I have been in the UK for 3 years and 3 months now. And being a migrant, I’m facing a different environment, although I still live in a European country and there are a lot of common elements with Greece. At the same time there are a lot of differences, mostly cultural. I think that the biggest difference is that I came to a city where I didn’t know anyone and I had to create a new social circle for myself starting from scratch. I had to create new habits and let go of old ones.

You talked about a cultural difference between Greece and England. Tell me what you lost when you moved and how that is linked to loneliness? 

I had to leave my family and a relationship, which we had to do long distance for 2 years, and my circle of friends, which I have been building literally for 29 years. I left Greece when I was 33. Not knowing anybody when I came to the UK was a shock. It was a big milestone in my life. Suddenly I was in a city where I didn’t know anybody.

I met a lot of Greeks through my job.

why did you want to meet Greeks? Did you feel closer to them from a cultural perspective? 

Yes, for example humour, the cultural references in relation to movies and songs.

I went to a country where I didn’t really know the language and I had difficulties communicating with others. So, during the evening I had a need to communicate in my native language.  When I first came to the UK, I moved to the midlands where they have a regional accent, so I couldn’t understand ANYTHING, not a thing. I remember that my colleagues would speak in English at the first meetings that I attended, and I couldn’t understand anything besides the words “the”, “this”, the very basics. I needed some time to understand the accent. To understand what people were telling me.

It didn’t take a lot of time for me to adjust to talking about technical issues at work, I had learned to talk about them at Uni in Greece anyway. But from the moment people started to talk about everyday staff, like what did people do during the weekend or what they would be doing tonight, I would just be looking at them with my eyes wide open, in astonishment and think “What are they talking about?” And it wasn’t easy.

So not knowing the everyday language, it was hard to go and hang out with people, that can really speak English.

And this is not just an impression that I have, I’ve experienced it. We used to go out, everybody from work and after the first half an hour I noticed that English people used to hang out between themselves and all the migrants that didn’t really speak English would hang out separately. Because English people were speaking their mother tongue, with all the idioms and jokes that you make in your native language, which were hard for us to understand. And you’re never going to be taught those idioms when learning a language. So, the rest of us, Greeks, Italians, a Chinese, a Czech, we were trying to be funny, but we couldn’t reach their standard of English. This made our communication with the local people challenging.