Customs Officer: Hello madam!
Me: Hello!
CO: Where are you coming from madam?
Me: Sweden, but I’m not Swedish.
CO: What is the purpose of your visit?
Me: The World Tour Finals.
CO: ???
Me: Tennis tournament.
CO: Enjoy your stay madam!
And that is the second time I say this when entering the UK.

With tennis in mind, I took a flight from Arlanda to London. Yes, I have very good reasons to be at the ATP World Tour Finals this year: 2 Romanians and Roger Federer, plus it so happened that the tournament is played in the very same week with my birthday, so, yay, happy birthday to me! But the tennis post should come a few days later when I will get out of the tennis euphoria and try to make one step back and think about it not just in terms of “tennis is amazing” but some sport-related reasoning as well.

Another reason to be in London this week is school and work related and consists of a conference. I am very nervous about it but very excited as well. I was very happy because it happens to take place in the same week as the tournament because this means that I can make a pretty nice combination between a lot of things that I really like: tennis, school and London.

London. Well, I’ve been here before and being a tourist in London is not such a bad thing. It’s a lovely city with its perks, full of life, cosmopolitanism is in bloom here and I like it just as much as saying that I’d give it a chance to live here for a little while just to see how that feels like. I love other places too, Paris for example. Great city, so many tennis tournaments including my favorite grand slam but I don’t think I’d like to live there. Visit it, yes, with pleasure. But I’d have to have a better reason to move to another place than just wanting to change the scenery and I know there are a lot of serious issues to consider when moving. If school, a job or people were on my priorities list until now, I am seriously starting to consider security as well. Will not get into more details about this now. Though that music store where I can find all those cool books sure is an extra advantage this city has. And MilkyWay. And I haven’t given up on Helsinki but lately New York sounds really tempting also, or any US city with a tennis tournament, of course.

So far, so good, my holiday is half done and I will switch back into school-mood soon. Either way I hope I will enjoy doing both things in London because I like them both and I like the city.