I know where you live...

Ariana

Black-and-white leopard
Thinking about the recent travelling thread, I realised that I've seen too few places and I'm not likely to see many more. So I decided to start a thread where we can tell everybody about the places we live and offer a perspective that may be different from the one in tour guides. I'm interested in the things you like and take pride in, the things that add personality to the place, so they don't have to be famous places of interest.
You can add pictures if you want.
 
This promises to become an interesting thread, but I'm having a tough time here, picking something to talk about, in a city of 3.5 million that covers a larger area than New York. The fact that I get around in the city a lot and that I work as a tour guide in a museum doesn't help very much. How elaborate do you want it to be?
 
This is a very good idea. :) I've been trying to figure out what to say. At first I was just going to post about the town I live in and the interesting things surrounding it but then I thought, well maybe I should say something about the state as a whole too?
 
@Perun: I'm actually looking for a more personal view on things. I can find tons of stuff about Berlin on Google, so I'd rather hear about the things that make it special for you. Like your favourite places.

@Moon Child: pretty much the same. I can find stuff about your state but probably not much about your town. But I think anything that you find cool about it or the state would be nice.
 
Cool idea. I might later talk about my city rather than my region or my country as a whole.
 
Well, I'll try not to make this too long. You people know my posts, so I'll probably not succeed.

I like to think that I live in one of the most diverse places in the world. As I said, Berlin covers a larger land area than New York City, it's got 3.5 million people, and those key events in the history of the 20th century that weren't set off here at least left their mark. In terms of ethnic diversity, I suppose only Amsterdam and New York beat Berlin. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations, one of the most renowned centres for artistic creativity, and one of the most talked-about cities in the world.

However, if young urban people from all around the world talk about the city, they talk about something different than what I identify with it. Sure, I go clubbing, although almost exclusively rock and metal. I have friends in the hip areas of the city, and the area I live in is becoming increasingly popular. But all that doesn't have terribly much to do with the city I grew up knowing as my home. As most here know, I grew up in many different places around the world, and I have spent less than half my life in Berlin. Yet, my family comes from here, and I have always considered this my hometown. When I visited the town with my family when I was young, we would always stay at my grandparent's place, so that was where I always felt at home. They lived in a suburban district in the southwest of the town, called Lichterfelde - so I'll talk about that here.

The district was largely built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the Wilhelminic epoch. It was a colony of villas for the wealthy elite of the Prussian state, especially members of the military caste. A barracks was built there, and many streets have very martial names. The area is particularly notorious for its eccentric medieval architecture. A few examples:

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Many of those villas were designed by the architect Gustav Lilienthal, a native to the area. His brother, Otto Lilienthal was probably the most famous resident of the district, and he conducted some pioneering flight experiments nearby, and constructed one of the first aircraft worldwide, before the Wright Brothers. The test grounds are now a memorial site:

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The barracks was originally home to the 1. Gardeschützenbattalion, then the 1. SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, the headquarters of the United States occupation forces in West Berlin, and is now used by the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany's inefficient secret service:

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When I was very small, you would see American G.I.'s playing baseball there.


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Part of the so-called Westbazaar by the train station.

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Another one of those houses.

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The Johanneskirche, where I was baptised. It's just down the street from where my grandparents used to live.

My grandparents bought a property that had been destroyed by a bomb during the war, and a new house was built there, in convenient distance to the university where my grandfather was a professor, and where I now study. After my grandmother died, the house was sold and I have never been there since. It still is the only place in the world I feel at home at, and it is one of the most beautiful urban places in the world to me.
 
Most of those pictures were taken at the wrong time of the year; you should see it in July.
 
The place I currently reside in is called Middletown. Though I've lived here in Pennsylvania for all of my life, I've only lived here for about 4 to 5 years. It's a very nice little town to live in with pretty much everything being in walking distance if you really just feel like walking anywhere. It has lots of big old Victorian houses, a nice park, little shops, various pubs and nice eating places with great food. Other than that, there isn't very much I can say about the town itself. I can't complain about it. If I end up living here the rest of my life, I'd be happy. These are the few pictures I was able to pull up on Google:

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Some other interesting things to point out, we live right near the nuclear power plant Three Mile Island which is a bit famous for a partial meltdown it had in 1979. Much of the residents of Middletown had to be evacuated. Things turned out alright in the end of course but sometimes I worry about living so close to it but I try not to worry to much. I can see the towers from my backyard pretty much.

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We also live right near Hershey which is where Hershey's Chocolate comes from and also Hersheypark, a very fun place to go. It's funny that this place is so close to me and I can go anytime while to some people it's like "Oh my god! Hersheypark! It's so amazing!" (This is really the best picture I could get of the whole park. :lol:)


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Prior to that, I've always lived in Elizabethtown which is my hometown where I grew up and is only about 10 - 15 minutes away from Middletown. I've lived and grew up relatively in the same area all my life so there are alot of things I love about it. Scenery of fields and farmland, rolling hills, mountains. Various parks, trails to walk on, fun places to visit. There are just so many things I love about living here it's hard to list.
 
@Perun We have a lot of those here. I think that one in particular was turned into a fancy restaurant that I have yet to eat at.

@Ariana I love Victorian houses too. I've always wanted to live in one. Perhaps one day...
 
I've only lived in Oslo for two years (actually exactly two years). I have come to appreciate some things about it:
  • Since it is the capital, I rarely have to go other places to get things done or to find stuff I need. It obviously also has a good variety of places to eat, drink and be entertained.
  • It's actually quite easy to get around when you live here.
  • Even though it has not yet reached 1 million people, I think it is among the biggest cities in the world that has both cross-country skiing tracks and a proper alpine skiing hill inside its city borders.
Still - after growing up in the countryside and then spending nine years in Trondheim - where people generally are more laidback - I am still getting used to the more up-tempo/rushed/hurried mentality of this city.
 
I guess the cool thing about living in a capital is that you get to pass by the president of Kazakhstan and think nothing of it.
 
I guess the cool thing about living in a capital is that you get to pass by the president of Kazakhstan and think nothing of it.

:D Yep, or have your public transport closed down because the Nobel peace prize committee wanted to meet Obama (before I moved here, but still ...)
 
Or have your public transport closed down because... oh feck, don't get me started!
 
Some very cool sharings so far. Too bad I don't have that much to work with.

I live in a city called Samsun. My city isn't all that fancy. My great grandfather migrated to this town from Crimea which is on the other side of the Black Sea. Samsun is a major Black Sea port on the north coast of Turkey and is home to 1,5 million people, making it the 13th largest city in the country and the largest in the Black Sea region.

I guess it can be described as a developing city. While its substructure is weak and is desperate to the huge floods happening in the summer, it has started to feature some eye candy. Its coastline which was a mess year before looks a lot better and is a popular destination to take walks and whatnot.

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While the central part of the city doesn't have much to offer from a touristic standpoint, it's a very easy-access minded city, you can pretty much walk your way through the most significant places because they're mostly connected by one short road. A street called İstiklal Caddesi (which translates to Independence Street) which is better known as Çiftlik (which translates to Farm because there was a farm in there years and years ago) is pretty much the heart of the city and is always crowded. A long street filled with shops called Mecidiye is also very crowded and is about three minutes away. The city's main square, Cumhuriyet Meydanı (which translates to Republic Square) is just below Mecidiye and it connects to the coastline. Everything is very accessible and fresh looking.

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The city's touristic features are placed in other towns. Amisos Hill, paleolithic artifacts of Tekkeköy Caves, nice natural views of Vezirköprü, hot springs of Ladik and Havza spring to my mind.

And of course, you have the most significant event of the city's history, the fact that the Turkish War of Independence was started by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on 19 May 1919 in this city.

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This statue is pretty much the symbol of the city. You can also visit the ship he arrived at Samsun, it's a museum these days. There's a remake of Atatürk and his companions setting their foot to the city not too far away.

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I live in Los Angeles. Most people know quite a bit about LA from watching movies and television. It is not a great city to visit as a tourist, in my opinion, as there is no central tourist area. It is very spread out. Beverly Hills, downtown, Hollywood, Disneyland, the beach -- all worth visiting, but none is really near the other (well, Hollywood and downtown are fairly close). Also, public transportation is virtually nonexistent, so you need a car here. Traffic here is infamous, but not as bad as the other really big American cities. I think it is a great place to live. Beautiful weather, beautiful people. A fair amount of natural beauty, too, with the mountains, forests and ocean. They say you can go snow skiing and surfing in one day, which is probably true, but I don't know anyone who has done so. Good restaurants and arts/cultural outlets, too (though not quite in New York's league in those areas).

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