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Author:  Colleen

For those of you who haven’t yet relocated to London and may not be familiar with Marmite, it’s a condiment that consumers either love or hate. And, indeed, some expats moving to the UK and renting London apartments share a similar love/hate relationship with the experience, though, instead of feeling either/or, it’s a little of both.

I believe London is an ideal start for North Americans wanting to try out an international experience because there is reduced culture shock—it’s more Western than continental Europe, so the day-to-day experience isn’t much of a jolt. And I’ve already lauded the at-the-very-least 10 reasons to move to London. That being said, an example of what one may have to acquire a taste for is living on a smaller scale, both physically and figuratively.

In the first sense, buildings and streets are smaller and narrower, as are the stores. Shop for groceries more frequently and in smaller quantity, and, as storage place is limited in most London flats, don’t bring everything from home. Get used to doing laundry in your kitchen, buying smaller jugs of milk, and stowing clothes away in containers if not giving them away entirely, to name a few other minor adjustments.

One also has to scale back here in terms of energy and overall budget. I find gas and electricity, for instance, to be much more expensive than what I paid at home, so am constantly turning lights or the heater on and off as necessary as well as drying clothing on racks. Air conditioning is a rare feature, and prepare to be taxed on any common excesses—owning a TV, a car, etc. A large proportion of your income will go to paying rent on your London apartment (unless your employer is covering the cost), so you’ll want to live modestly in other respects of less priority. One thing you will need in abundance, however, is patience for enduring slow responsiveness in service.

*grumbling with something akin to (though much milder than) HATE*

Overall, however, you really do learn what you can live without and start to make more conscious choices, which I think is a good lesson.

*nodding and humming with something akin to respect, if not LOVE*

The fact is that in the course of an international move things will be annoying. Things will go wrong. The unexpected will always occur. But if you can take these things in stride and understand that there are trade-offs, you’ll soon recognize that what you’re gaining in exchange for what you lose is an invaluable experience that you’ll carry with you for a lifetime. For a lot of us expats, it’s only a temporary situation anyway, so you have to enjoy it for what it is during that time.

The best advice I can give you for making the London move, then, is to be open-minded. Don’t expect the UK to be exactly like home. If you want it to be just like home, then an international move might not be for you. Spread marmalade on your toast instead of Marmite.

It’s important to respect the ways of the nation you move to and know that you can learn from them, just as the people there can learn from you, too. To maintain this positive sort of engagement with your new surroundings, you have to be positive yourself. At least give that salty, super-concentrated vegetable stock a go with a tearful squint and a grin.

My personal verdict? I do hate Marmite. But I loooove London!

Today’s guest post comes to us from Rob Tucker of Lotus Events, who will soon be relocating to London from Canada with his wife, Andrea.  You can follow their ongoing progress at lotusevents.blogspot.com, and they can also be found at Got Craft? and Granville Online (where they share clever-n-crafty ideas and updates on the DYI scene!).

Hello! We are two Canadians preparing to move overseas to London, UK in February 2011. I have been chatting with Colleen over email for the past few months about our plans to relocate and she has been kind enough to spend a great deal of time answering our questions about finding a flat. In fact, you can find our entire Q&A interview about relocating to London by Colleen over on our lotus events blog – part 1: http://lotusevents.blogspot.com/2010/09/london-relocation-pt-1.html, part 2: http://lotusevents.blogspot.com/2010/09/london-relocation-pt-2.html and part 3: http://lotusevents.blogspot.com/2010/09/london-relocation-pt-3.html.

We wanted to post about our experience moving to the UK, because as Canadians, we couldn’t find that much information out there. Most of it was geared to Australians looking to move abroad and with our feline friend making the big move with us, we wanted to talk about the steps that went through from our point of view. One thing that we always came across whenever we mention that we are moving to London, is generally the comment of “Wow, it’s so expensive there”. Yes, London isn’t cheap, but according recent reports (http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100126/housing_vancouver_100126/), Vancouver (where we are from) is the most expensive city in the world to own a house. That’s right, folks. I have spent a great deal of time looking at the costs associated with our move including transportation, flat rentals, mobiles and food. One element that I was always frustrated with was finding out the realistic cost of grocery shopping each week in London. Most webpages offer general pricing on what you might spend each week, but the pricing was always quite generic. So, we decided to do a little experiment of our own.

After grocery shopping the other day, I decided to see if I could pin down some true figures. I visited the Sainsbury’s website (http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1285653286712) and discovered that they list the price of every single item they have for sale. You can browse grocery items by category such as fruit, meat, bread, cereals and almost every other item you could possible purchase at a store right down to bags of ice cubes. I thence took our grocery bill and checked each item line by line to compare the prices from our local Save-On-Foods to the prices listed at Sainsbury.

Below are some price differences:

Avocado- $1.89 vs £1.19 ($1.91 conversion)
Broccoli Crowns- $1.70 vs £0.61 ($0.98 conversion)
Block of Jarlsberg Cheese- $5.49 vs £1.45 ($2.33 conversion)
Organic Eggs- $5.99 vs £4.00 ($6.43 conversion)
Gala Apples – $2.86 vs £1.00 ($1.62 conversion)
Chicken Thighs- $6.67 vs £3.00 ($4.85 conversion)

At the end, our Save On Foods bill was $128.83 vs £75.00 ($120.52 conversion) from Sainsbury. Pretty interesting, eh? Of course my excitement about this is tamed by the fact that we pay £712pm for a rather nice one bedroom apartment. Can’t wait for the big move!

This is just an update on our London Living social networking site.  Our membership continues to grow and as of today consists of 142 Londonistas standing proud

London Relocation Ltd. created London Living as an interactive resource for you if you’re relocating to London or have already moved here and are looking to network with fellow expats.  It’s a one-stop shop that houses feeds from our blog and Twitter profile, as well as connects you to the London blogs authored by our Londonistas for further resources on living in London.  Our discussion forums are open to any London-related topic you wish to chat about, from things to do to essential moving advice.  Going forward, we’re adding a feature in which Londonistas can share what upcoming plans they have that others are welcome to join in on to supplement the socials we organize and London events we post, and we’re adding to our offering of apps for fun schtuff like chatting with other members and playing online games.

If you join us at London Living, you will also get your own profile page to pimp out with apps, photos, texts/feeds, and a comments section where other Londonistas can post messages to you.

As a growing network, we’re happy to evolve to meet your needs as a current and future London expat.  There’s a lot of possibility within this friendly community, and you and your ideas are very welcome here

Today we’re happy to introduce to you a new guest blogger, Belle Gurd of Moving 2 London. As for what this comprehensive and utterly wonderful resource is for expats, I’ll let Belle take it from here:

Hey there, a big thanks to London Relocation for letting me hijack their blog spot for a guest post.

Today, I’m just going to give you a brief overview on www.moving2london.com, the London website I started with my partner (Nick) about 5 years ago when we were living in London.

moving2london.com is aimed, as the name suggests, at helping people move to London. The website is an online information resource (sounds boring, but I promise it’s not) with 19 videos (filmed and edited by Nick and myself), interviews, maps, blogs, an e-book, a  Facebook group and Twitter account, all aimed at informing and guiding people on making the move to London.

Nick and I lived in London for two years, on the Working Holiday visa (best thing we have ever done just quietly) and whilst we were both trying to work our way through setting up a totally new life in a totally new country we decided we’d start a website about it.  We wanted to help other people navigate their move over and inject a lot more time for fun and exploration!  www.moving2london gives people info and advice on how to open bank accounts, what a national insurance number is, the job market, how to get around London on all the transport, how to understand the tube and loads, loads more.  We’ve even got a fancy new e-book we’ve just recently published, ‘Survive and Thrive in London’. And for those of you who have used, are looking to use and want to use London Relocation, we’d like to offer you a 50% discount if you purchase using this link.  http://www.moving2london.com/survive-and-thrive-london-ebook-50-off.html

Check us out if you’re heading over to London. London Relocation can help you find your home and we can help you navigate the city.  Remember, life’s too short to stay at home.

Thank you Belle!  We’re so happy to recommend your website and e-book to our prospects to help them transition that much more smoothly in their new London home.