LIVING IN LONDON

4 Things I Hate About Being an Expat in London, And 5 Things I Love

After 3 years of living and working here

Adele Arbi
The Penny Pub
Published in
8 min readJul 12, 2023

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Photo by David Monaghan on Unsplash

I hate long introductions and at the same time, I am very guilty of writing them. But not this time, as the title of this story says it all, so I will jump right away to the lists.

The 4 Things I Hate About Being an Expat in London

1. The Distances

Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash

Even with the great transportation infrastructure of London, it still remains a humongous city.

Getting from one place to the other takes a long time and many changes of trains or buses. Londoners take the longest in the UK to commute to work, travelling for one-hour and twenty-one minutes each day. Which is less than the time my commute takes, a forty-five-minute trip each way, one hour and thirty minutes in total. Thank God it’s not daily due to hybrid work.

But going to work isn’t the only travel we do in London.

We also need to get the tube to attend events, go to a cultural activity, and to meet…

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Adele Arbi
The Penny Pub

A curious soul pondering and documenting life. Quran Student, Memoirist, Bibliophile, Explorer. 100% of my Medium earnings go to charity.