From The Countryside To The Capital – Two Different Worlds

I used to live here.......

Now the busy streets of London are what I call home.

Moving from Cornwall to London was a huge change for me. Moving from an isolated house in the middle of fields to the busy streets of London was a scary experience. It was something that I was doing on my own. I was getting the independence that I always wanted. I was coming to university to study what I wanted to.

Arriving in a city that is home to 8 million people compared to a county that houses 532,300 was daunting.

The one thing I noticed that was very different from Cornwall to London was how much strangers talk to each other. Back in Cornwall I would regularly converse with strangers and say hi etc. In London I was a lot more afraid to do this for fear of people judging me or rejection. Hardly anyone talks to each other in London! Public transport is silent. People are completely immersed in their phones or books. It seems so strange that you can live in a city surrounded by people yet feel lonely.

The countryside and the city are two completely different ways of life. They are worlds apart. I found that a lot of people I knew in London would ask me why I wanted to move from such a beautiful place like Cornwall. I myself like a lot of people from Cornwall wanted to move away and explore something different. Cornwall does not have the best job prospects especially for younger, less qualified people. There are a lot of dead end jobs in the county and that was a trap that I really didn't want to get into. I wanted to experience something new in my life.

One of the things I find with Cornwall is that it really lacks diversity. There's not a lot of people from other ethnic backgrounds other than White British. I am often the only person of another ethnic origin when I visit somewhere in Cornwall. Being in London has opened up my mind to other cultures and ways of life.

I think that people from the city and people from the countryside are ignorant of each other. A lot of people in the city don't know what it's like to live out in the countryside and vice versa. The two different ways of life are worlds apart and I believe people should experience both at some point in their life.

-Noah Barco