We really were a very strange group of people. We had all met in a London bar by chance: all of us were in our twenties and all of us were studying. Richard, an English guy, was taking some French classes London offered. His family was very rich, and he came from a small town called Netherbury. He was a really smart guy who liked art and was particularly interested in the life of Napoleon, prompting him to want to learn French.

Mary, a pretty girl with a prettier accent, said that if you want to learn Chinese London is the best choice. Mary came from Scotland. She had studied arts in Glasgow, but her apparent specialist subject was football. She could remember nearly the complete history of the World Cup, and surprised me by telling me the first world champions were Uruguay - I still don't know whether she was being serious or was just trying to make me look a fool for believing her.

If you want to learn German London is the place, said Frank, while he chewed his last piece of sausage. Frank wasn’t here to learn but to teach. He was graduated from the Munich Language School and he could speak Polish and Norwegian very well, but needed to brush up on his German grammar. He wasn't particularly happy about it, since his father was German and had always tried to emphasize his nationality onto Frank.

In order to learn Italian London couldn’t be more suitable, said Paolo. Guess what - he was an Italian teacher. He came from Napoli. He usually had long and amusing arguments with Mary about football, saying that the 1986 Napoli team was the best team in the universe, ever. She didn’t seem to agree, but to the rest of the table they might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

For me, who was about to sign in some Spanish classes London seemed to be the place were all cultures lived together. And I really couldn’t have been happier.