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.]

Letter Home (SHINE Competition Entry)

[This is something I whipped up for some international student competition a few months ago I wasn’t planning on entering but at the last minute decided to have a go at. Didn’t win anything in the end, but it was fun to write. Thanks to all of you who tell me my stories are entertaining, whether they actually are or not.]

 

Dear Mum and Dad,

Life in the UK is good (oh, I learned the difference between ‘England’, ‘Britain’, and ‘the UK’, by the way). More than good; it’s fantastic. My main source of information on Britain having been childhood literature like Robin Hood and Harry Potter, I had some pretty fanciful perceptions which I fully expected to be disappointed. They were not.

Sure, there aren’t wizards flying around on broomsticks (that I know of), but history and culture is positively oozing from every building I see. Before I left Japan, when I would tell people I was going to Bradford, aside from never once failing to have the link between my name and that of my destination pointed out, I certainly received a number of surprised looks from those who’d heard anything more about the city. However, the slight worry that began to stir in me was unfounded. It’s lovely here. As you saw, I couldn’t help but snap loads of pictures as soon as I arrived, and not just because of ingrained Japanese tourist tendencies.

I quickly took the opportunity to do a bit of traveling around West Yorkshire, which only served to confirm my amazement. In addition to modern city features such as malls and museums in Bradford and the nearby Leeds, there’s also wide countryside, rustic villages, massive ruins, the whole gamut. It might just be the faery-tale lenses on my eyes, but I think colours are more vivid here. The sky definitely is; it’s certainly not dreary grey as often as I was led to believe.

Speaking of added colour, since coming here I’ve expanded my vocabulary with words such as ‘rather’, ‘smashing’, ‘cheers’, and ‘yoright’, which basically means, “What’s up?”. I’ve also learned to spell properly, but it seems that I don’t pronounce things quite correctly.

On that front, however, I have had a kind of success. Like many others, before coming, I was guilty of assuming there to be a sort of ‘standard’ accent, like there is in Japan and, to a certain extent, the US. There doesn’t seem to be, or if there is, it’s certainly not to be found in Yorkshire, much less this uni. To the contrary, I’ve been surrounded by a mad swirl of different pronunciations since arriving, but am slowly starting to match accents to regions and cities. Fortunately, I picked up early on that no matter how curious I am to see whether my fledgling instincts are correct, I must never ask, “Is your accent Scottish or Irish?”.

Even though I had very little idea what I’d be studying in my chosen course, “peace studies”, this too has turned out to be excellent. I’m learning so much about, well, everything, and because we’re given a range of essay questions to choose from, I basically get to study what I want. One day I read all about the Chilean coup of 1973, the next day I went from knowing nothing about the British political system to having a much better understanding of it than either the American or Japanese ones. This culminated in getting to sit in on a Parliamentary session in Westminster, which most people would probably find boring but for me was, like all else, enchanting. It was a bit of a struggle towards the end of term to finish all my essays, but I was able to pull through and emerge into the sunlight of five glorious weeks of break.

I had the most amazing Christmas and New Year’s experience because I chose to spend a chunk of that break in London, the mecca of my magical expectations for this island. For twenty days straight I walked the streets, took in the sights, visited museums, and stayed at strangers’ houses thanks to a wonderful travel website called Couchsurfing. Between that, trying out hostels for the first time, and Megabus, I was able to have this entire adventure for quite cheaply; in fact, with my remaining few days of break I did the same with Edinburgh and was blown away, again. I’m absolutely chuffed to be making friends not only at uni but ‘all throughout the land’.

People ask me what my favourite thing in London was, and I suspect they wouldn’t be entirely satisfied with ‘standing amidst broad, old, tall, new buildings with my senses wide open, soaking in the the very spirit of the city itself’. But that’s the truest answer and also a pretty fitting description of my experience in Great Britain in general. It’s exceeded my expectations in virtually every aspect, and often I feel it’s almost unfair that my life should be so good.

I suppose this is what all those hours of teaching English last year really were for. And the complexity of getting academic transcripts and bank statements from both Japan and the US. And the scholarship essays. And the risk of committing three years to a place I’d only seen the website for. Well worth it.

So that’s been my first few months trying to convince the natives how great their country is, and I’m looking forward to what the next semester, and next few years, will unveil.

Love you much, and yes, I’ll try to be on Skype more regularly this year.

-Bradley

Day 5: What’s London To You?

Oh, dear Internet, how much there is that I want to share with you that my drooping eyelids just won’t let me. It’s a funny and inconvenient phenomenon, but it seems that it’s always the times that I’m most busy that I have the most I want to do; the most I can let myself be distracted with. I suppose that’s because busyness gets my brain active on multiple levels, whereas when I’m on vacation and actually have time to write on all manner of thing my brain slows to a slow…just a second; Thesaurus…circumgyration. Yes. No. Whatever. It gets lazy.

That said, I intend to be productive this Christmas (never mind that I’ve said the exact same thing before all the major breaks in the past few years and have generally failed). The surroundings will stimulate me. And I have a list of topics to flesh out that’s longer than…well, let’s put it this way for digital era’s sake, the scroll bar’s getting awfully short.

I think I did a lot today. I think I can go to sleep feeling satisfied in my usage of this day’s time allotment (that is, after watching an episode of Spooks, a show I’ve really gotten into recently – how do I get it? Well, that’s quite a valuable piece of information that I do  happen to be planning to divulge to you, just not tonight. I’ve got plenty of other websites for you tonight). I went to a new church, I was my usual critical self but tried to suppress it and found myself pleasantly moved; I worked on my essay and, despite once again having collected far too much information, got about halfway through shaping a considerably more concise outline; I felt my brain getting frazzled so I decided to try to make some Christmas decorations out of sweets wrappers; I watched Ryan Higa’s “medium film” on YouTube; I sent more requests out to CouchSurfers; I once again participated in a valiant effort but disappointing result at the weekly Pub Quiz. Curse you, Mr. Flibbles. But I’m not gonna go into any of that right now, except to ask what you think of upside-down trees. Don’t try to make sense of it, just answer. All shall be revealed in Chapter 33.

Oh, before we go on, you need some music, don’t you? Well, you shouldn’t, seeing as I already told you about Spotify and Pandora and even how you can cheat the system to get them where you shouldn’t, but regardless here’s a gold nugget to accompany your reading:

No, instead of talking about my day which may or may not have anything to do with you or interest you, I’m going to be selfish and ask something of you. But I’ll trade you for it. Here are the websites I’ve found related to exploring London (and possibly other places) for cheap. Have at it.

• http://www.generatorhostels.com/ – I’ve never stayed in a hostel, but that’s going to change this month. Some of them are honestly dirt cheap. Probably for good reason. But that’s what reviewing systems are for.
• http://www.hostelworld.com/ – If any of you have hostel experience, tell me what to watch out for, that would be great.
• http://walkit.com/ – I do a lot of walking exploration. It usually ends up being more than I originally intended, and much less on the beaten path. But it reveals a wealth of seld0m-seen sights. I suppose it’s worth mentioning at this point that if any of you are looking to tour Shinjuku, I spent the better part of last year getting acquainted with all its nooks and crannies, so be my guest (next summer).
• http://londonforfree.net/ – This has been a rubbish list explanation, hasn’t it? I’ve just talking the entire time. But I figured it was safe to assume most of these sites are self-explanatory from the URLs. What do you think this one’s about?
• http://www.visitthecity.co.uk/ – And of course the official website is useful, too. I like how it’s just “the city”. As if there’s only one important city in all of the UK. Oh, wait…haha. (Oo, did you see the quote at the top of the London For Free page? Love it!)

Okay, that’s what I’ve found so far and it’s yours for the taking. But I need your help. Websites are useful to a point (I chose two fantastic universities on the strength of online information alone) but an inside perspective would be even better. So what should I see in London? How’s the best way to go about it? What are the nook-and-cranny places that no one knows about but you? And even if you’ve never been, what are some perceptions of London that you’d like me to prove or disprove? I’ll take all suggestions; I’m there for more than two weeks, after all.

I’ll also be in Manchester for a chunk of January, so I guess all these questions apply to there too. What’s Manchester famous for, other than Old Trafford? Really don’t know, come to think of it. It’s the third largest city in the UK, below Birmingham, I believe. Know absolutely nothing about Birmingham.

Okay, I’m gonna go get my daily dosage of espionage now, but thanks for sticking with me this far. The pace is picking up and things will soon be developing faster than either of us can handle.

See ya!