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So Long, London: My Journey from the UK to Spain

Updated: Apr 3






[00:00:00.000] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to More Than a Language, the Intermediate Edition. My name is Oliver, and I am an English teacher. I've been doing the advanced version of this podcast for almost a year now, and something occurred to me this week. I was filming a version of the advanced podcast about accents within the UK and talking about how often people in Spain tell me I sound incredibly British when I talk in English. What they mean by that is that they think I have the stereotypical British accent, the accent which many people think of when they think of Britain. I've heard this virtually every time I've spoken in English in Germany or Italy, the European countries in which I've lived previously. But despite this apparently incredibly British accent, I don't actually live in the UK nowadays. Maybe my accent is going to get a little bit less British because of that. We'll have to see. Anyway, towards the end of last year, I moved to Valencia on the East Coast of Spain. For today's podcast, I thought I'd give some details about how that happened and how it felt to leave the UK. I thought that was especially relevant this week because I just got back from a trip to London in the last few days.


[00:01:30.700] - Oliver (Host)

The reason that I'm living in Valencia is because of my partner, César. We also work together. He's my co-host for the advanced version of this podcast, plus we do a Spanish language version together. I met César when I was on holiday here in Valencia, and almost eight years later to the day, that is the same date of the year, but eight years later, we moved to Spain together. Moving to Spain was a decision César and I made some time ago, and honestly, we're both really happy to be living in Spain now. There have been obviously a lot of changes, and inspired by César's episode of his intermediate Spanish podcast about this same topic, I wanted to dedicate an episode to London, too, to say goodbye to the city and that phase of my life properly, and to celebrate starting this new phase here in Spain. César and I discussed the title of his Spanish episode about this topic in quite a lot of detail at the time, and he chose an English language title to reflect the topic. The title is actually inspired by a Taylor Swift song. César, although he liked the song a lot, hadn't realised that she uses the phrase, "So long, London", in two different contexts, one meaning for a long time and the other as a way of saying goodbye, London.


[00:03:08.630] - Oliver (Host)

And both of those phrases work well for my version of this episode: goodbye, London, we spent a long time together. Before I continue, just a quick reminder, if you're new to the podcast, you can read the transcript and use the vocabulary flashcards on www.morethanalanguage.com. So where to start? Well, maybe at the beginning, when I first arrived in London back in 2011, 14 years ago. When people not from the UK ask me where I'm from, I normally say London, but it's not actually true. The city I've spent most of my life in is London, but I wasn't born there either. I grew up in a small in a county right next to London called Hertfordshire. I'm including some photos of the area where I grew up in the video version of this podcast, in case you're watching on Spotify or YouTube. My town is literally 20 to 25 minutes from the centre of London on the train. So very close. But no real Londoner, no born and bred Londoner, would consider me to be from London. In fact, when I was little, I was always very aware that London, Europe's biggest city, was on my doorstep, but it felt very far away.


[00:04:39.690] - Oliver (Host)

I very rarely went to London, and I wouldn't have dreamt of going to the bustling metropolis by myself without my family. For university, I moved to the city of Oxford, which was a happy medium between my hometown and London in terms of size. But there was no question I had no doubt that I would move to London as soon as I graduated, and this is exactly what happened. I packed my bags and moved to London in the summer of 2011, just a few weeks after graduating. Almost everyone I knew from university headed to London after they finished their degree. My first jobs in the city were pretty interesting. I talk about my whole career trajectory in episode 18 of the Advanced podcast, but it's just a monologue without a conversational element, so you may find it easier to understand than some of the other advanced episodes. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I only had a couple of years in London before I had to leave. I left twice in very quick succession. The first time to spend six months studying Mandarin in Beijing, and then the second time another two years later. By then, I had become a finance lawyer working in the banking industry, and so I went off to practise law first in Germany and then in Italy.


[00:06:11.500] - Oliver (Host)

Then, as I mentioned before, I met César while on holiday here in Spain. Although it seems a bit crazy in hindsight, it was one of those holiday romances that never ends. I'll do an episode on it in more detail eventually, but essentially, by the end of my time in Valencia, we'd already organised for him to come and visit me in Germany, where I was living. Then soon after that, we decided to move together to London. This was a return to London for both of us because César originally moved to London only one year after I had. I always find it quite funny that we never ran into each other there. We are exactly the same age, and when we did meet, we realised we had loads and loads of friends in common. But we hadn't managed to meet until I came to Valencia by chance, on a whim, essentially because of a misunderstanding about how hard it would be to get a visa to go to Cuba to practise my Spanish. When we moved back to London, by coincidence, for both of us, it was our third time moving to London. And so that meant that recently, we both had to say so long to London for the third time, though this time it was saying goodbye together.


[00:07:36.930] - Oliver (Host)

And it has been quite emotional. For both of us, we've really enjoyed this last chapter in London. It was the longest period either of us had lived there, more than six years, and it was a very formative time in our lives, full of changes. We moved in together. Our relationship grew stronger, of course, with its ups and downs like any relationship. Both of us completely changed our careers. César created Spanish language coach, and I left law to work in education, too, being a secondary school teacher of kids aged 11 to 18. Between one thing and another, over the last 14 years, I've spent most of my time in London, except for a few months in China and two years in Germany and Italy. I'm in Valencia very happily now, and I really love it here, but it's not quite yet my home. It's definitely getting there, and that process has been easier than you might expect because Valencians are so welcoming and hospitable. But London is still my home. There's a famous quotation that says, "Tired of London, tired of life", and in the last few months, even though we were excited about moving to Spain and starting this new chapter of our lives together, it was still a significant moment to leave a city that had given us so much.


[00:09:12.140] - Oliver (Host)

César, in particular, was deeply, deeply sad to leave London, but he had an amazing last few months there. In his version of this episode, he talked about how he squeezed every last drop out of London. He visited all those places he hadn't yet seen, all the tourist traps that Londoners normally skip. He made it a mission to go to a ton of theatre shows, musicals, restaurants, museums, and we properly experienced London together. The last few days of London, in particular, though, were very odd. César was extremely nostalgic. When we left our flat, the place we had lived in for six years, Caesar was in flood of tears. He couldn't stop crying. But really, that's actually a very nice thing to happen. It showed how important the city had been to him. So this episode is my "So long, Goodbye", London. Thank you, London and its Londoners, its real Londoners, for making me feel at home for so long. And thank you, student, for listening. I'll see you in the next episode, now, as ever, from Valencia. Goodbye, adios, and until next time.

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