Show and Tell - Your City

[Maedhros]

I love looking at pictures of other cities, so figured I'd make a thread where everyone can post pictures, and maybe write a little bit about the city they live in, without too much effort. So, where do you live?

I live in the second biggest city in Norway, the biggest on the West-Coast, namely Bergen (population 275k). It's the former capitol of Norway, which changed when a younger brother (The Duke of Oslo) inherited the crown, and naturally wanted to change the capitol to where he lived, the bastard. Bergen was founded by Olav Kyrre, son of Harald Hardrada (the guy who was the leader of the Varangian Guard in the Byzantium Empire, later became King of Norway, and "ended" the Viking Age with his failed invasion of England). 

The city is known mainly for being surrounded by small mountains "The Seven Mountains" (we hike all seven yearly with my kindergarten), and for being exeedingly rainy. It once rained here in over 100 days in a row...but as they say here, "no bad weather, only bad clothing", or more modern "good excuse to stay indoors and play videogames". You can probably imagine how much we appreciate dry summers. "Bryggen" (pic below) shows the city's heritage as a Hanseatic port. Below that pic is a pic of the most popular tourist attraction, the "Fløybanen" (railyway up the most popular mountain, Fløyen).

All in all I'd say it's a very nice city to live in if you can handle the massive amounts of rain. I particularily love having nature so close to the city - pretty much wherever you live you can reach a forest, or a mountain by foot. Since the public transport is nice, and nature is so close by, I haven't really ever felt the need to buy a car - saving me a lot of money.

(Northern Lights very rarely happens here btw, more common up North)

Edited September 20, 2019 by Maedhros

[Keyrock]

I live in a little podunk town just outside (literally adjacent to) Charlotte North Carolina. There's not much to say about the podunk town, on account of it being a podunk town, it's small and quiet and fairly rural, so instead I'll focus on Charlotte.

Charlotte was named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the county of Mecklenburg, where the city sits, was so named for the same reason. Charlotte became Queen of Great Britain roughly around the same time the city was founded, thus the moniker "The Queen City" (Cincinnati can **** right off with their claims of being The Queen City).

Charlotte sits at the very southern edge of central North Carolina in the Piedmont region. Because of several atmospheric effects beyond my understanding we get a fairly steady amount of precipitation year round. We're far enough away from the Atlantic coast that we're generally unconcerned with the hurricanes that ravage the Caribbean Islands and the east coast every year, and far enough from the Appalachian Mountains to not get their winter effects. We have long hot summers, with July and August being particularly brutal, as temperatures regularly go into the 90s (thankfully almost never into the 100s) and we get Florida-like humidity most of the time during those 2 months. Spring and autumn are AMAZING. March, April, May, some of September, October, and November are generally extremely comfortable. Winters are quite short and very mild. We average about 4 inches of snow a year. Some years we get none, some we may get a foot, most of it melts very quickly anyway. We do get a nasty ice storm once in a while. It's not unusual to see me out there in early December and late February wearing flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt. Winter wear is mostly long pants, and a hoodie. Breaking out a heavy jacket and a proper winter hat is fairly rare for me, though I spent 30 years up in the frozen wastes of Connecticut, so I'm more used to cold winters, the natives wear proper winter attire more often down here.

Charlotte lies just east of the Catawba River (I live on the other side of the river). Lake Wylie lies to the southwest of the city and Lake Norman, the largest man-made lake in the state, lies to the north. Charlotte is the second largest city in the southeastern United States at roughly 900,000 people (Jacksonville, FL is #1), our metro area is roughly 2.5 million. Downtown Charlotte (called Uptown, for some reason) is almost entirely ultra modern, with lots of giant glass buildings and skyscrapers. A good portion of the outer parts of Charlotte have a decidedly medium-sized town feel to them. The city is fairly spread out (and constantly looking to consume Matthews to the south) with only the downtown area and a few of the more centrally located areas being heavily congested. There is a metric ****ton of parks scattered around the city (and many more just outside it). The city is home to the Carolina Panthers (NFL) and the Charlotte Hornets (NBA).

Note: Pictures not mine

Edited September 20, 2019 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

Pretty much all there is to see in Toronto But is the largest city (and thus most relevant) in Canada.  Seems people here really want it to be seen as a world class city, but we're on the tier of Chicago rather than NY. 

All considered, it's not a bad place to live, although it is getting ridiculously expensive to live in due to a lot of reasons, things like preferences for single family dwellings, demand (although some people are stupid in how they MUST live near the core).  Prices aren't as bad if you go into Etobicoke or Scarborough (two former cities that were eventually merged into Toronto), but the problems there are your jobs will likely be downtown and public transit offered there is a joke. 

A lot of immigrants ended up here, so at the very least you can usually find food from all over the world here (yet, no place has good doubles). 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Malcador

[majestic]

I remembered this thread after a new website with aerial pictures of Vienna went online. Like with Keyrock there's really no point in posting pictures of the 'burbs here, but the city's quite nice to look at I guess:

If you're intrested you can look at the rest.

[Gorth]

Not much to say about Brisbane really... it's a city? Never were particularly fond of cities, always preferring to live as far as way as I could get while still have a job in said city. I guess the river is Brisbane's defining feature, shaping it's layout and history (and the evolving suburbs spreading out from the city center)

 

The annual Riverfire festival (cancelled 2020 for covid reasons)

Following the river to the sea and the outer suburbs there

A hostel in Brisbane. Lots of backpackers in the city most years

 

[Maedhros]

I had forgotten about this, I don't know why I specified it to be about "cities", when my intent was rather "where you live". So to clarify, if you live in a small town, or in a remote desert and want to show and tell us about it that's fine too!

Since I'm very into wine and fine dining, I like visiting big cities with a rich food scene, where beautiful countrysides (& vineyards) are a short drive away. Both Vienna and Brisbane seem to be good candidates in that category.

[Sarex]

Well Belgrade is a city that has been leveled to the ground in more than a couple of wars, so architecturally it's a hodgepodge of different styles. Also with the Bosnian war more than a million Serbians were chased out of Croatia/Bosnia, so Belgrade had a very large influx of people in a short time which called for a lot of cheap buildings to be made.

 

[majestic]

40 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

Since I'm very into wine and fine dining, I like visiting big cities with a rich food scene, where beautiful countrysides (& vineyards) are a short drive away. Both Vienna and Brisbane seem to be good candidates in that category.

Vienna has vineyards within its city limits, so you should be good. If you can get past all the travel restrictions, curfews, lockdowns and the common tourist traps, that is. The first few of those should go hopefully go away soon but the traps... yeah, I guess they'll remain.  

[Pidesco]

Despite what says on the left I actually live in Partille, a suburb of Gothenburg that is actually its own municipality. Partille proper is a nothing of a city, but within the its area there are actually a bunch of nice places to visit and walk around in. Essentially Partille is in the middle of the woods.

Here are some pictures taken by some guy who knows what he is doing:

https://www.mikaelsvensson.com/photo/tag/partille-kommun/

And here are some pictures taken by some guy who does not know what he is doing:

[Hurlshort]

Ah. I remember this thread! I live in a small town on the southern outskirts of Silicon Valley, and we have an amazing mix of beautiful mountains and verdant valleys. Most of my pics are places I have ridden or run that are near my house.

So yeah, not really the city, but what I tend to see in the distance.

[Azdeus]

22 hours ago, Pidesco said:

Despite what says on the left I actually live in Partille, a suburb of Gothenburg that is actually its own municipality. Partille proper is a nothing of a city, but within the its area there are actually a bunch of nice places to visit and walk around in. Essentially Partille is in the middle of the woods.

Here are some pictures taken by some guy who knows what he is doing:

https://www.mikaelsvensson.com/photo/tag/partille-kommun/

And here are some pictures taken by some guy who does not know what he is doing:

 

And a bit further out lies Alingsås which would be my home town, I don't live in the town itself but outside by a village with a couple of houses. There's not much to say about my village except that it has been settled since way back. There's a couple of burial mounds nearby that dates from the bronze age from what I know, but they've been vandalized throughout the millennia since, so there's not much to see that is of interest.

Alingsås, established two years before Gothenburg, is called many things, Potato town; A man named Jonas Alströmer was born in Alingsås and was one of the people that was part of the industrialization of Sweden, one of the founders of the Royal Swedish Academies of Science and the man that popularized the mighty POTATO! Hence; potato town and a yearly festival of the potato. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but, thanks to the industrialisation and many women getting jobs in the weavery in the 1860's, they didn't have time to make bread for their families which lead to many cafés being established for men to go and buy their bread. Most of the cafés has had a very "workercafés" style over them, but to go "shop and fika" is really a thing here and Alingsås is also known as the "Capital of Fika".

It's also the town where Karin Boye that authored the book Kallocain took her life.

Every year we have an even called Lights in Alingsås where artists and students from around the world set up lighting and effects around areas of town.

Overall the town is mostly low rise buildings in wood in the central parts of town, and has a very cozy feel to it. The municipality has throughout the years made efforts to keep the look of the town the same, though that is slowly changing thanks to some changes in the municipal government changing to one of a more "entreprenurial" one.

[Guard Dog]

I don't live in a city, or town, nor any kind of municipality. Where I live there is no fire department, no trash pick up or water utility. Heck police and EMS are easily 20-30 minutes away. I don't even get mail delivery here! But the nearest town where my PO box is located is Covington TN. 

Covington is a small and nice enough little town. Population around 8k give or take. It has a handful of historical buildings that make up a quaint "town square":

 

The Lindo Hotel was built around 1850 and has a really great restaurant in it. I wouldn't know myself. 

The one thing Covington does have is great BBQ joints. Three in fat I'd say were as good as any in the world. @Hurlshot can back me up on how good the Rendezvous is down in Memphis. Bell, I'll take Pappy & Jimmie's every day of the week:

Other than that there isn't much to tell. We do have a confederate memorial at the courthouse. I think they are taking it down. Don't know. Don't really care. It's a small town. You can drive across it's widest point in about 5 minutes assuming you don't catch any red lights.