London, the Capital

This is my first time studying at the LSE. Despite Exeter also being a TOP UK university, it cannot match LSE in its exceptionality. All of my lecturers are the very top in their fields and they tach us about their new research, which will only make it to other universities’ curriculums in a few years. My dream master’s course in Local Economic Development is in fact much better than what I imagined it would be. Most of my courses are focused on economic development in small scale, meaning units smaller than regions, usually cities. Apart from governmental strategies we also analyse the role of globalization and international trade and the role of private-public partnership. Along these core courses I also attend Urban Futures – a course about urban planning in relation to different eras and ideologies of different societies and about the consequences of such planning on the given society. I am also planning to attend a course on research methodology and on economic appraisal and evaluation of incalculable items, such as natural environments or historical heritage, which should be useful in the future for cost-benefit analysis of different development strategies.

It is not only my course, but also my class mates that is great about being at the LSE. Each of the 44 of us has experience related to the field, which is specific for a concrete country. This allows us to compare the impacts of different strategies across different countries.

This is my first time living in a capital. After my rural childhood, youth in a small countryside campus of a boarding school and my bachelor’s studies in provincial Exeter, living in the UK’s capital seems quite exciting to me. At the first time, I was rather scared by the amount of traffic in London and I was constantly afraid that I would get hit by one of the 9300 red buses. However, after I month living here I already got used to it and now I know when to cross the road and when to wait for the green sign.  

I have to commute by public transport to uni after a long time. Again, after living in Exeter, where commuting was a charming walk and after Open Gate, where it was a quick run through the garden-like campus, this is new to me. I already got used to the morning nap on the bus, however the price commuting is still traumatic for me. The monthly student bus pass, that does not even allow any travel on the tube, costs £56.9. Compared to Prague’s student travel pass for 260 CZK, London seems to be costly. I was also surprised how many people chose to save on travel costs by cycling every day, which is hugely supported by local authorities. Although I am a huge fan of cycling and ecological travel, I would never get on the main road myself. Every day I look at these brave yet fragile people who overtake buses on their bikes in awe.

My alternative to travelling on the bus is walking. The bus journey to our house takes around 45 minutes with standard congestion, and my new walking record is 43 minutes. This activity allows me to see the beautiful London panoramas from the Waterloo bridge every day and it also gives me the otherwise relatively scarce.

This is my first time living in a city which has a satisfactory choice of swimming pools. Since swimming is my next sports activity, I really appreciate that I can do swimming pool tourism in London. My aim is to visit a different pool every week. I have visited four during the first month of living here. Two of these were subsidised by our borough council and thus the entry fee was just £0.6 (Elephant and Castle a Camberwell Public Baths) and they are both free of charge for local residents on the weekends. They are however only twenty-five meters long and I would say also overheated. My third pool was the outdoor fifty-metre London Fields Lido, which had pleasantly cool water. Despite me liking it a lot, my flat mate Kristyna found it repellent due to the amount of green sediments at the bottom. The fourth pool I visited was the temporary King’s Cross Pond Club, which is filtered by a natural plant ecosystem. I can’t wait for the ninety-meter long outdoor Tooting Bec Lido to open in the spring, as it is the largest surface pool in the UK.

It is my first time living on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise building. Living in a high-rise panel house might be quite an ordinary experience for many city dwellers, however for myself it is a little miracle which I would have never predicted based on the lacking aesthetical qualities of the house. With my flat mate Kristyna, who is also studying a master’s course at the LSE, we managed to find a cosy flat in Camberwell, which on one hand isn’t exactly close to the university, on the other one it has many parks and most importantly this borough prides itself in a high number of these high-rise council built houses. The main advantage of this housing is that it has central heating and thus water and heat are paid at an annual fixed rate. For those, who have never experienced the cold of student houses in England and all the procedures done to save on bills, this must still sound strange. But to those, who have this frightening experience it must be clear that having the radiators switched off and still having 22°C (not speaking of the temperatures when we turn them on with no extra payment) this must sound like the paradise it truly is. The option of having a bath full of hot water every day at no extra costs is another benefit, along with the beautiful views from the fourteenth floor.

And even though this already happened before this new academic year,             I finally got my first academic title. In July 2016 I graduated from the University of Exeter, saying a final good bye to the University, my friends there and obtaining a First Class Honours degree.