Brockley Zeitgeist

Recently, our working life has been transformed by a German woman who has joined the company and, with good natured efficiency, sorted out all the annoying financial stuff which we usually try to pretend isn't part of the job.

Like all the best people, it turns out that she lives in Brockley. So before we signed off our invoices, we nagged her in to telling us what she made of the place, as we're always curious about what exotic insights people from other parts of the world will bring when they encounter Brockley.

It turns out they wish there was a free cash machine, but they like the trains. Es lebe der Unterschied!

I've been living in Brockley for over two years now. I’m from Germany originally, but have been living in London for 9 years now so I don’t have many links with Germany any more really apart from family.

I don’t personally know anyone else from Germany in the area but I have noticed there is a German car parked in a road round the corner, so there must be more of them!

I used to rent on the Greenwich/Deptford border, but wanted to buy. As much as I would have loved to buy in Greenwich I couldn’t afford anything there, so Brockley seemed a cheaper option and since it is going to (hopefully) improve transportwise too within the next few years it seemed like a good option.

I’d heard about the place from a friend I used to work with who lives round the corner from me now.

The best things are the transport links as we are close to Nunhead, New Cross Gate and Brockley, so we’ve got trains taking us to Victoria and London Bridge. One of the worst things about the place is that there are no free cash machines. I really hate having to pay £1.50 every time I want to get my own money out - you can tell I work in Accounts. The nearest free cash point from us is Sainsburys in New Cross Gate, very frustrating!

I wish there could be more places to go out, at the moment we tend to go out in Greenwich or New Cross when we go out locally, but there may well be places that we don’t know about.

The other thing that’s annoying is that there is always lots of rubbish lying around in our street. This may not be a Brockley problem in general though. I think it’s more due to the students that live in some of the houses in our street. Unfortunately it lets the whole street down.

Otherwise I really like living there though, Brockley’s got some nice houses and it’s very quiet too. And I can be in central London in 10 mins whilst not having to pay a fortune for my flat. Well, compared to other places!