. It's hard for me to understand how this happened, how come they haven't been assimilated by the British specifics, how come they managed to open exclusive bars for Polish people (no British or any other nation accepted) in a foreign and very civilised country.

Apparently this kind of rules are not accepted any more, but the fact that the English are allowed to enter the bar it's still perceived like a favor they're doing to the Brits and to the other foreigners.
I'm not racist, I even understand them, and I pity us and our Western-European spirit (under it's bad aspects) that apparently we can't get rid of.