Parks

Each park in Central London has got its own personality and it distinguishes itself for a particular reason. Regent's Park is pretty and contemplative-great for picnics. Green Park is the only one with no flowers (hence the name) and conveniently placed near the Queen.

Hyde Park is huge and good for concerts and festivals (I saw REM here), St. James has got the ducks and the squirrels that tourists love and it looks from a scene of Alice in Wonderland in the cold winter sun. When the sun comes out every park in London seems to come alive and fulfil its own destiny as one of the hearts of this city. It is easy to spend whole Sundays getting pissed with friends in the summer, as I also did when my mother came to visit in April.

During my time here the parks have played an important role in the way I have lived London, as I am sure many Londoner would say. Hyde Park was the park around which I'd run all the time whilst preparing for the marathon in 2005, or where I had my 24th birthday picnic during the scorching 2004 summer (we all ended up red and dehydrated, and that was the day when my friend Appy met his future wife), or where I used to have lunch in between classes when I was a student.
Regent's park is the park where I sometimes go to get away from it all, or to jog in the beginning of spring nights. Green Park is the park where I rarely go but where I am celebrating my 29th birthday this year (!), or that I use to cut across the areas of the city that surround it. No more to say about parks.

Trains

There is something completely liberating about jumping on a train, unless it's a bloody commuter's train in which case there is something very brain damaging about trying to jump on a train. Trains are arguably the best way to see a country and the same applies to England. London is full of train stations: Paddington, Kings Cross, St. Pancras, Marylebone, Waterloo, London Bridge, Marylebone, Farrington and so many more, the starting point of myriads of invisible lines that connect this city to the rest of England.

During my time here I have taken many train journeys. These were the Midlands trains that took me back and forth from Nottingham during my first job at Capital One, the Eurostars that took me to Paris for a volleyball tournament or for a weekend ending at L'Unsolite, the Heathrow Expresses, the Gatwick Expresses, the Stansted Expresses, that took me towards my travels, for fun, for work, for desperation. These were the trains that took me to Stoke on Trent on improbable business journeys, that took me to Cornwall for a wedding with my past, to Bristol, to Brighton to visit friends.

RELOCATION TIP

Trains in England are incredibly expensive and if you buy a ticket on the day of travel you will end up paying a fortune.

Trains can be booked online on http://www.thetrainline.com/

If you are a Londoner and would like to add/ammend this tip for the Londoner wannabes, please leave a comment.

The Silence of London

One thing that always intrigues me of London is its silence. The Silence of London is almost a miracle, an extraordinary event one would not expect, which takes place when you are walking down a busy road and magically you find yourself alone, or when you wait for the next tube to find the train empty. It might happen whilst you walk through Regents Park near the rose gardens, or the little alleys between South Kensington and Knightsbridge where I used to work as a barman when I was a student, or the streets of Marylebone. It does not really matter where and how it happens. In those instants the city appears for what it really is: a timeless masterpiece that has been here before the chaos of Oxford Street, before my drunken nights in Soho (would you believe it?) and that it will be here after me, and millions of people after me have come and gone having done their time here. This blog is about my time here, and the 365 days leading to my departure.