What's it like where you live?

[Fimbulvetr3822]

I can see my house in your 2nd picture Whats amazing is that Bath is only so big, so there is a decent chance we have passed each other at some point

It's an amazing city to grow up in although it has chnaged alot in the last 15 years since the universities expanded and alot of the residential areas I grew up in have become student only areas. We do have the best pub in the world though, so I suppose it balences out

Yeah it's a really cool place to be a student although I wouldn't like to live in Oldfield Park simply because it's just full of students. What's the best pub in the world? My vote would go for The Hobgoblin.

Good lord! That second pic looks like something out of a Stronghold game!
I've never seen something look so placid and idyllic that wasn't in some sort of entertainment media.
I want to live there. ;-;

It's pretty expensive to buy a house but can be cheap if you rent in a houseshare...I only pay £325 a month for the place I'm living and it's decent enough. Anyway, have some more Bath porn:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Ok, this is creepy it is the Hobgoblin I am 100% sure we have met now. You want to know which one i am, i'll be the one dancing to dropkick murphies infront of the jukebox

 

[Kinitawowi]

I live in Custom House, an area of inner east London, UK.

Studies vary, but by general consensus the London Borough of Newham (where I am) is definitely in the top ten most deprived areas in the country - it was as high as second at one point. Much has been spent regenerating the area (particularly around the ExCeL, which is a five minute walk down Freemasons Road from my house), but even within Newham, the Custom House / Canning Town area is still one of the crappiest wards.

That said, my bit isn't as bad. Some of my family have been stopped by the police nearby for random knife searches before now and some of the 2011 rioters came literally straight past our front door, but those have generally been isolated incidents compared to the main Barking Road thoroughfares through Canning Town.

To put the degradation of local society another way, Jeremy Kyle is from this area. Education is a waste of time (49% of the local working age population have no meaningful qualifications) and kids have kids because it's the quickest and easiest way to get a council house; this is chav country for people far too poor to be chavs.

They're trying, in fairness. The Olympics inspired significant development (the area around the ExCeL in particular), Crossrail will be coming through as soon as they finish building it, and there's massive efforts going on to try and gentrify Canning Town proper; trying to get rid of a lot of the old council terraces in favour of modernised flats and such (which are naturally priced so high as to be totally out of reach of most of the local market, unless they have kids and get the council to pay for it).

On a semi-related note, I do actually work; and I carry a multi-tool type knife in my backpack for use while I'm there. It's on the verge of dying (the handles are breaking and most of the knifes are totally blunt), so I'm looking at a new Leatherman (possibly the Charge AL). I'm petrified that some plod will stop me outside the local chicken shop and accuse me of going out on the stab with it.


So yeah, I need to get out.

 

[6urk17s]

Pretty shit really. I feel like I'm the only English person in my town right now, everyone else is either Polish, Latvian or chav.

Uhh, ehh, sorry about that one. If you don't mind asking, I am really interested in your opinion about our immigrants over there.

Anyway, I live in the Riga, the capital of Latvia. It is mixed.
The center of the city is called the Old Riga, mostly architecture up to 19th century.

Spoiler: Vecriga(Old Riga) (4 pictures)

Then the surrounding territory of the center is mostly 19th-20th century.

Spoiler: Centrs(Center)

Rest is mostly Soviet with new building popping around here and there.

Spoiler: Purvciems(Swamp Village)

Spoiler: Me?ciems(Forrest Village)

Spoiler: Maskavas For?tate (Moscow Suburbs)

Then there are a few landmarks:

Spoiler: Riga Radio and TV Tower

Spoiler: Freedom Monument

("Brīvības Piemineklis" is the Latvian name, spoiler didn't support the letter "ī")

The text written on it is "Tēvzemei un Brīvīvai" which translates to "For Fatherland and Freedom"

Spoiler: Academy of Sciences

Overall, I like it here. We get insane Internet here. There are also a lot of Russian speaking people in Riga, like, more then Latvians themselves.
Don't really know what to add other then showing some pictures.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Well, I live in a small town that's full of wanna be thugs, intolerant preppy teenagers, a moronic school administration, and some stray animals. To be in more depth though, it's just pretty sub-standard around here. I live JUST on the outside of town (meaning literally steps before you start seeing the crowded buildings and small clothing shops and all that junk), which means it's usually quiet unless the fire hall uses the siren when there's a fire. In town though is usually a lot of Hispanics living in the cheap apartments, a few unique stores, and that's about it. We get the occasional crime like a small shooting or robbery, but nothing entirely news-worthy. I love it during the winter though. Pretty much everyone is indoors, I can wear a hoodie, and walk around town without some stupid teenagers yelling obscenities at me in their car as it drives by.

Apparently my town was pretty important at one point, mainly during the civil war, since pretty much anyone had to go through the town to get to Gettysburg. We have random signs posted all around containing some historic information, and this town probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the business that the war brought.

Aside from all that, I mainly just stay indoors. I'm a bit anti-social, which you can blame on the multiple places that I've lived. I grew up in a lot of places that hardly had any other kids at all, and the roads were completely empty. (or road, in most cases, since I ended up living in rather rural places). My current residence would be the first time I've lived in a place with more than just 2 people my age, and they all fucking suck and are stupid, so I just keep to my small group of close friends and play games and go to work.

 

[Subatomic]

I live in a medium sized town called Ibbenbüren (the umlaut is very important!) in northwestern Germany. I say medium sized in relation to the average German town, because as you probably know Germany has a relatively large population (82 million), but few big cities (only Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne have more than a million inhabitants).
Ibbenbüren has about 51,000 inhabitants, which makes it one of the bigger towns in the rather rural area, though there are a few bigger not too far away (most importantly Münster and Osnabrück, which still aren't all that big).
Ibbenbüren has the distinction of being one of the northernmost coal mining towns in Germany and was heavily dependant on the coal industry, but with coal mining becoming unprofitable throughout Germany, the mine, which currently is one of the last three coal mines in all of Germany, is scheduled to shut down in 2018. Thankfully the end of the coal industry was forseen for decades and the region has taken steps to mitigate the closure of the mine, but the influence can still be seen in a lot of places. For example, we occasionally have (very very) small earthquakes because of collapsing underground coal beds (the northern part of Germany is otherwise extremely geologically stable). The town is also much less focused on agriculture than the surrounding towns, though there's still a lot of that too. Another particularity due to the history as a mining town is the relatively strong standing of left leaning political parties, while the surrounding agrarian area is much more conservative.
Ibbenbüren has a lot more cultural, educational, social and medical facilities than a town of its size would need, because it provides for a lot of the smaller towns in the 'Tecklenburger Land' as well. There are for example several secondary schools, vocational schools, a hospital, lots and lots of doctors and pharmacies. On the other hand, it's a pretty bad place to go shopping, as the inner city just hasn't a lot of interesting places to go and is just too small to attract most businesses. Still, it's a nice place to live, as it's not so big as to be crowded, but not so small there's this "everyone knows everybody" thing going on. It's also rather cheap (my brother who lives in Cologne pays more than double my rent for similar sized appartment) and has decent public transport to the more shopping/party-friendly Münster and Osnabrück, as well as direct access to the Autobahn from where it's only a relatively short trip to the Netherlands or the Ruhr area. Talking about infrastructure, the broadband connection is unfortunately rather crappy - several of the outlying parts of town don't even have broadband internet, and even near the center where I live it's everything but fast.

Spoiler: Panorama of the main town, with the coal mine and associated power plant in the background:

Spoiler: The Christuskirche (Christ Church), one of the oldest buildings in town, whose foundations are from the 11th or 12th century:

 

[saoirse13]

The South/Republic of Ireland on the other hand has amazing scenery, attractions and the most wonderful people. The restaurants on the West coast (namely Kerry, Clare and Galway) are fantastic. The people are amazing friendly and kind.

Nice of you to say so but don't worry there's plenty of arseholes down south as well[/quote]

Oh i know, but familiarity breeds contept, as the old saying goes. It could be a case of far away fields are greener, haha

 

[nat_401]

Much nicer than my old home, a place called Scunthorpe, the only British city to have a foul word hidden in the name and now has its own TV series called Skint, about how poor, deprived and generally shit the place is.

There's a small town in Dorset with the more obvious name of 'Shitterton'.

You're welcome.

Lol, I had to look that up, apparently its world famous, that bests Scunthorpe by a large margin, a very large margin.

@SpunkyMonkey I wouldn't say rose tinted, Its just I only have one place to compare it to, and to be honest a pile of horse manure looks warm and inviting compared to scunny, not once have I seen a schoolchild injecting themselves in the street since I moved.

 

[Ticklefist]

Moved to Austin, TX a few years ago. Don't believe the hype. The place is a pretty plain and boring modern suburbia.

 

[kurokotetsu]

While Madrid and Barcelona are bigger cities, have way more tourist attractions, have a higher diversity of people and a booming nightlife, they are simply too large to appeal to me. In Barcelona, I was constantly bothered by the street sweepers that cut through the city at 2 or 3 AM every night. People would be screaming to each other at 5 AM after getting back from one of the countless bars in the area. Madrid is simply too large for my tastes and Barcelona is so cosmopolitan that learning Spanish would be a waste of time. If I was 5 years younger (I'm nearing 29 now), I wouldn't care as much. Like just about every big city I've lived or vacationed in, it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

If you think that Barcelona and Madrid are too big don't even come to where I live. Where is that? Mexico's Federal District, normally known as Mexico City. How large is it? The whole metropolitan area is populated by over 20 million people, which means that it is the third largest metropolitan area in the world.

That means that where I live is ecclectic. There are huge contrasts where crossing a street means going form a nice and secure place in the city toa very poor and not really good overall part. There are beatiful places and there are depressing slums. We have great universities, all kind of people and almost everything to live. It is also a complete chaos of a city and if you don't know the unspoken rules of behaviour it can be veryhard to live in.

We have food froma all over the world, as people, but we are very fond of Mexican food, which is cheap, good and a little bit spicy. We are, like New YOrk, very unlike the rest of the country while being very Mexican at heart.

 

[lacktheknack]

I live in Edmonton, AB, CAN.

<spoiler=Skyline>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Edmonton_Skyline_at_night_-b.jpg

It's a pretty great place to live. It's the country's festival center (in the summer, there seems to be a festival every week), it's got a thriving-but-not-overbearing nightlife, it's got metropolitan sprawl, all that jazz.

My favorite aspect is the river, though. It's a slow-flowing river with a few bridges over it, with Downtown encroached on the north side and the Universtiy of Alberta encroached on the other. However, instead of cutting down all the valley trees and putting in services, we just cut a few paths and let them be.

<spoiler=River valley>http://wakpaper.com/large/Rivers_wallpapers_260.jpg

It's a bit odd driving through a bustling city street and then BOOM trees, but it's cool that it can happen.

The only thing that's sub-par is the transit. If your destination is on the (limited) LRT line, then it's easy and faster than driving. If not, you get to deal with our buses.

Also, snow.

http://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1028375!/httpImage/image.jpeg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpeg

But I like snow, so I consider it a plus.

But yeah... if you've seen that smear campaign that tries to imply that Alberta is a sooty wasteland filled with burning oil patches and dead-eyed Stepford families... don't believe it. It's hilarious bullcrap.

 

[lacktheknack]

Much nicer than my old home, a place called Scunthorpe, the only British city to have a foul word hidden in the name and now has its own TV series called Skint, about how poor, deprived and generally shit the place is.

There's a small town in Dorset with the more obvious name of 'Shitterton'.

You're welcome.

Lol, I had to look that up, apparently its world famous, that bests Scunthorpe by a large margin, a very large margin.

But does it beat Fucking, Austria?

It's pronounced "foo-kin", so stop sniggering.

 

[Frybird]

Also German, currently living in Bonn.

Bonn is the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Also, Bonn used to be the "federal capital" in Germany.

Meaning that, although the capital of Germany has always been Berlin, Bonn did house the government of (West-)Germany because Berlin was split. Given that Bonn is comparatively small to other capitals as well as many of the larger cities in Germany, it got the nickname "Bundesdorf" (Federal Town or Capital Town).
Eventually most of the Government moved back to Berlin in 1999 (There are still some embassies as well as smaller ministries located in Bonn)...aaaand Bonn kinda never recovered from that.

Wich isn't to say that it turned into a ghost town or a slum or something. In fact, the Headquarters of Deutsche Telekom (known as T-Mobile outside of Germany) and Deutsche Post/DHL, two of the maybe 10 largest companies of Germany are still located in Bonn (Also, the headquarters of Haribo are here, wich is awesome because you can buy the best Gummi Bears for cheap at the factory)
But it also was certainly called "Bundesdorf" for a reason, and it has certainly a different feel than other cities. The residential zones around the city center have more of a town/small city feel, and given that Bonn is relatively close to Cologne (the fourth-largest city in Germany and the largest in the western part that is also called the "media capital" given that many of the mayor Television Studios as well as many publishers are there [as well as the Gamescom]), most of the nightlife and shopping and whatnot is done over there.

But it does have its advantages. Traffic is mostly bareable, the city center is charmingly filled with a lot of small shops instead of large store chains (although of course we do have a bunch of McDonalds/Starbucks/etc here), and although there unfortunately is a whole lot of "city-like" noise and pollution, it's a city with a lot of trees and grass and there is a huge great park at the Riverside.

So, yeah, it's alright. I'd rather live here than in cologne or some other cities.

 

[Sinful]

Well I live in a little backwater area of Holland so it's pretty calm over here. It's not really a rural farmland kind of area but pretty much between that and a big city. We have everything we need here, including a big shopping mall so atleast it's not utterly secluded.

Obviously, this being the Netherlands.. The Weather is pretty terrible most of the time. It rains allot and especially because this is such an open area, the wind makes it much colder then it actually is. Having a bit of that wind during hot summertimes however is great.

The people here pretty much keep to themselves and to be honest the whole area is pretty dull. There's not that many meeting places like clubs or bars but we're not far from the city so you could always go there.

Overall I'm pretty happy with where I live. Though I would prefer to one day move back to the bigger cities, as that's where I grew up anyway.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I lived in a coastal resort town in Wales. While the place is great to visit as a day trip only but living there is quite boring but in saying so it is a safe place to lived in (not like you going to bet mugged or something.
The town is pretty much a retirement home for the elderly and also it's quite far away from the other coolder cities like Chester or Manchester.
In saying so however I do prefer living here compared to the past towns I had lived in since it does have decent shops like HMV, Waterstone, etc so I still have a plce to get my dvds and games (however I had turn on an online shoppers these days).

 

[Fox12]

I live in the state of Georgia, U.S. There are trees everywhere, which I love, but it's suburban enough for there to be tons of people. The mall is about fifteen minute drive away, so there's always something to do, and you don't have to worry about rednecks unless you go wandering into the sticks (I joke, but the rednecks aren't really THAT bad).

This pretty much describes most of the state actually, suburban communities spread out over most of the state. There are a few areas out in the middle of nowhere, but that's disappearing fast because it's developing so much here. There's a lot of undeveloped land that companies are latching onto. Then there's Atlanta, which I avoid. It's nice there, but I hate cities, and the only time I head up there is if there's a sports game or concert I'm attending (which is rare).

It's just developed enough here to give you something to do, but it's not overcrowded enough to make you miserable.

 

[SuperUberBob]

SNIP

I've visited Spain several times but always typical coastal holidays like Magaluf or Solou, so I'm gonna try and do Barcelona next year. You've perked my interest with Valencia now though - is it worth a visit as a tourist?

I'd probably take in a football match, but Valencia need to get their act together! lol

If you're on a long-term vacation, a couple of days in Valencia would be a couple of days well-spent. However, there are better places to go if you're short on time.

 

[Johnnyseven]

I visited Valencia but only for a very short time when I went on holiday, seemed like a great place, spent time around the cathedral area and in a park with some giant trees. There was also a guy who trained a monkey to help pickpocket people, which was cool.

As for me. I live in Barnsley and as someone who doesn't really drink, smoke or care at all about football I don't enjoy it at all. Its in South Yorkshire, England. Its the place that got the BNP its first seats in the European Parliament

I typed Barnsley into youtube, the first non-football related video summed it up quite well. The comments are icing.

Spoiler

 

[FPLOON]

Eh... It's okay... I got the (cool) beaches to my west... The (snowy) mountains to my east... And if I want to go to, say, freaking DISNEYLAND and/or CALIFORNIA ADVENTURES... It's like a hop-skip-and-a-jump in a semi-short car ride up a little north...

Although, I wished it rained more... I mean, it's bad enough it mistakes fall weather with summer heat... But, no winter or spring rain? COME ON!! It's like it only rains once a year, but its timing is SO off and unpredictable... If rain were a table, I would flip it with inner rage...

I really do not want to live ANYWHERE else... (SoCal 4 life, son!!)

 

[Esotera]

Ok, this is creepy it is the Hobgoblin I am 100% sure we have met now. You want to know which one i am, i'll be the one dancing to dropkick murphies infront of the jukebox

Awesome, there's a good chance I'll probably bump into you next Wednesday as it's Fresher's Week + Discord I definitely don't get down there often enough.

OT: This is really cool reading what everyone thinks about where they live, it really shows how diverse the escapist is...and has kept me checking it every few hours today.