Photo by: Very British Problems A couple of months ago, my partner’s mother, a lovely born-and-bred Brit with German ancestry, asked me something that I have been pondering on this whole time – and will probably continue thinking about it for a few more years: – So, do you identify yourself as British or Belarusian…

Whenever I crave a bit of showing off, I share a very simple fact about me – I speak 5 different languages. OK, two of them are my native ones, Russian and Belarusian, so I can’t really take credit for them. I just happened to be born and raised in a bilingual country. I do…

They are moving the goalpost for me after all… It’s not set in stone, but most likely – yes. A couple of weeks ago, the Home Office announced pending modifications to the settlement scheme. Their proposal for immigration changes is now open for public consultation. (If, by any chance, you have 15 minutes to spare…

Having completed my big move to the UK, which involved transporting my cat from Minsk to London by car back in 2019 (that’s a completely separate story), I didn’t bother too much with a driving licence. After all, for the first year in the UK, I could use my Belarusian licence, and it did come…

I was once asked what Brits and Belarusians have in common. First thing that came to mind was that both nations like complaining. And that might be one of the reasons I feel so comfortable living in Britain. Today, though, I’m going to pause that for a minute and focus on positives of being someone…

When someone learns where I am originally from, the most common response I hear is ‘Oh wow, I don’t think I have ever met someone from Belarus before!’ That’s true – we are a rare breed, at least outside of countries where many Belarusians ended up in the past few years, such as Poland, Lithuania…

In my first few years in London, I heard way too often that making friends in this city is virtually impossible. People would say that very few stay in London for long enough to build and maintain long-lasting friendships, that everyone is way too busy with work and all the fun stuff the Big Smoke…

You are in your early 30s, you divorce your partner of 10 years and send him back to your native country as he’s proven completely useless in life in general and in expat life in particular, and you end up being single in one of the biggest cities in the world. Depending on your circumstances…

If you are a single woman in your early 30s in London, the dating life can be hard. (and it’s probably worthy of a separate post) Tons of people who are not interested in any sort of commitments, shallow dates, cultural mishaps due to the multinational nature of the city – the list goes on…

It felt as if that 5-hours’ flight lasted an eternity. From the sunny and hot Tashkent in the middle of June, where I hung out with my lovely Uzbek co-workers and was force-fed the most amazing plov and samsas I have ever tried, I was being transported to the country that raised me, where a…