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Great London adventure?
#14
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I have this crazy thing in my head.
I'm 19 years old and do not go to school. I work a reasonably shitty job, but it's managable. I live with my parents.
I want to save up about a 1000 euros, go to london, sleep in a youth hostel, get a job (anything really. washing dishes or something), which will allow me to stay in the hostel without using up more of my 1000 euros. Then I will do anything to find a real place. Networking, looking for people looking for roommates, shitty room in a shitty neighbourhood, whatever. Then just live in London until I'm either sick of it or go to college there. I am from The Netherlands, so i'm from the EU. My sister also lives in london, who might be able to help me out in the finding a job part of it all.
Is this realistic?
I'm 19 years old and do not go to school. I work a reasonably shitty job, but it's managable. I live with my parents.
I want to save up about a 1000 euros, go to london, sleep in a youth hostel, get a job (anything really. washing dishes or something), which will allow me to stay in the hostel without using up more of my 1000 euros. Then I will do anything to find a real place. Networking, looking for people looking for roommates, shitty room in a shitty neighbourhood, whatever. Then just live in London until I'm either sick of it or go to college there. I am from The Netherlands, so i'm from the EU. My sister also lives in london, who might be able to help me out in the finding a job part of it all.
Is this realistic?
#14 on
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As long as you succeed, yeah. You won't have many problems if you're from the EU.
Beste wensen van uw zuiderburen :P
At worst, you'll save up a thousand euros, come and hang out in London staying at a youth hostel for a couple of months before the cash runs out and then have to head home again. But even if you don't succeed in finding a job, permanent residency or going to college, it could still be a worthwhile experience so I say if you have nothing else to do, do this.
Ha bedankt man :P
I plan on taking any job that I can get, though. Should be able to find work in the first week, shouldn't I? I mean I can find a shitty dish washing or telemarketing job RIGHT NOW over here. Is it any different in London? Once I'm settled I'll start looking for more enjoyable jobs.
you know where can I find out more about this?
Even if you are staying at a youth hostel, eating & transport will spend your money very fast. Also, I wouldn't count on getting a job that quickly, but it might be possible. Better to see if you can get your sister to set you up with something.
Minumum wage is currently £5.35, so working full-time you could earn ~£175 a week after tax. Whether that's enough to live on I don't know, since I hate London and never go there, it's pretty expensive though compared to the rest of the UK.
Temp agencies. I'm fairly certain you could probably enquire before you even came to the UK. At the moment, there are plenty of Poles doing exactly what you're planning.
What? Accomodation and food at...the Ritz? Are you sure you don't mean a) "a grand a month" or, b) "I don't know what I'm talking about?" London might be expensive, but it's not £1000 a week expensive unless you are making it so. You can get by on minimum wage, you just aren't going to be doing much, and living in a shithole / eating shit.
PS Temp agencies are the best way to go, but bear in mind they usually require a certain level of school or demonstrable computer / secretarial skills.
He IS from Amsterdam. I don't know if that is interesting for him.
Depends on the agency, and their clients. When I was working in catering, we routinely got temps (from Reed and Hays, IIRC) who had never had a job before and barely spoke English. Since most of the time they were min-wage kitchen porters, though, we didn't especially care.
If a person has demonstrable experience in something (i.e. has actually been employed before), and their English is passable or better, I don't see too many problems as long as they're willing to work shitty jobs. One thing I've learned about temp agencies is that if you start trying to cherry-pick positions, or turn stuff down while waiting for something decent, they'll just stop calling you.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt, because these are my experiences in Glasgow. I'm not certain things would be similar in London, but it would certainly be worth calling a couple of agencies and finding out if they reckon they'd be able to place you.
Yeah, but living with my parents is getting kind of old. I'm pm'ing that guy!
Thanks for all the advice guys. I realize that it kind of sucks to be a Pole in London for a year but it sounds like a nice little adventure. Fuck it, it's not like I'm doing anything important right now anyway.
London is fantastic for all the museums and theatre (yes, I like theatre fuck off). But you may want to consider outside of London. There are lots of nice cities, just don't go to places like Blackpool which are the damn arse end of the UK.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I've visisted Manchester and I loved it.
I just kind of got the impression London was the easiest city for this. Kind of the multicultural immigrant everyone tries to make it here vibe.
Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow or Edinburgh are probably equally easy for this. London just happens to have particularly high living costs (although so does Edinburgh, to be fair). It might be worth your while looking into some other cities.
Everywhere in Britain has immigrants, we're a mongrel nation if ever there was one. I wouldn't have thought London had any more (as a proportion of the population) than any other major city in the UK, I don't have any stats though.
If there are more immigrants in London than spread across the UK, it would probably have something to do with it being the main international transport hub.