Plymouth will never be deemed as a stressful city considering the fact its most foreboding building is a lighthouse. However, after leaving my humble abode of said city and returning three months later, not only did I discover that the place had the potential to be chock-a-block with people, it also had the potential to frighten the life out of a young woman who has lived there all of her 21 years. I’m not entirely sure whether it is because the city I inhabit in Spain is as calm as a cup of camomile tea practising yoga or the fact that I returned to the city of Sir Francis Drake at Christmas time, but either way, on my first venture into the city centre, I very quickly wished to turn around and run home like a toddler who had just walked into a glass window pane after being chased by a Rottweiler. The Plymouth I had left behind was a calm place. Everybody who frolicked around the town had an accent that could only be laughed at when spoken in an aggressive tone. The ‘Big Issue’ salesman even had a certain amount of humour. Plymouth basically had no threatening element other than the over population of shell suit wearing cretins who enjoyed complaining in shops about the foundation mark on a white top that they caused. (Apologies, repressed retail work experiences creeping out there). However, when I returned from my first few months of my year abroad I was astounded. I strolled through the mall prepared to flee from anybody who wanted to attack me because everybody had a frown so distinctly forged onto their face they looked like they had been constipated for a month and were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. People were practically growling through queues, using prams as battering rams and yelling at such a volume, an already debatable dialect sounded Japanese. I quickly became more and more perplexed over why the population of Plymouth was running around the shopping mall like headless chickens during a bomb scare.
The pandemonium did not cease until the late afternoon although, strangely, I had only been awake for a few hours of these ludicrously busy hours. For four months I have been sharing an apartment with fellow late starters. It was completely and utterly normal to arise at midday and congratulate flatmates that one arose before the hour of two. Not the case when back to home. During the first week my parents stared at me in astonishment when I grinned to myself that I was awake before 11am. Their astonishment then slowly morphed into the realisation that there was a lot of potential to ‘wind me up’ ,so to speak, thus choosing to vacuum outside of my bedroom door, yell up the stairs and play Christmas songs at full volume like Santa Grotto’s rave. Needless to say I was not amused. After enduring the noise pollution for a significant amount of time I would emerge, not so rested but rather resembling Big Foot’s cousin wearing a fluffy red dressing gown with a runny nose. Indeed, for some unknown reason whilst my presence resides on the island of tea and crumpets, my nose decides to run an Olympic marathon and my lungs wheeze like a decrepit steam train. I can frequently be found with a tissue in my pocket, sneezing or at least looking somewhat sheepish about my nasal failings whereas across the channel, my insecurities vanish as I no longer act as an advert for Kleenex. To some, an insignificant matter; to me, a blessing as wonderful as a chocolate covered Hugh Jackman.
It would appear that the only distinctly positive aspect of returning to my home country was the fact that I no longer had to rehearse general greetings prior to ordering a coffee or think twice about verb endings and conjunctions. I was back in a country where a zebra crossing unanimously meant a pedestrians’ safe crossing haven; not just lines on the road that have a debatable meaning so that the safety of the pedestrian is usually down to the driver’s discretion. And I was back in a country that lovingly shunned drizzle as a pathetic attempt at raining instead of hoisting gigantic umbrellas up due to the smallest amount of precipitation.
Admittedly, perhaps I am being too harsh on the fair land that I call home but considering the fact I have spent a good quarter of a year chilled, relaxed and only becoming stressed by plot cliff hangers in ‘telenovelas’, it is easy to see why being flung back into a wildly contrasting culture is quite the shock. Now that I have returned to Burgos my British stress levels have subsided and I find myself waylaying essays for a cheeky cerveza. Some might say it is a lazy life style. Myself? I prefer to call it adapting to culture.
