misconceptions I had about the UK

I love visiting London, but I always feel happy and relieved when I’m on the train home. That was something I hadn’t expected when I moved to Kent. At the beginning, I thought living outside London might mean missing out on the proper British experience.

By the time I shared these reflections in April 2022, I’d lived in the UK for six years and had changed my mind about quite a few things. Two of the biggest were where I’d want to live and whether I’d ever feel at home. Neither changed because the first few months were easy. They really weren’t.

The first five months were overwhelming

I call my first five months in England the months of living hell. Everything felt overwhelming because everything was slightly different. It wasn’t necessarily that each difference was huge, but there were so many of them. At the beginning, I honestly thought there was no way that I, as a Canadian and as the person I was, would ever fit in.

Six years later, that had turned out to be a misconception. I felt at home and at peace, and accepted to a certain level. I still had negative experiences with people sometimes, including conversations where someone would start ranting about foreigners ruining the country. Hello, that’s me you’re talking about.

On the whole, though, British people had been accepting, friendly, welcoming and kind to me. I truly felt that I fitted in. At the beginning, with everything different and overwhelming, I hadn’t thought that feeling was possible. I was very glad I’d been wrong about it.

I thought London was where I should be

My partner was from Kent, so that’s where I moved, in the southeast of England. A lot of the other expats I connected with online, and people I saw on YouTube, lived in London. It looked like this cool big-city life, and I thought I might regret not giving it a try. A town, a smaller city or a village seemed as though it might be boring by comparison.

I still think London is an incredible city. There’s so much to see, eat, drink and do, and every visit gives me something new to experience. I have nothing against it. Loving those visits just hasn’t turned into wanting to live there, and the relief I feel on the train home says quite a lot about my own preference.

Over those six years, I’d lived in different places and learned that an English town or village suited me. I didn’t feel I was missing out by choosing that. London doesn’t represent the whole UK any more than Toronto represents all of Canada, so living elsewhere wasn’t stopping me from having a British experience.

The television version is only part of the picture

I’d also imagined that everywhere would be beautiful and historical, full of the architecture you see on television. There certainly are places here that look like that, with old buildings and monuments, but the whole country doesn’t. There are ordinary neighbourhoods and suburbs too. A thatched-roof cottage on screen doesn’t mean that’s where you’re going to end up living.

Visiting London and wanting to make it home were different things for me, too.

A lovely holiday doesn’t answer the everyday questions

Copenhagen was another reminder of that difference. I loved visiting in the middle of August, when the weather was sunny and beautiful, and thought I’d happily live there. But I’d never experienced a winter there, worked there or commuted to a job there. My holiday didn’t tell me what all the ordinary, monotonous parts of life would be like.

That was why I didn’t think having misconceptions about a place was shameful. Living and working somewhere brings the less exciting details into view, including delayed buses and bills. Even after six years in the UK, I was still learning and discovering things I’d misunderstood. I was happy to keep learning, especially when being wrong meant I could feel at home here after all.

Watch my reflections on the misconceptions I had about the UK.