Discovering Europe

Not long ago I found myself telling a friend that this city doesn’t have a heart. It’s a concrete jungle with more than 8 millions inhabitants. They hardly ever interact with each other because they are always too busy, too serious, too sunken in their own lives. Eternal grey skies, huge gloomy buildings, the heritage from the industrial age and that morning fog, make me think this is a cold, serious and sober city.
However, the time passed and wandering once and again around narrow streets, over different bridges and through several boroughs, I discovered another London: a city bursting with a colourful life; a city full of wonderful little corners. Places like a small fruit stall outside Liverpool Street station. There, a charming couple sell flowers, apples, berries and nuts to the busy businessmen that rush to work every weekday. Places like those flower corners where a young women offer daffodils, tulips, orchids, roses, and peonies to the pedestrians. Places like the picturesque mews with houses in different colours and gardens full of green grass and tiny flowers.
Yet, there’s a special spot, in the middle of the chaos that London is, there’s still a small space for reflection, a place to simply observe life: It’s the Kyoto Gardens in Holland Park. When I first discovered it I sat in front of the waterfall and let my mind drift. I paid attention to the scene before my eyes: the water flowing, spilling, jumping, and making its way towards the pond. In that moment, I felt it: a special energy which stood there, imperceptible for the oblivious tourist. It was something that can’t be explained but felt, something breathtaking, something magical, something inspiring. Something that trapped me and together with the inexorable babbling of those waters, took me far away.
Pigeons, peacocks, squirrels, Koi carps, cranes, crows and humans completed that particular sight. Red, green, yellow, brown and grey mingled together with a cloudy bluish sky and the cold breeze of the autumn woke me up from my reverie to realise that, there, it was where London’s heart lives.