Years ago, when I was sitting and reading in my grandmother’s room back home, in a small village in Transilvania, I dreamt about living in the big city.

I wanted the buzz, I wanted to meet new people and go to movies whenever I wanted, I didn’t want to use only the books and my imagination to travel. I didn’t know at the time where exactly the big city was but here I am, years later, living in London. It has been almost 9 years since I moved.

Time flies in London! Actually, rather than flying, time is running along trains and buses, it elapses impatiently at red lights and when you are stuck at Vauxhall station in the rush hour. You are playing catch up with your time, checking on it constantly! Everything, the whole day, gets divided in 30 minutes, 20 minutes, chunks of time here and there. Life in London is built by segments of time, is not continuous or fluid, is pretty much calculated carefully and relentlessly. And it all adds up very fast to years. Before you even know it! So maybe life in the big city is a bit more work than I thought it was! But the lack of fluidity and the constant need to calculate is compensated by the buzz and the abundance of opportunities. Opportunity to work, to have fun and to discover all the things you wanted to discover even from back when you were a child and you had time to stop and think about what you really want to see. Now I stopped seeing everything through the TV screen and I started reaching, feeling and listening to all the things that make life more beautiful.

Art and culture cannot be read and seen though screens. Watching the Nutcracker live before Christmas means that the world outside of that space is simply drowned and far away. You can be a worry free child or a part of a story or whoever you want to be in that moment. You can be your happier self. And this is London. It forces you to find things about yourself that you never thought you would discover. One of the important things I realised a few years after I moved here is that life in London is not only about the city itself. Is about the doors it opens outside and into the rest of the world. If you take the right opportunities you can hop in a plane and go and see the amazing places that you always wanted to see. You can talk to people all over the world and you can discover so much about the culture of the rest of the world if you only embrace the diversity. There is a fine balance between getting excited and getting tired by the diversity and London is not exactly a quiet city!

Is comparable with a noisy market most of the time! But there is some sort of order in the chaos, we make it work, we rush a lot but we still make time to open doors and smile and help someone in need. The overwhelming feeling of London can be surprisingly beautiful sometimes. You think that no one pays attention to you and you feel lost in the sea of people but if you happen to need help the sea of people will make room for you to sit in a crowded train and they will offer you water and they will make sure you are ok.

If you ever find yourself in London and you get to walk around, you’ll find that after every corner there is something new and sometimes bizarre. Street players that try new music on the spot, new forms of entertainment, people in costumes walking towards some carnival, shops that sell things you never even knew existed – from old fashion nautical shops to accessories for fluorescent themed parties! All these things can either make you happier if you are in a good mood or overwhelm you completely if you are tired and want to get somewhere, following a map on your phone, checking the time constantly. That is how it feels to leave in London! Life kind of takes you over and makes you run with it. It’s up to you if you follow it or fight it! And is nothing – absolutely nothing – like you thought it would be!