Blair's Official Everything London Thread

[VwSweetHeart]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Sounds like thing's are going really well. Glad your getting settled down and really enjoying life there.
Love reading this thread and glad you keep in touch with all of us here!

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

I am a few days early with this post, but as I will be away on my true anniversary I thought I would take the time to celebrate living in greater London for a year! The year has gone so quick and I really have a hard time believing it has been this long already but time marches on. I have not really missed Calgary all that much, mostly a few of my favorite foods and friends and family of course, but other than that I cannot say I think about Canada all that often, besides recent flooding events notwithstanding.

London however is just such a different place and a different way to live; walking and public transport for everything. Going 15-20 kms is like heading into another world and sometimes can take hours to get there. Everything is so much older than we are used to and things are much more established in ways and patterns that have existed for centuries.

I still find many parts of living here are cheaper than Canada, especially a lot of the day to day items, such as food, cell phones, internet and even TV. We pay £145.50 for a yearly TV licence and that provides us with about 50 channels of Freeview and gives us access to use all the online and apps for the major stations such as the BBC iPlayer and 4oD to watch anything you have missed or want to see again, and that is all we pay for the whole year. My cell phone is £34.50 a month for 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts and unlimited data, plus the contract was just 2 years and the latest phone was only £28.00 up front. Things like housing and transport are of course fairly pricey though, but the big difference is that wages are fairly low on average here too.

With a small geography and a large population I guess the logistics of everything work to the advantage of consumers here as competition can benefit the population, and it makes you think about Canada’s foreign investment policies, which are intended to help businesses, but I think often negatively impact the basic Canadian. This leads to a big problem with living in London, people, the population is close to 8 million and with another 15 million visiting every year the place is busy! Where I live is pretty quiet and away from the bustle but going into central London on a weekend makes Chinook on Boxing Day look like a walk in the park. Topshop on Oxford Street can attract 30,000 people a day, for one store! Thus timing in London is important and you can often only handle so much at a time as it is just a struggle to get somewhere or see something. At this point I have learned that if you go a couple blocks this way or that way you can generally escape the crowds, but it is a factor you have to adjust too, with regards to transport and planning your day.

Overall though I still thoroughly enjoy living here and the differences and challenges it offers compared with Calgary. Up until now I have had it fairly easy as I completed my Masters classes and dissertation, and now that this is all finished I will attempt to join the working world and my experience may change of course with a big daily commute and dealing with more people, but we shall see. First I will enjoy a bit of the summer with no commitments, and my wife begins her holidays today so we will get 2 weeks together which we have not had for quite some time. As travel is a fantastic benefit of living here we are off to Iceland next week for a few days and as we had more time left on our holidays we also booked a few last minute days in Barcelona, a nice option to have.

As our time here is uncertain, with only 2 years now left on our current visas and the possibility of renewals, returning to Canada or moving elsewhere unclear I will just continue to enjoy this time and get the most out of living in one of the great world cities. If anyone is coming over this way I encourage you to get in touch as I can be a pretty good tour guide now too, I think Andrew can vouch for that!

Thanks again for reading and I do miss the Eurodrivers scene!!!

[nismodrifter]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Great to hear you and your wife are doing well in the UK. Congrats on completing the masters!! Huge accomplishment!!!

[VwSweetHeart]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Glad to hear all is well and congrats on your masters! Cant believe its already been a year.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Thanks everyone, still not feeling like that I am finished school but have a fairly long wait for my grade and hopefully I will be crossing the stage in Liverpool in December.

I am off to Reykjavik in the morning so have a good week everyone!!

[liquid]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Congrats Blair! What did you do your Masters in?

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Congrats Blair! What did you do your Masters in?

My degree is a Masters of Science in Corporate Finance and my dissertation is entitled "Stakeholder theory and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from Facebook's initial public offering (IPO)."

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Well it has been a while since I have updated this thread and I have not shared any of my pictures of Iceland and Barcelona, which were my summer holidays. After visiting Calgary last week I am glad to be back in London, feeling a lot more like home now, but still adjusting to the time change.

Monday morning I am off to Poland to rendezvous with Bart and we are doing a tour of the German automaker HQs so I will make sure to keep you all informed of our adventure!!!!

[limey]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Your making me want to move back home :(... If it wasn't for my job here if go back in a heart beat.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

I am still really enjoying it here and feeling more like home now than Calgary, so fingers crossed for visa renewals in the next year or so.

It will take me a few days but I have a lot of pics from the recent trip and had a great time in Dresden, Stuttgart, Munich, Affalterbach and Neckarsulm and all the roads between!

[R_Ethug]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

pics or ban!

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Well I have tried to go through my pics and post a few up for you guys to enjoy. I took all these pics with my phone so some are not great and they have not been edited for the most part so I apologize in advance.

Anyway since I was not able to make it to the Frankfurt Autoshow this year I decided a trip to Germany was still in order and so Bart and I came up with a plan to hit up most of the German Brand HQs on a fairly epic little 4 day road trip. We rendezvoused outside Warsaw and set out on a speedy 1,100 km first day journey to spend the night in Munich. We pretty much just drove the first day with several stops for fuel and one extra bathroom break at the Volkswagen Phaeton Factory in Dresden, which was nearly closed for the day.



We continued on with the journey and racked up some fast miles on the autobahn including the last part of the night heading into Munich where we spent about 45 minutes doing some good speeds (245ish) with an older lady in a Porsche Panamera 4S, oh Germany

In the morning we woke up and made the short walk from the hotel to BMW Welt (World), which is made up of factories, a giant dealership type building and a museum too.











Inside the dealer building they had a live demo of a guy riding a motorcycle through the building, including up and down the staircases.



Delivery area



Production i3





BMW Museum

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

After our visit of the BMW Welt we packed back in the car and made the journey from Munich to the Stuttgart area for the next part of the trip. The drive was not too far but did have plenty of construction as they were replacing some large sections of the Autobahn but after being stuck behind a truck being towed in a reduced width section of the road we got some very open and unlimited sections of road and were able to give the car a very fast run!



After more construction and more fuel we headed straight for our next stop, the Mercedes Benz Museum.



The building was quite a bit larger than BMW and was made up of a corkscrew of 7 floors with many, many cars spanning the brands history!

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Well after staying in suburban Stuttgart for the night, we made the trip the next day first thing in the morning to the Porsche Museum, which is currently celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the 911.











































This is the archive and museum workshop a nice place to sit and have a coffee.



Parked at the dealership across the street from the museum, complete with a couple Carrera GTs and some other rarer Porsches.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: Blair's Official Everything London Thread

Well after a morning full of P-cars we made the small journey and transition to Affalterbach in the afternoon, the home of AMG. We had a private tour and got to see the production of V8 and V12 engines and the final assembly of a few special cars too. I had the pleasure of sitting in a new CLA45, E63 Wagon and an SLS in F1 safety car trim too. We were not able to take too many photos but the narrow streets around the facility are home to many AMGs!



A45s are pretty popular around these parts!







One of these cars is not like the others







The next morning we departed the Stuttgart area and began heading back north, along the way we made a pit stop to meet up with another TTRS owner, who was rocking an APR Stage 3 kit! We did a few Autobahn runs and made a quick coffee break at a fairly famous automotive little spot.









You never know what you are going to see around these parts I guess!