From Tourist to Resident - A Changing Perspective

It all started with a few Facebook photos a friend had posted from her recent trip to London. There were the usual double decker buses, the London Eye, and one from Trafalgar Square. Someone had written a comment: "You really captured the essence of the town!" Hmm, hang on I thought. Pigeons on Trafalgar Square are not the essence of London, surely? After all I'd lived in London for many years. So my perspective would by necessity be different from somenone who's spent a weekend there. Had gone to a pizza place, maybe a cocktail bar, stayed in a hotel, did a bit of shopping, and would have gone to "a show" (being American).

Don't get me wrong - I'm not making fun of that experience. And of course having been a tourist, i.e. visiting a town as often as you possibly can is vital when you plan to make your sojourn more permanent, and become a resident. I can safely say I know what I'm talking about. When I moved to Edinburgh I'd been there plenty of times. I'd even taken the trouble to visit in various seasons so as not to be surprised by the weather. I've always done careful research before I moved and finally settled somewhere. But it is impossible to anticipate what finally awaits you.

Just a few vital examples of things you neglect to find out at your peril:

• Public transport. Sure, as a visitor you're bound to take the occasional bus ride. But you're not dependent on it. If the wait's too long, you'll jump into a cab.

When I'd moved to Edinburgh the transport system was just about to collapse. Whole areas of town were cordoned off and buses rerouted.

• Rubbish collection. Staying in a hotel will not prepare you for the often (especially inItaly and the UK) totally chaotic and insufficient collection times in your new town.

I ended up doing daily trips to a totally overfull public rubbish collection point, due to mismangement and long-term strike action.

• Shopping. During your visit you won't have found out where there's a good place to buy potatoes or washing powder, simply because you don't needed any.

• Safety. Although tourists will probably be worried about their money belt and rucksack, when you live in a place, it's not pickpockets on open squares you will be worried about. Residential areas are mostly not the sort of places tourists visits.

In Edinburgh, I was very lucky to live in an area which was both quiet, safe and central - the Westend. An absolute godsend, as I hadn't known this beautiful quarter before I actually moved there.

These are just a few pointers that the impression you may get on holiday is not necessarily the "correct" one, and certainly one you will have to query many many times once you've moved to your new place.

Let me know of your own experience in that field!

A Professional Foreigner Writes....

I'll start this guest post with a confession: My name is Rhino75 and I'm a professional foreigner. By that I mean that I'm one of those people who have lived outside their home country for so long that they no longer fit in properly anywhere. Ask me where I'm from and I won't miss a beat: "I'm British" I say in my best Home Counties accent. But when I'm actually back in the "old country" I fumble with small change, I'm confused by public transport and I don't recognize two-thirds of the people on the telly. Yet in France, my adopted country, I'm seen as the embodiment of all things British, a kind of unofficial spokesman. "What do people in *your* country think about this?" French friends ask me, while offering me another cup of French-style tea (weak, without milk). Or "We're planning a weekend in London, what do you recommend we see and do? And where should we stay?" Do I come clean and say "I've absolutely no idea"? Or "The last time I was in London, I spent almost the entire weekend in Dalston, with only a brief foray out to the White Swan in Stepney"? No, because they'd be disappointed. So I quite simply make it up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - being from a different country has provided me with a nice sideline in media punditry over here. But the truth of the matter is that, after 12 years, France is naturally more familiar to me than Britain is. When I bump into people in the street, my first instinct is to excuse myself in French. I know the names of most of the main politicians - in Britain, I recognize Brown and that's it - and all the tv stars. I can tell the difference between a 2 centime and a 5 centime coin with my eyes shut and can describe all the symptoms of my cat's asthma without getting a single noun gender wrong. I know the right wines to drink, the right gifts to take to dinner parties and can even decipher the alphabet soup of French bureaucracy. While the Britain I knew, the Britain I remember, no longer exists, not quite as it was anyway. The references are different, the goalposts have shifted, leaving me feeling hopelessly old fashioned. Someone asked me on a recent trip home how I feel when I return to Britain and I replied "Like David Niven" - and yet the country of my birth is the very thing that defines me, at least initially, to many people I meet. "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," runs the old Jesuit motto. But does that count for national identity too, I wonder?