Well, as I pointed out repeatedly I visited London during the holidays and one thing I sadly discovered when coming back was: If you have been to a really big city once it’s really hard to come back to a kind of small city. For explanation, the city I live in counts about 250.000 people and is indeed the largest one in this region of the country. For up-to-date numbers of population of London try the Wikipedia but I assume it’s at least a few million and therefore more than a few times the size of where I live.
Actually everytime (and I mean EVERYTIME) you walked through the city of London there were people around. When you go out on the streets of my hometown at about 8 or 9 in the evening you hardly get to meet people even in the inner city. But in London the streets were filled with crowds. Of course most of the stores are open until 8 or 9 while most stores here use to be closed at around 6 or 7. And there I was even introduced to stores that are open 24/7. Not even McDonalds is open 24 hours in my town. You see, it’s quite an remarkable difference and after about five hours of traveling by plane and train I suddenly realised that I was finally home when I left the train at the station that is nearest to where I live which is actually not the main station but a really old, abandoned place where they don’t even have staff working, you can buy tickets from the machine but that’s about it. If the train wouldn’t have to pass this station on his way to the main station he would probably not stop there. And so I got off at about 6 on a Sunday and there was nobody around. It was dark and cold and the only shop – a kebab grill- I passed was of course closed.
It really was a weird feeling that didn’t really go away for a few days. It’s not that I don’t like my town -I really do- but it’s just so damn small. Amen.