The Crookes - Hold Fast

This album! You all have to hear it, I cannot get enough. And they are playing in Sheffield on Saturday. Might just have to go.

Coming to a new place

I just saw a post on Instagram from someone who had just gotten to Sheffield for the first time, and had taken a photo of our pretty train station, saying “first impression of Sheffield”.

This made me think of my first impression of Sheffield. I was dropped off by a University coach outside of Bar One at our Student’s Union, and I remember thinking “what an ugly city”. (You Sheffield peeps know that the street outside Bar One is not the best looking place.) However, little did I know how much I’d come to love this place.

It’s strange seeing friends going on the same adventure that you have been on. My best friend moved to Manchester a year after me, and I remember worrying so much for her the weeks before she was leaving/the weeks after she had arrived. Not because I didn’t think she could handle it, but more because I knew how tough the whole thing was, and how vulnerable you feel in a completely new place in an entirely new country. Especially when you meet and make friends with people that are from that country. Because they all know the culture and the customs. You on the other hand will be completely new to everything, and even doing a grocery shop can be a mission. My friend did brilliantly though.

And now another friend of mine is going on a similar adventure. He’s from England and is off to Scandinavia this winter. Norway more specifically, traitor as he is, choosing our Scandinavian neighbours over us. I’m nervous for him. Then again, I think his loud little vegan self will love it there in the gorgeous environment with the open-minded people and very cold weather (he doesn’t handle heat very well.) 

I also somehow feel responsible for how Scandinavia will treat him! Odd.. Anyway. What I have to say to my friend and to everyone else who is moving to a completely other place is to go there and (cliché coming) be yourself. I know I’ve told my friend that Norwegians are quiet and therefore he shouldn’t be very loud at first when he arrives. That was a bad piece of advice. God knows I had some doubtful friendships in the beginning of first year, all because I wasn’t being myself. It was first when I was brave enough to show my dodgy humour, and sort of weird self that I got good friends here. And you need friends. They become a second family when your first one is way back home in a different country.

So make friends and have fun, and just as I have done with the Brits’ strange relationship to their Queen and to beans on toast, enjoy laughing at the strange customs of the country which you will probably never wrap your head around.