Ask HN: Moving to London from California
7 siamese_puff 7 5/19/2025, 2:27:17 AM
I’m moving from a smaller beach town in California to London in a month as an American. Any tips?
30, no kids and a wife. Felt like life was short, so we found jobs and bought a plane ticket.
If you like walking try and walk around the centre as much as possible (without using phone mapping ideally), you'll realise it's quite small really and get to know the place. Take some time to experience the history, art galleries, theatre etc I wish I'd done more of that now I live in the provinces.
Take time to see different parts of the UK, although I loved living in London for 2 years and visit a lot I way prefer other parts of the UK and now a lot of people live remotely it's practical to live in the midlands for example and go there for work once a week maybe.
Take regular trips to Europe by plane, train or car. It's cheap and doable for a weekend. There is a lot of variety between countries/cities which I think you'd really appreciate.
I've been here for ~10 years and feel like I'm familiar with a fairly narrow slice of it (mostly north/north east a little bit). A good mental model imo is to see it as a collection of smaller towns, each with distinct urban centres, that have grown into each other. This makes it endlessly interesting to me and I feel like I'm unlocking new parts of it all the time.
Tips? Nothing concrete. Be open. Everything will change; let it. What you thought is true and indisputable will be called into question; let it. Find new truths. Bruce Lee said, "Be water." Be water. Allow it to change you and it will, permanently, in the best way possible.
When I was 26, I moved from California to Europe and never looked back. Easily one of the best decisions of my life. Have fun. You won't regret it.
Oh and when they ask you, "Who do you support?" (and they will!) it means which football (soccer) team do you back, and the answer is Liverpool.
P.S. If you have any concrete questions, my email is in my profile.
This is the way.
Make use of the huge amounts of green space that London has.
Make use of the nightlife in London.
Make use of the huge number of in-person events in London.
I am contactable via my profile if you'd like a more detailed discussion, and/or to meet for beer, coffee, etc.
Jokes aside, but just curious what is bad about California that makes you want to go to London?