After I first thought England was an acceptable, if somewhat quaint place (see my first posts), I have now positively developped an ethusiastic aversion to it. Sorry (as they so abundantly say, see one of my earlier posts as well). I do consider myself an open-minded individual, flexible in adapting to foreign cultures and enjoying that. But England seems to Europe like Earth to Mars. Hey, they're both planets, and the chemical elements are the same! Same shit? Far out!

It started with more innocuous things such as my profound lack of understanding for the need of two separate taps for hot and cold water (there's not always a plug, so you could mix! Esp. in public places. Well, glad they don't have separate showers, as my friend Katia exclaimed when she came) or for the benefits of carpets in bathrooms. A health risk (I think of fungus and mould), and that in a country that's so deep into health and safety, you can't take a step in any direction without stumbling across black-and-yellow or red-and-white signs admonishing you of the potential dangers lurking! (On the door of the building where I work, there is a sign asking first time visitors to collect their personal health-and-safety brochure from the secretary's office before doing anything else!)

Now again, I can happily live with such things, they're quaint, but harmless.

Things thickened a little last fall, when I broke a finger, and had my fingers taped together with a strip of bandaid and was given the information that nature takes much better care of these things than the hospital, and a cast, could. After they had me waiting in a corner for 3 hours and only resolved to the bandaid action after audibly discussing in front of my corner that they now really needed that corner for another patient.

I have now been kicked out of the place where I live and had to face the grim and expensive housing market again, after less than a year. Already the kicking out is something I cannot well understand being used to other countries where when you rent a place, it's kind of yours for as long as you please, and you can decorate it the way you like, and bring your own furniture, of course, and put nails in the wall and hang pictures you like. Not in England! Oh, with luck you might find a space without furniture, but it is made very clear to you that it belongs to someone else who really cares for their cream-coloured carpets (yes, also in the bathroom) and walls and curtains that look suspiciously like in that hospital where they care squat about broken bones. English people don't understand why it upsets me that at the age of 31 I still cannot afford a space of my own, with my own stuff and without being bossed around by the landlord, which I easily could in all other countries in Europe. And in fact have for the last 13 years. My independence is very important to me, and this -- although you might think I'm exaggerating -- really cuts me deep.

Another thing is the illusion that Great Britain -- being such a multicultural place with people from all their former colonies spicing up the mix in a pleasant way -- is OPEN to foreigners. Far out once more, it really also depends on what kind of foreigner you are. Of course, when you come to a place as a foreigner, it is you who has to be open in the first place, no doubt. As I said, I find carpets in bathrooms and lack of mixer taps quaint, but accetable. And of course my trouble with the housing situation has also to do with what in my foreign perception counts as normal, but may not be.

Other migrants are used to other things. In England, THE nation of sports, you are supposed to throw back into the water whatever you catch when you are fishing. You also reuse the ball in football, right? I saw fishing competitions on the river Cam, where anglers sit lined up all day, a couple of yards apart, and put whatever ends up on their hooks into a big net the contents of which will be weighed at the end of the day, after which they are released back into the river. Mostly really small fish, now with a hole in their lips. Ouch. In most other places in the world, a more primeval approach to fishing, or hunting, is maintained -- you only hurt animals if you also want to eat them after.

Immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe, who bring this approach from their countries of origin are a nightmare for the British angling sport, and a subject of constant debate in the media. With last Christmas approaching, owners of waters and defendants of the pure sport were in fear of those Polish and Ukrainian savages scavenging the waters for their Christmas tables. And so put up, The Sun reported at the time, warning signs. In pictograms, because those savages don't understand English either! :-O