Toulouse: The Seattle of Europe? Part 2

BUT!

Toulouse is not the only city referred to as ‘the Seattle of Europe’; in fact, if one were to take a deeper look at all of the places bearing that title, as one is about to, Toulouse would emerge relatively insignificant.

Remember me saying that a full 50% of the search results for ‘toulouse “the seattle of europe”‘ were actually about Norway? Turns out if you Google just “the seattle of europe” (double quotation marks needed, otherwise you’re served only flight offers) you get five different candidate cities in just the top ten hits. And if you click on the second hit, a site ironically called ‘seattlest’ though I doubt the creators meant that the way I’m reading it, you get a whole list of cities claiming to be the Seattles of their region, country, or continent. Some of them contradict each other, and Toulouse is not even to be found.

I won’t list those cities here; you can look at the site yourself if you’re that interested, but I will name certain contenders, as well as their reasons for being such, and hopefully it won’t be as time-consuming as the search for clarity concerning Toulouse.

Bergen, Norway is mentioned on several sites as being the Seattle of Europe for its heavy rainfall and general overcast-ness. Apparently the terms ‘City of Rain’ and ‘the Seattle of Europe’ are synonymous. I guess that would make sense, as Seattle is known as ‘the rainy city’. Does that make Bradford the Chicago of Europe? The UK is supposedly the windiest country in Europe, and Bradford is a pretty windy city, though apparently Newcastle dwellers purchase more anti-flatulence products. Nah, I’m not seriously trying to garner that title for Bradford, though as you’ll see in the next paragraph, it certainly wouldn’t be the most whimsical christening. But just before that – remember when I said the phrase ‘the Chicago of Europe’ sounds farcical? Apparently Mark Twain wouldn’t agree, as he used that precise description on Berlin, Germany, so I will of course defer to his opinion, though he admits the parallel does break down. Really I just wanted to get Bradford into this somehow.

One blogger has named Belgium the Seattle of Europe simply because it rains a lot there, and a few others have done the same with Amsterdam. The site I mentioned before that ‘may harm my computer’ says – going by the two-line description Google gives of search results – that Seattle “seems to be closer to Amsterdam than Toulouse”. I feel like this website contains all the answers to every question this post has raised and could ever raise, but I won’t see them because the site potentially contains malware. Typical.

We persist. A columnist calls modern Switzerland the Seattle of Europe, but fails to elaborate, unless it’s because of the ‘viable economy, no visibly poor, and “an amazing ability to reconcile modern technology and modern economics with traditional mores and the visible presence of the past”‘; in short, the ‘consummation of the bourgeois revolution’. I wouldn’t know. Any Seattle-ites willing to venture an opinion? I’d welcome it on any point of this two-part discursion.

Back in North America, Austin is called the Seattle of the south, Boston the Seattle of the east, Halifax the Seattle of Canada, Iowa the Seattle of hardcore, and Machinima the Seattle of media. Pity most of the links are now dead. I do know from The Classic Crime that Seattle has a big music scene; punk-rock according to them, but also jazz according to Doc Wiki.

France itself has several claimants to the throne other than Toulouse, such as Champagne, for reasons unknown, or Rennes, in which apparently it rains much also.

It’s interesting what you can learn about something by who or what is named or names itself after that thing, though one must always be wary of such secondhand information, the Christ being example par excellence. What’s also interesting is that this naming business brings to mind what the lecturer in my Australia class (yes, I have a class devoted solely to the entity that is Australia, but in the interest of keeping this parenthetical aside shorter than what I want to say about it, let’s save all that for another time) was talking about last week. When people move to a new place, especially one where they will live for a long time or even the rest of their lives, they give names to places and things based on where they’ve come from, to increase familiarity and make the new place home. Australia is rife with such examples, and perhaps there is some of that in all these ‘Seattles’ as well. Even if the people moving to Europe or the region in question are not from Seattle, they may be comforted by assigning their new home a somewhat familiar name. Or perhaps calling it that prior to moving makes it less intimidating a change. But I also think there’s more going on than just that.

Despite the smacking satisfaction of discovering something very similar to something previously known, and the accompanying temptation to call the new by the name of the old (which explains why How I Met Your Mother has been able to make doppelgangers a recurring motif throughout the show), such expressions at times thinly veil a degree of arrogance. By calling something new to me by a name less new to me, I am not merely making the new seem familiar, I am implicitly asserting that the new offers nothing that the old did not already. To be so colonial with cities is heinous; to do so with people, unforgivable. Sadly I am certainly guilty of the latter. After a certain point (somewhere between five hundred and a thousand Facebook friends, I reckon), not all those you meet are ‘new’ people, but rather new versions of old friends; they fall into various categories. And yet, gratifying though this may initially be, it is ultimately dangerous, as those new acquaintances will surely fail to live up to the identity of those we’ve associated them with, for they are not them, and it is also demeaning to them, for, again, they are not them. The same applies to cities. There may be similarities, but reducing the identity of a thing so complex, diverse, and wonderful as a city to a single story is woefully unhelpful. In the words of one commenter on the Seattlest website, “[I]t indicates a deep lack of civic self-esteem.” Even if the intent is by the city itself to boost its repute by attaching itself to the name of a better-known city, this still shows a lack of self-esteem; a lack of appreciation for own uniqueness. That this too applies easily to people, I doubt I need to highlight.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of sister cities. Such programmes can provide excellent cultural links, but this would never lead to one city being called or even known by the name of the other. After all, what parents would give their children the same name (besides George Foreman, that is)? Their kindred-ness is evidenced by their similarities and love for each other, not identical names. So in answer to the question topping the Seattlest page – ‘sister cities or identity thieves?’ – I must reply that it is neither, it is simply a case of mistaken identity.

To wrap up, some evaluations. Firstly I propose that we dispense with calling a city a Seattle merely on account of its abundant rainfall or even amplitude of overcast days. Rain and clouds are not unique conditions; most of the world experiences them, and many places experience them in plenty. That Seattle is already known as ‘the rainy city’, I cannot do much about, but let us not behave as if it has a monopoly on the condition, nor as if that is the defining characteristic of Seattle. Even without having been there it is clear to me that there is far more to this urban area than the weather. If we were to select a proper noun to denote a general meteorological temperament, surely we would wish not to rob that noun of its other connotations by using it for such a purpose. In other words, calling Bergen the Seattle of Europe does Seattle a disservice, because it dispenses with all the characteristics of Seattle not mirrored in Bergen, which are likely everything but the rain; it does Bergen a disservice for the same reasons as well as the implication that Bergen has nothing worth knowing in its own right, by its own name; and it does the rest of Europe a disservice by ignoring all its other rainy cities.

At a more basic level, the phrase invites confusion, as it relies on everyone possessing the same primary connotation of Seattle; that is, rain, when in fact we have already seen that there are a number of viable connotations one could hold. ‘The Seattle of Europe’ could be a rainy city, a musical city, an aerospace city, a coffee-drinking city, or any other type of city that springs to mind in relation to Seattle, accurate or not. Ideally it would be all of these things for it to indeed be a true Seattle, but could that ever really happen? Would that even be desirable? Not only with regards to rain, but whenever describing, let us be wary of reductionism.

As for the aerospace parallel between Toulouse and Seattle, I have not much left to say. Seeing as its usage seems to be not very widespread but rather contained to the industry which it describes, the potential for confusion is mitigated. Those using it would know what they are talking about, as would those listening to it being used. The fateful instance of me in class which led to this lengthy endeavour was probably a one-off.

You may’ve guessed by now that I will not be introducing the city in which I now live as ‘the Seattle of Europe’. However all this has made me want to visit Seattle even more, to see what all these imitators yearn for. How about you? Have you come across any other cities that come up a lot in the descriptions of other cities, or places in general? Do you have places you fondly refer to by the names of places you used to know?

[I also realise that I love writing about cities; after all, I love cities (making it all the more interesting that my favourite album from my favourite band is called Cities). Perhaps I will make it more of a habit.

Thank you all for reading.]

Day 9: New Year’s Resolutions, Talking, and Words

is irritated. Oops, started that like a Facebook status update. That’s a bad sign – means that translating my thoughts and emotions into Facebook status format has become second nature. Oh dear.

Lameness test: Throughout the day, when you see or do or think something, do you often think about status-ing it and so try to remember that event for when you next log on? (or if you have Facebook Mobile the question would be: Are you constantly updating your status with things you’re seeing, doing, and/or thinking that no one really needs to know about?) Guilty. But I don’t have Facebook Mobile, THANKFULLY, because if I did I know I would over-post.

Next question: Do I write words and words on this WordPress that don’t really benefit anyone graciously coming over here to read, nor does it benefit me who could be preparing for sleep right now?

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one.” I feel like that quote epitomises this blog, especially as of late. Most of my posts in this Christmas series have been written in the wee hours of the morning, after I work my eyes out on essays (more figurative than actual, unfortunately) or couchsurfing requests, so they’re rushed, shallow, and verbose. I know that in my very first post to this site, way back when – which you probably haven’t gone back far enough to read, which is a good thing – I said this space would be very stream-of-consciousness style, but I’m considering reneging on that and holding myself to something higher. That would mean devoting more time, which means it probably won’t be happening before the sixteenth of this month. But it is helpful to be think about these things now, because once vacation hits it’s so easy to stop thinking.

That’s why New Year’s resolutions fail so hard, isn’t it? Because they’re made in an atmosphere dissimilar to the rest of life?

I haven’t really done the whole New Year’s resolution thing for most of my life, usually because I get a late start, and because I tell myself I don’t need a special occasion to change, which usually results in no occasion of change. Maybe this year I’ll give it a serious go.

Starting with the goal of being less verbose. To choose my words carefully. To not broadcast trivialities, on Facebook, on here, or in actual conversations. And you can hold me to that.

But there are two sides to this 2011 constitution. The first is to say less of what doesn’t need to be said, but the latter is to say more of what needs to be said. I shy away from that so often, and that really doesn’t help me or others at all. Honesty is a rare and roaring fire in this world.

Among the people that know me I think some would say I talk a lot, and some would say I talk very little. I agree with both, and offer this first New Year’s resolution as a remedy. I would ask you guys what your resolutions are shaping up to be, but you know how unpleasant it is to ask a question that no one answers.

Oh, one more point, because my last sentence reminded me of something I’ve thought for a long time but rarely have the chance to say (and I’ll do my best to make it seem to connect). If you’re finding yourself in a position of leadership but don’t quite know how to fulfil it; say, if you’re in your final year of high school (college) or you’re a more senior member in some kind of group: answer the questions. If a teacher or speaker is asking questions, answer them. Don’t ignore them because you consider them simple and ‘beneath you’. If it’s an easy question meant to have an easy answer, give that easy answer to make the speaker’s point so they can carry on. If it’s a question meant to provoke thought, be the daring first to venture a guess, just to open the floor for more timid others. Time spent waiting for people to answer a question they know the answer to is wasted time.

If you’re getting into small groups to share or pray (this is for a specific setting but those of you it applies to will know what I’m talking about) avoid the awkward moment of everyone looking at each other unsurely by jumping in to start it off.

I’m not just saying talk to fill silence with words, because silence and thinking time are important. But I think we know the difference between the times when we’re thinking and the times when we really just don’t want to be the first to speak. Don’t be so cynical and aloof; take the fall, be a hero.

If you know me you should know that this is strange advice to come from me, because I’m cynical and aloof; the type to hold back and let someone else speak or answer first. But then I became a senior and realised there was no one to wait for; others were waiting for me. And there are more important things to life than trying to act cool (remind me of that every time you see me, okay?) Step into that leadership role, if only by overcoming your personal preferences and facilitating opportunities for others.

So, in recap, I spout words far too carelessly in conversation, and to an even greater extent in conducive environments like Facebook and this blog. I’m going to make a conscious effort to say less, but say more with less. One of the ways I can increase the worth of me opening my mouth is by identifying when something needs to be said (like when others are waiting for someone to go first) and what needs to be said (a harder task, but one that will develop over time through training myself to say life’s important things – I know what they are, I need to share them).

Hey, maybe this post is actually somewhat cohesive and meaningful! Maybe I’m already making headway, or maybe I just got lucky tonight, er, this morning.