Lovely double room for rent £120 p/w

Most of you probably saw at some point during the last decade, the film L’Auberge Espagnol. Back in 2008, four months into my London tale, I watched it for a second time (in French, 38% comprehension) and what caught my attention was the way how a movie can light up different emotions depending on the context. I know, no Nobel Prize for Literature is going to come about because of that quote, but in my middle class head that was actually big news. It meant that in the space of four years I shifted from the lethargy and “happysadness” of enjoying the movie through to longing for an unlikely experience, to the joy and satisfaction of being, to some extent, inside that story.

Truth be told, the English language is not something too rare for Chileans. Considering that we daily witness neon posters written in dodgy wording, teenagers in Metallica t-shirts and cheesy “boutique” La Dehesa shops. Whoever has lived for a while in countries such as France, Germany, Sweden or even Brasil, will probably know what I mean. Xavier, the main character, the very first thing he comes across to in Barcelona is a Metro station with an horrific name: Urquinaona, a catalan equivalent to Eyjafjallajökull. Straight away, a voice- over is heard with a line: “When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everything is unknown, virgin... After you've lived here, walked these streets, you'll know them inside out. You'll know these people. Once you've lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times... it'll belong to you because you've lived there. That was about to happen to me, but I didn't know it yet”. That’s it my friends.

I guess I could write a lot about the no-sense and struggle I experienced during those 23 hours that passed after I left my home in Santiago to the time I arrived with two bags, a laptop and a guitar to a flat in Bethnal Green (including closed tube stations, broken public telephones and a nearly fatal street crossing).

I used to live in a flat with five people. Less glamorous than l’Auberge Espagnol but equally diverse.

William (aka “The Alien”) was a frenchy guy who worked in banking. He was certainly alienated, unable to interact with the rest of the house; I don’t know if it was due to shyness or because we didn’t fulfill his social requirements (if any). Maybe a merge of both, because he was the first person I talked to, kindly telling me that we were going to share the second floor and even gave me his mobile number. Biologically speaking, he was a good chap. However, I realized he had idiotic traits when he told me he was paying ten quid to the Indian guy on the third floor for sharing the broadband (the whole package was 12 pounds). “I sing he is making prrrrofit”, “Well of course he is making profits man! I don’t even know him and he’s already a cheeky bastard”…”Ah! And I believe he is eating my food too”. Sweet Lord. That was one of the last conversations I had with him, with the exception of a scary Facebook friend request I received from his girlfriend after a casual “ça va?” in the kitchen. I met thousands of experiments like that at Uni, nerds keen on progressive heavy metal, and definitely not the most exciting people to hang out with.

At first glance, Rich (aka “Rubbish!”) appeared to have no other discernible talent than being our sole British specimen. But along the way he became this kind of easygoing lad who wasn’t bothered by not understanding a single shit word of my then rudimentary English (“Sorry, say again?”), or was happy to repeat 15 times what he was telling with his cryptic accent. Whenever you ran out of bread and sugar, you could count on Rich to re-stock. He worked as a web programmer for The Guardian, had a couple of piercings on his lips, mad about BMX (fuck is this late 70s?), was my TV partner in the lounge and sporadically a good companion when going to the park (not gay). Our source of fun was who else, the Indian guy. I can now recall telling him about this dude telling me “Hey mate, I heard you playing guitar last night…do you know any Boyzone song?”, and the hopeless reaction of the good old Richard, “Oh Jesus”.

Rodger (aka “Comprende amigo?”) is a south african-dutch-german dude who’s spent his whole live travelling around the globe, or at least that’s what he says. As odd as his background, I’d define him as someone in between The Big Lebowsky and Anton Chigurh of No Country for Old Men. What was he up to in London? Well, he was working at Soho’s biggest sex shop and from then on I predicted this was a friendship that was to last forever (“Look buddy, I couldn’t talk or advise my kids, tell them I lived all around the world but didn’t work in a Sex Shop in Soho”, “Man! I have £5,000 in porn in my room, and it’s all brand new. One day I’m gonna sell it all and buy a car”). This was my drunken mate of the house, the one of the cool parties and long and winding chats. As the old man he is (35 y.o.) he tends to become Mr. Grumpy, like that Saturday morning when I found him threatening to blow the Indian guy’s head out with a blender. It’s also interesting to point out that he had a tattoo studio in the basement and that he used to introduce me as “Hey this is Rodrigo, my new flatmate. He’s a banker”. Sorry, I am not.

Catherine (aka “Wilson”) was Rodger’s girlfriend. Stereotypically aussie, she was laidback and friendly. Memorable Chicken Roasts with the Indian dude’s ketchup. I don’t know why I have this funny feeling that without her our flat would have been more than likely in unhealthy conditions. On top of that, you should praise someone whose able to deal with Rodger, shouldn’t you?

And finally, Nishit the Indian dude (aka, apparently, “Nick”). When you join a shared flat, and you volunteer on sharing some expenses, the last thing you expect is someone trying to take the piss out of you, don’t you? Moreover, being told “I don’t wanna get home and check that the money isn’t under my door”. Dear Sir, you can kindly suck my cock and fuck off.

I mean, why is it that sometimes we tend to have some sort of affection for people we must have punched in the face in first place? What’s the rational behind that? In any case, these are the Crown Jewels:

1) First chats "So buddy, what’s your English name?". "Pardon?". "Yeah, for example my original name is Nishit but I decided to call me Nick". POOM!

2) Me playing guitar on the couch For a fifth time “Hey buddy, can you play a Boyzone tune? “Ehm, not really mate” “And what about the Backstreet Boys?” “Well, let me try Quit Playing Games”. What followed was a Dantesque scene. This guy almost crying (imagine Juan Gabriel) while trying to sing with a falsetto, eyes closed and dodgy workout t-shirt, expanding the limits of self-respect and lecturing me on how to play the rhythm “because you’re messing up the song”.

3) Me sleeping on a random Saturday 10 am For a third time he wakes me up with his awful tecno-house-indian-boyband music (“one thing is to be woke up with music and another very different is to be woke up with rubbish music” Rich said). Pissed off, staring at the ceiling, I suddenly found myself surrounded by a well-known beat, with no exit but to enjoy this unique moment: DALE A TU CUERPO ALEGRIA MACARENA

4) Talking about my new hair cut Just telling the guys about this place I found in Soho where you can get a decent hair cut for a fiver, compared to the 25 quid charged somewhere else. “It’s incredible, only a crazy guy could spend so much money on that”. And that crazy guy lived on the third floor. “I paid 40 pounds for this new haircut, but it’s not only a haircut…I wanted to change my style”.

5) In the lounge having a bottle of wine The man showed his skills in the art of chating-up by bringing a bottle of white wine to welcome a Chilean friend. In the process of making Cary Grant look like a junior regular of a Holloway pub, he dropped what was apparently his best line to the poor girl. “Look, it’s very simple: I need someone to iron my clothes, you need some pounds. Would you iron my clothes?” Serial killer.

And that’s how I started to love my adoptive city.