North London Food & Culture

14 essential tips, apps and no-nos for new students in London

About to start his second year at King's College London, Camden blogger Brendan Hodrien dishes up some advice for new kids on the block

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Say what? Pints might be £5.50 in the pub next door to the student union bar. Photo: CC

1. Cash does not exist.

It’s not a thing any more. Nobody uses it and nobody wants to. If you want to have a wee in Euston then be my guest: bring all the 20ps you can fit in your pocket.

2. Citymapper will save your life.

If you’re not familiar with this app then let me inform you: it’ll tell you various ways of getting there and how long that will take: what tube line to get, which line to change to etc. So it’s a miracle indeed, but it does have its limitations. For example, it’ll be convinced that you’re not walking at an appropriate London pace and will nearly always overestimate walking times. It also lives in a world where traffic does not exist and buses simply float through the streets, so always allow another 15-20 minutes at least, but hey, we’re not all perfect. Which leads me to:

3. Learn London Walking Pace (registered trademark).

This is a thing and you must abide by it or make sure you are not in the way of people that do abide by it. This is London, everybody has somewhere to be. So don’t get in their way or you risk being burnt into a mere shadow on the Strand.

4. Standing on the left of the escalator is breaking the Geneva code.

And punishable by death or severe tutting and eye rolling. Not only is this ignorant and arrogant but it’s also dangerous, particularly during rush hour. I can’t tell you the amount of times in rush hour I’ve been running down the left of the escalator at a million miles an hour propelled by caffeine, tardiness and a firm of middle aged white men behind me with important clients to meet – and had to throw a tourist to the right to avoid flattening them.


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Don't get lost at the Ball: KOKO. Photo: PR
Go for the Freshers’ Ball: KOKO. Photo: PR

5. Black cabs are as outdated and quaint as flip phones.

You will use Uber and you will be bloody pleased about it. Black cabs are invariably more expensive, 99% of the time they are driven by ruder drivers and will provide a worse service because they have not a shred of the accountability that the Uber drivers have. You can order Uber cars from your phone, they’ll tell you how far away the driver is and what his * rating is, it shows the route they will take you in advance and finally driver and passenger rate each other /5 to help keep everybody nice to each other. Drivers with low ratings get reviewed and passengers with low ratings don’t get picked up. Win/win. Also, you can get £10 free credit with the code “uberfreshers2015”. You’re welcome.

6. Freshers’ events are good.

But. Remember. You. Are. In. London. And. London. Is. Really. Really. Really. Really. Expensive. You don’t have to go to all of them, I’d recommend Fabric and Ministry as you won’t be able to afford them after Freshers’. Get to at least two, you don’t need to do all of them, you can meet enough people and bond enough doing just a couple and you won’t totally bankrupt yourself in the process. Ministry, Fabric and KOKO (the ball). This leads me onto my next point.

7. Drinks are expensive.

They are very expensive. Especially if you’re from the north. At what was supposedly a student night at KOKO there was an offer on Jaegerbombs making them a measly £7.50. Most student nights will charge a minimum of a fiver for one. The cheapest drinks you’ll get will be at your student union bar. I’ve only been to three since I arrived and I’ll have to say King’s Waterfront bar is by far the best; it’s understandable why it is consistently voted the UK’s top SU bar. The food is cheap, as are the drinks and the view is spectacular. When I say cheap we’re not talking in relation to your friends’ SUs in Leeds. We are talking compared to the bar next door. In Leeds you can get £2 pints in the SU but £2.70 round the corner. Here we’re talking about £2.60 in the SU and £5.50 round the corner. Lifesaving stuff.

Cocktails can sometimes cost a tenner or more a pop. Photo: SE
Cocktails can sometimes cost a tenner or more. Photo: SE

8. If you live in Zone One then the world is your oyster.

Everything is in touching distance. Where I lived in my first year it took me eight minutes to get to lectures on the Strand. Fifteen minutes to Covent Garden. Twenty to Soho. This is all on hoof. Now I’m in Camden yes it’s Zone Two but still central enough to walk.

9. Shoreditch is dead and it’s a tragedy.

There are still a lot of fun things happening there but don’t expect to step off the tube and bump into generation-defining artists hosting interactive poetry workshops out of their craft alcohol-free gin van. There is a vicious debate raging on where is the next Shoreditch. Brixton? Hoxton? Dalston? Peckham? Hackney? Personally I believe nowhere will be The New Shoreditch (registered trademark) but it will be divided amongst the aforementioned.

10. Go to Lidl or Iceland.

If you’re feeling flush then you can treat yourself to Aldi. It may take a lot of you a long time to accept this and/or realise this but Sainsbury’s and Tesco aren’t as cheap as we think when parents do the shopping. You are a student. You must make sacrifices. You are in London. You must make five times more sacrifices as before. You will learn to love the taste of Bird’s Eye chicken dippers with rice (£1 for 12 dippers when on offer, rice 50p).

Hackney Wick. Way more fashionable than Shoreditch. Photo: SE
Hackney Wick: way more fashionable than Shoreditch. Photo: SE

11. One for my Literature mandem.

You are not expected to read every book. Your lecturers may make you believe that if you don’t read all of every text you’re set then you will be failed and immediately transferred to Skegness Met. You will not. Make sure you have a brief understanding and some key quotes that you can discuss and you’ll be fine.

12. Remember you live in London.

Play it cool. You will see The London Eye almost daily, the view from the Waterloo Bridge, the Shard is just like…there. Play it cool. You’re not a tourist; two weeks after moving in every touristy picture you take puts you further away from adjusting to your surroundings.

13. Remember: you live in London.

Play it cool. There are celebrities everywhere. Do not approach them, just make a smug Facebook status a la “I saw Kanye West trying to figure out how to hire a Boris Bike before”.

14. You will see people Instagram pictures of their uni experience in other cities.

And you will pity them because of how content and happy they are with their “beautiful beer garden…in Sheffield”. This will be a similar feeling to when a toddler tugs at your jeans to show you that he’s finished colouring in the dolphin in his book only to find that it’s pink and gone outside the lines. But you still smile and applaud anyway.

Read Brendan on how he came to live in Camden here. Follow him on Twitter @ablogbybrendan

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