An expensive city

You've all heard about how London is an expensive city. But expensive doesn't quite describe it.

The first thing I had to do in order to become a Londoner was finding a place to live.

I quickly learned that here you don't rent apartments: you flatshare. The rents are so insanely high that, unless you want to live at over an hour of commute time to work, you simply can't afford to rent a flat. Even paying for a room eats a nice chunk of your salary. And this is assuming you've got a half-decent job. If it's a McJob, well... Because of this I quickly found out that the flatsharing industry is a thriving one. There are lots of specialised sites that make a living out of this. Some allow you to browse for ads but only to contact an advertiser if either he or you pays a fee. Others only give you contact details after a certain number of days from the posting of the advert unless you're willing to pay, meaning that paying users have greater chances. All in all, I had a hard time navigating through this maze but I found a room. Granted it's not that good (ok, the flat is plain bad) but that's another story.

The problem, however, is that rooms are just the beginning. I was expecting to eat a lot of beef around here.

Fat chance. The famous beefs the British people supposedly eat all the time go for at least £20 in restaurants, and that's not including the drinks. Some cheaper meals can be had for £10, but £5 can buy little more than fast food. This is particularly troublesome at lunch, since I really don't fancy the idea of bringing a home-cooked lunch to work every day. But I guess that at least at night I'll be giving the kitchen a fair bit of use.

The rest of the things follow the same trend. Buying stuff that couldn't have been brought on a plane is a pain. Finding a backpack (I only had a laptop bag) for less than £40 is like looking for a needle in a haystack. (I just found one today!!!) Bedsheets start at about £25 (the crappy ones) and then quickly escalate to over £50. Clothes are expensive at average shops and blow through the roof if you want the cool brands. Paying for the Tube on a daily basis can be as much as £8.40 a day, though that can be mitigated with a monthly travelcard for the modest quantity of £110.

All in all, the saying goes that if you want to buy something and you can't find it in London, it probably can't be bought. That might be true, but it certainly doesn't mean you'd want to buy it here.