Traveling can be stressful, whether you are driving a couple of hours to see relatives in another state or if you are flying across the ocean to vacation in another country. Moving is also a stressful event for most people. Now put the two together.
The Journey
My husband and I moved 5000 miles away from our home country to live in Oxford, England. We purged most of our material belongings, but we still had to move our clothes and some sentimental items to England with us. In total, we had two large suitcases (37 lb/17 kg and 47 lb/21 kg), a shoulder bag of insulin (pump) supplies, a small backpack, and two large backpacks that contained laptop computers. I do not regret bringing everything that we did bring, but I will say that lugging around this much luggage and using public transportation proved challenging.
This is not our transatlantic flight, but it is a good representation of what our flight was like (picture from http://www.airliners.net).
Our first flight left Albuquerque, NM at 11:00am (we woke up at 5am the morning of our flights). The airports/airplanes were the easiest part of this journey. Our longest flight was about 9 hours long and we had an entire area of the plane (in the very back) to ourselves because there were only about 50 people on a flight for 300 (and most of them sat up close to the front). While on the plane, we tried to sleep, but were unable to. This meant that when we got to London Heathrow International Airport at 6:55am, we hadn’t had any sleep in 19 hours and wouldn’t be able to sleep until we got to our flat in Oxford.
The next leg of the journey to our flat consisted of trains! I really do love trains. I love metro/underground trains, above ground trains, light-rail trains, bullet trains, and even airport terminal trains. I love them all. But I hate trains when I am carrying luggage. We rode the Heathrow Express to Paddington station, which was easy because (1) we were some of the last people on the train and we had time to put out luggage on the racks and find a seat and (2) the luggage racks were not full.
When we got to Paddington, we caught a train to Oxford, which was a little more grueling. I’m not used to a big-city rush, so when the turnstiles opened to allow the passengers to board the train, I wasn’t prepared to be stampeded while carrying a ton of luggage…. but that is what happened. I picked a train car and hopped in, but my gigantic suitcase did not follow me. It decided to get stuck on the steps up to the train. My husband helped me free it loose after a couple minutes, but the people behind us were beginning to lose patience. Then, we had trouble maneuvering our luggage into the luggage racks and were simultaneously blocking the way onto the train car in the process. Finally, people started to push past us, making it even harder to put up our luggage.
Paddington Station
We finally got settled into seats and took off. At this point, we still haven’t had any sleep in 21 hours. When we get to Oxford, we have two choices: catch a bus to our neighborhood, 3.7 miles away or walk. After fighting with the last luggage-rack mishap, we chose to walk. It was definitely a good workout.
The Flat
When we finally made it to our flat (1:30pm and 25.5 hours with no sleep), we were about ready to give up, and I was in tears. After we checked in, things started to look up. Our flat is amazing, and a lot bigger than we expected it to be. There are some things about our flat that are very English and that I think are really nifty.
Blue key fob
We get into our flat and our flat’s complex by using a key fob. Most places in the US outside of major big cities are switching to access cards (credit-card-looking that you swipe) about now from keys while here, they are switching from the access cards to these electronic key fobs. Hold it up to the pad by the door and you are in. I find this neat.
The outlets here have switches to control whether electricity is flowing through them. Heat and water are included in our flat-rate monthly rent, but electricity is not and we are only charged for however much we use. Having the option to turn off the outlets makes me really happy, and I have been walking around the house often to make sure no outlets are on charging fully-charged devices.
Our fridge and freezer, side-by-side.
The refrigerators that most flats contain here are the size of the mini-fridges people use in their dorm rooms in the US. This is awesome because less food gets lost in the back of the fridge and forgotten about; therefore, we save more money by not wasting food. It also forces me to walk to the store to go get groceries more often, getting me off my butt and down the street even when I may not feel like it. Finally, having a small refrigerator like this one saves us money in that we have to be more selective about the foods we buy and we don’t buy so many unnecessary items.
Our flat has an entryway, kitchen, living room area, and bedroom. All rooms are very much larger than I expected them to be. The floors are all hard, sweepable tile instead of carpeting, which will be much easier to clean. Below are some pictures that I took of our flat here at Summertown House.
Our entryway has coat hangers and a mail slot
The view from the window-seat couch in the living room facing the bar, kitchen, and entryway.
Part 1 of the living room.
Part 2 of the living room.
A view of part of the bathroom. The toilet is around the left corner.
Our much-too-large bedroom.
The rest of the bedroom, showing one of the cubbies next to the bed and the closet doors.
Our kitchen
Just a little area of things on the bookcase that are from home.
And finally, the view from our 4th (5th in the US) floor living room window.
The journey here was rough on my husband and I, but we learned a lot from it. Now we know how to travel better the next time we have to pick up and move to another country. Something humorous is that we learned the day after we got here that there is a bus that runs directly from London Heathrow to Oxford every 30 minutes to an hour. This bus will get you to Oxford in an hour and a half or less for £24 (roughly $36) a person and will stow all of your luggage under the bus for you. On our journey here, we took 2 trains and walked 3.7 miles over 6 hours time and spent £60 (roughly $90) a person.
Despite the hellish trip from the airport to our final destination, I do not regret the experiences we had along the way. We will continue to do things wrong until we learn to get them right, and we will learn from every single thing we do here in this new country, right or wrong.
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