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You should see it now. It has totally changed into a popular tourist attraction and liveable university town. Unfortunately, there are always dozens of construction sites which means that it will never be "finished" just like some parts of Berlin.
in my native land - Hatfield, UK, famed for its gorgeous Tudor palace, but surrounded by zombie hell on earth that is the much dreaded 'New Town'/ 'Garden City'. Leafy suburban nightmare, cultureless desert, on suicide watch. Window twitching nirvana of postwar tweeness - the perfect combo of cold modernity with aspirations to car culture, and small-minded faux brick kitsch. Winner of Britain in Bloom year in year out. The main street is a roundabout, the town centre and all its shops are housed in one single room - a 1970s hangar-like shopping mall. There's a big university filled with unlucky, unwitting Chinese students drifting around the perfectly clipped lawns in doomed groups, and who resort to catching the train to St Albans for any semblance of nightlife (or life in general). Last bus home and last drinks 9pm! Needless to say all the other inhabitants who live there ****ing love it, and their polished white Ford Escorts and suburban wife-swap parties. Gimme the estates of Peckham anyday.
Oslo was a bit of a letdown too, constantly under construction as it rebuilds its roads after every winter, twee, modern, surprisingly dirty, a small city (in a bad way) and chokingly smelly by the dock (I think it's a fish processing factory - you see it coming before it hits you, wondering why people are running and belching between buildings like a terrorist attack, then being hit by a sensation of rotting fish combined with a blast of raw sewage being poured into your eyes, and the first time you smell something so overpowering it makes you vomit), where one catches ferries to the underwhelming, slightly boring Oslofjord. It's saving grace being its good looking inhabitants, but other than that as unassuming and neutral as a clear glass of glacial water. Great looking new Opera house though.
Stockholm also- grey skies, and despite being built on several islands, riddled with endless highways, train tracks, concrete bridges, blank modernity and emptied streets that disfigures what would otherwise be an elegant and historic place. The surviving Gamle Stan (Old Town) is way too small for what once was, and too taken over by the tourist and chain brand buck. Every gorgeous edifice is fronted by double the space of roaring traffic, or islanded in a park rather than forming part of the urban fabric.
In terms of ugliness, Cairo takes the biscuit (living in an unfinished building means the inhabitants don't have to pay the residence taxes, so almost every building resembles a bombed out, concrete shell more Baghdad than Bukhara) but the Islamic City (world's largest medieval city, one of the poorest and yet one of the safest urban realms), the colonial city and Old Cairo (Christian city) are gorgeous, and the streets in general brimming with 24hr life and culture which are the saving graces. Despite the heat, poverty and looks, the city is amazing to visit - highly recommended.
In terms of experience - Fez was godawful. Spectacular looking medieval city, brimming with culture, history, good food and beauty everywhere you look - but WRECKED by aggressive touts and unwelcome attention at every turn, who will follow for miles and hassle for hours. Puts Marrakesh in the shade with an uneasy sense of danger - don't leave your female unattended thankyou. The kind of place not used enough to tourists so they stand out a mile (and are assumed to be whatever stereotype-du-jour, whether it means youre mere moments from jumping in bed with every short, fat male, or swimming in stupid dollars), but so historic, and poor and without modern prospects many jobless men are desperate, and hustlers. -After a while you don't trust a soul (despite the majority of people just being normal, everyday people) - not even the sheets in the hotel you barricade yourself in. Culture shock FTW.
In terms of soul destroying, Ampang, a poor, modern suburb of Kuala Lumpur would be right up there, with its mouldy concrete highrises and exploited inhabitants, bullied refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, and the corrupt cops who prey on them. Stories forever unwritten.
Last edited by smool; 12-27-2014 at 06:06 PM..
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