It’s just nice that now when hearing the name Birmingham, I can say I have been there, and I have a picture in my head, rather than just thinking “some industrial grey city”. Four things have brought me there at four different times: Stargate, Doctor Who, Sherlock and Torchwood.
I recently had a layover in Hannover, one hour time between trains. So I thought, let’s see what Hannover looks like, and walked from the station through the pedestrian area with its shops. Apparently Hannover must have been bombed in WWII as well, and the whole inner city destroyed. And instead of reconstructing, like they did in Nuremberg which also has many nice historical buildings, here they just built new ones. Architecture from the Fifties and Sixties and they all look the same. Warehouse after warehouse. Nothing special. Same can be said for Ludwigshafen, which also looked rather dull, at least the part I saw. So yes, in comparison to those cities which rather shocked me (as they certainly don’t look like the “golden West” every GDR citizen imagined), I think Birmingham is beautiful.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2016-02-23 09:06 am (UTC)It’s just nice that now when hearing the name Birmingham, I can say I have been there, and I have a picture in my head, rather than just thinking “some industrial grey city”. Four things have brought me there at four different times: Stargate, Doctor Who, Sherlock and Torchwood.
I recently had a layover in Hannover, one hour time between trains. So I thought, let’s see what Hannover looks like, and walked from the station through the pedestrian area with its shops. Apparently Hannover must have been bombed in WWII as well, and the whole inner city destroyed. And instead of reconstructing, like they did in Nuremberg which also has many nice historical buildings, here they just built new ones. Architecture from the Fifties and Sixties and they all look the same. Warehouse after warehouse. Nothing special. Same can be said for Ludwigshafen, which also looked rather dull, at least the part I saw. So yes, in comparison to those cities which rather shocked me (as they certainly don’t look like the “golden West” every GDR citizen imagined), I think Birmingham is beautiful.