Bristol
Let me tell you about where I live.
I'm sharing an old-by-Kansas-standards (my guess is turn of the last century) house with two other people: a woman who works for another division within the Institute of Physics, and a man who is on a teacher-training course. It's a nice house, with a little yard, a large bathroom, and two skylights. This I love. Two of the walls in my bedroom are painted a violent purply-pink. This I love not so much, but am coping with.
According to wikipedia;, my neighbourhood is a good place to buy heroin and crack cocaine. This I find a little scary. So far, however, I have only encountered cheerful drunks, small boys playing football, women in headscarves, and a lot of tidy front gardens. This I find reassuring.
I'm starting to know my way around Bristol a bit more. It is by far the largest city I've ever lived in, and I haven't considered myself a city person since the time a few years ago when I spent a week in central Paris and mostly hated it (I liked Notre Dame and the Louvre, but not so much the anonymity, the size, the rudeness, and the dog crap on the sidewalks. And let me tell you, there was a lot of dog crap on the sidewalks.) I find its size intimidating (...said the actress to the bishop...), and I'm not used to having so many options. But then, given that my previous places of residence were Durham and Los Alamos, neither of which are metropoli, that's hardly surprising.
But there's a lot of things to do here, some of which are cheap, even free. Last weekend there was a citywide open house in which you could tour lots of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. For example, Matt and I got backstage tours of the Bristol Old Vic theatre, which is Britain's oldest building continually in use as a theatre (dates from 1760 or so), and is about to undergo a major restoration. We also went to the Redcliffe caves, which are not proper caves but a rabbit-warren of manmade tunnels which used to be a medieval mine. This was cool, particularly since the natural sandstone was interspersed with brick arches installed to shore up the natural rock, creating what I was going to call a "synthetic-organic fusion landscape," except I remembered in the nick of time that I was a scientist, not a poncy art critic. Anyway, citywide open houses are cool, I've decided, and every city should do them.
Maybe next year I'll tour the Society of Merchant Venturers hall. The SMV have a dark history in the slave trade, and some say they still run Bristol in a behind-the-scenes, Illuminati-ish way, so it might be interesting to see where they hang out. Lots of options, though, and just one day, so we'll see.
I'm sharing an old-by-Kansas-standards (my guess is turn of the last century) house with two other people: a woman who works for another division within the Institute of Physics, and a man who is on a teacher-training course. It's a nice house, with a little yard, a large bathroom, and two skylights. This I love. Two of the walls in my bedroom are painted a violent purply-pink. This I love not so much, but am coping with.
According to wikipedia;, my neighbourhood is a good place to buy heroin and crack cocaine. This I find a little scary. So far, however, I have only encountered cheerful drunks, small boys playing football, women in headscarves, and a lot of tidy front gardens. This I find reassuring.
I'm starting to know my way around Bristol a bit more. It is by far the largest city I've ever lived in, and I haven't considered myself a city person since the time a few years ago when I spent a week in central Paris and mostly hated it (I liked Notre Dame and the Louvre, but not so much the anonymity, the size, the rudeness, and the dog crap on the sidewalks. And let me tell you, there was a lot of dog crap on the sidewalks.) I find its size intimidating (...said the actress to the bishop...), and I'm not used to having so many options. But then, given that my previous places of residence were Durham and Los Alamos, neither of which are metropoli, that's hardly surprising.
But there's a lot of things to do here, some of which are cheap, even free. Last weekend there was a citywide open house in which you could tour lots of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. For example, Matt and I got backstage tours of the Bristol Old Vic theatre, which is Britain's oldest building continually in use as a theatre (dates from 1760 or so), and is about to undergo a major restoration. We also went to the Redcliffe caves, which are not proper caves but a rabbit-warren of manmade tunnels which used to be a medieval mine. This was cool, particularly since the natural sandstone was interspersed with brick arches installed to shore up the natural rock, creating what I was going to call a "synthetic-organic fusion landscape," except I remembered in the nick of time that I was a scientist, not a poncy art critic. Anyway, citywide open houses are cool, I've decided, and every city should do them.
Maybe next year I'll tour the Society of Merchant Venturers hall. The SMV have a dark history in the slave trade, and some say they still run Bristol in a behind-the-scenes, Illuminati-ish way, so it might be interesting to see where they hang out. Lots of options, though, and just one day, so we'll see.