A new apartment, maybe a new city: moves mean change. But most do not change life as fundamentally as this one in the childhood of pop singer Katie Melua. She was born in 1984 in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, but since 1993 her family lives in the UK.
What it meant for them to move to the Northern Irish city of Belfast, Melua has now reported to the "time magazine": It had then felt for her as if she had "changed from a black and white film into a color film" said the 34-year-old. "Few people born in the West have any idea of how well they are here."
Melua also explains in the conversation what she means: In the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, the school was closed for two months during the first years of school in the winter, because the heating of the classrooms had been too expensive.
How different the life felt in the West, she noticed clearly fast. In Belfast, there were no empty shops, "instead shops that were lavishly stocked with everything that one could dream of in Georgia".
In school there had been "great subjects like art and theater". "Belfast, of course, had its own problems, there were big political difficulties during our time there, but going to school in that city was a dream for me as a kid." Melua lived in Belfast for about six years, then moved to London.
Melua had one of her first big hits in 2005 with "Nine Million Bicycles". In 2016 she released her most recent studio album "In Winter". She sings on it together with a Georgian women's choir.