Bulgarian student Rumen Lasev had a choice in 2020: stay locked up in Berlin or visit his friend’s family in a town he’d never been to before.

The 29-year-old from Plovdiv had heard Sheerness was a “dangerous area” and expected the worst. Here, he shares his thoughts on one of Britain’s poorest towns…

For all of us, 2020 was a tumultuous year of sudden and disruptive change but for me, it was the year of my European student exchange.

With the lockdown almost in full force, there were only two possibilities for me.

I could either do my Kent university course online from my little dormitory bedroom in Berlin, cut off from family and most friends, or I could go for a change of scene and visit my friend Bruce Hamilton on Sheppey.

The idea of spending six months in isolation didn’t appeal to me, so I decided to go to Sheerness in September 2020.

I would still have to attend the university remotely, but at least I'd be in England in the company of my friend, who I had met in a Berlin bookshop, and his wife.

Because Sheerness isn't your typical tourist or student destination I decided to do some online research.

To my astonishment, I found I would be moving to one of “England’s most dangerous areas”.

But I thought it could not really be that bad and I was quickly proved right.

In fact, I never saw any of the horrendous things I had read about and I began to wonder if any of the people who'd published such articles had set foot on the Island, let alone in Sheerness.

It is as if the Isle of Sheppey was just low-hanging fruit and an easy target for a story.

It’s not paradise on Earth, but the accounts all seemed to be grossly exaggerated, and the statistics their authors used to support them were actually dehumanising.

Coming from Berlin and, before that, a large city in Bulgaria, I had often yearned for the sort of real communal connection I saw in Sheerness.

With Bruce as my guide, I got to know all the small traders on the High Street – Stan the butcher, Lou the greengrocer, Kev and Steve down the junk shop.

We’d visit them all almost daily as we slowly walked through the town. For me that daily excursion became something to look forward to and there was a sense of excitement.

Who knew who we were going to run into? We might even be lucky enough to hear some local gossip.

Thanks to the Sheerness locals, just buying our groceries was an experience.

I saw the importance of the human connection, its value, and how a bit of back and forth with a local trader enriched your day.

There’s something about going for years to the same local greengrocer or butcher. Maybe they'll give you a little discount on your tangerines, or perhaps next time they'll throw in an extra rasher.

At a time when the human connection seemed to be under as many constraints as possible, I saw that this small tight-knit community was still standing, thanks to the resilience of its people.

They do not seem browbeaten by the hardships of day-to-day life. They stand resolute, a bit like the Island itself, positioned at the mouth of one of the world’s greatest waterways.

They are tough but sincere. I would not say they are full of joy for life, but they are lively.

They wear their hearts on their sleeves and take things as they come.

Bruce would often call my time there “the University of Sheerness” and gave me daily tutorials on how to make a proper "full English", followed by lessons on the old English monetary system, and a bit of Cockney to round it off.

After graduating from that university I ended up going back to Berlin in January 2021.

Since then, I’ve been back a few times, and each time I feel comfort in knowing not much has changed since my last visit.

I still recognize the same faces from over four years ago, and without them, the place would not be the same.

I now understand why Bruce has chosen to live here, staying on after retiring from a full-time job he'd held since 1991, despite saying he wanted to leave when he first moved here.

It almost feels as if the people here are inseparable from their island and will continue to be its bedrock until SS Montgomery goes off.

Despite being enrolled at Kent, I never actually got to see my university.

For many exchange students, a chiefly working-class island in the southeast of England, famous for having three prisons, doesn’t sound like the ideal destination.

But I'll bet none of my peers got to have an exchange experience quite like mine.