Juan

Juan from Spain

Photo by Louise Halvardsson

“I don’t know if it was because the sun was shining, but I just felt so good when I arrived in Brighton.” Juan says with a smile. He’s from Salamanca in Spain. “I just heard from a friend that Brighton was a cool place, so I decided to move here for a while.”

A good feeling about Brighton
Juan came here by coach and he had been sleeping the whole journey. “I woke up in London Road and I was so shocked. Everything seemed so tacky. Like a dirty big city. Not what my friend had talked about…” But he changed his mind when he got off at Pool Valley. “Wow, there was the sea and Pier…and I just felt great…and ever since I’ve had this good feeling about Brighton.”

Quite expensive
Now Juan is well familiar with the town and talks about his favourite clubs and shops. “I really like the Lanes…I mean the North Laine. The other Lanes are just too posh.” What he doesn’t like about Brighton is that it’s quite expensive. “And I had a hard time finding a good job. You get fooled around a lot.”

Life is relaxing
Most of all he thinks that it’s the people that make Brighton cool. Before he had only seen drunk Englishmen on holiday in Gran Canaria, behaving badly. “But the Brighton people are not like that at all. They are just enjoying themselves and are not so worried about their careers. Life is relaxing.”