Parting thoughts on NZ

Jul 20, 2006 19:29

[From Ingridients]

Some stuff I noticed while I was in NZ didn't seem to fit in the blow-by-blow tour guide I've written so far.


Overall, I really liked NZ. I think there's quite a bit of cultural overlap with Australia, but there are also significant differences. I think NZ deals with racial and cultural variation better than Oz does on the whole. I really like the fact that in much advertising, the "generic NZer" has dark hair and eyes; far too much Oz advertising still features blue-eyed blondes.

I admire little geek-friendly touches like the fact that their car numberplates use Ø for zero. I'm still not clear whether NZers in general really are crazy adrenalin junkies, or if that's just a specialist interest that has been exploited for tourists, like crocodile-wrestling here.

We seem to have entirely bypassed the whole "Lord of the Rings" thing while we were there and I don't remotely regret it. In terms of my cultural background, Middle-earth is a fantastic version of Europe, where I grew up. And I thought what Peter Jackson presented in the movie looked a lot like I'd imagined. NZ itself is different, more exotic from my perspective. I enjoyed visiting the real NZ better than I would have locations from the movies.

I'm really glad we picked mainly the west coast of the South Island to visit with our limited time. We spent very little time driving anywhere that wasn't scenic. I'm used to having to drive around a lot of ordinary stuff to get to the spectacular bits. In Australia, to get all-scenery-all-the-time, you generally have to head outback, which is a completely different kind of scenery, and a very different kind of remoteness.

That's not to say I don't want to see other parts of NZ, but I do expect the experience will be rather different. It'll probably also be more about people and culture, rather than mainly nature. I'd like to learn more about Maori culture but I didn't feel comfortable with the pitch of the tourist-aimed events we saw advertised. There was one slim booklet on Maori crafts and the symbols used that I pointed out to James as "I'd like something like this, at least three times the size". The fact that we didn't spend any time in large city bookstores was probably a downside of our trip in this respect.

And a sure-fire sign I felt comfortable in NZ: by the end of the week, I was beginning to suspect I was picking up a local accent. That took many months when I was in the US, and only really got going once I made local friends. I also like Maori words, and the fact that everyone is so comfortable using so many of them (again by comparison to Oz). I'm still not clear on how to actually pronounce most of them correctly, but that obviously doesn't bother most NZers. Takahe might be my favourite birds but I don't even know which syllable takes the stress.

I'm not intending to emigrate, but it's really nice knowing the place is there, and so relatively close.

travel, movie, language, advertising

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