Friday Fun: Hometown Pride
While I haven't lived there in decades, I'm very fond of my hometown, and I enjoy any chance I have to show it off or talk about it. Tell us about your hometown! If your community is known for a product, like corn, or a manufactured product like a car, show that off. If you have a historical landmark or even many historical landmarks, highlight those places. If you feel your community stands for particular values or attitudes about life, feature those. I hope this will drive people to communicate about things that they already love and to which they feel connected.
My hometown is Beamsville, Ontario, Canada. Wikipedia says its 11K people, and while its a small town, I know that number is wrong, as it was bigger when I was growing up (22K people and 32 churches), and things have only grown there. Beamsville is in the heart of the fruit belt in southern Ontario, and is home to 25-30 wineries. It sits along the Niagara escarpment (which starts at Niagara Falls), and has both unique soil and microclimate ideal for wine and fruit in general. It was founded in the early 1700s, had a role in the War of 1812, Was one of the locations pilots trained in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, two Beamsville pilots separately won Distinguished Flying Crosses. We have a few local heroes, my classmate Bill Berg (NY Rangers, NY Islanders, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs), Olympic Silver Medallist Tonya Verbeek, The Massey Harris (later Massey Ferguson) company cane out of Beamsville, and a band most people still know these days, Rush. Neil Peart lived in town, but Geddy and Alex all lived within an hour.
It's a beautiful place in the spring when the fruit trees start to bloom, and in the fall when the colours change.
Now it's your turn!
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... and another Frank Lloyd Wright home in Racine.
- The Thomas P. Hardy House is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Prairie school home in Racine, Wisconsin, USA, that was built in 1905. The street-facing side of the house is mostly stucco, giving the residents privacy from the nearby sidewalk and street, but the expansive windows on the other side open up to Lake Michigan.
My hometown is Caracas, Venezuela. Nowadays, that place is passing through a left dictatorship, so it has become quite challenging to live in (that's why I don't live there anymore) but what I could tell you is the following:
- The people: If it is within the possibility of anyone, despite the might be rich or poor, if they are in a hurry or not, they will try to help you if you are in a bad situation.
- I can tell you; we have a great mountain (El Ávila) where to hike and be in touch with nature as much as you want: there you have cascades, rivers, and a beautiful sightseen of Caracas, and the other side, the coast: La Guaira.
- I can tell you that you have the beach as far as 25 minutes away driving, where you can eat fried fish and plantain with your feet in the sand, watching the sunset.
- I can tell you as well, there in Caracas, we have a great temperature all year long, it goes from 24°C - 30°C.
- I can tell you as well, we can be living the worst-case scenario, and we would make a joke out of it despite the situation. In fact, until "recently," it was one of the happiest countries in the world, and it's one of the richest because of its natural resources.
I can keep telling you how awesome and how much I miss my land, and of course, the bad things as well, but that should be with a social drink in hand, having a good time, and laughing about it.
Thanks for allowing me to elaborate on such a pleasant topic, @Tom Kakanowski
While I haven't been in many years, I have many fond memories of Caracas. I used to go diving in Morrocoy (and Los Roques), so of course always came through and spent a bit of time in Caracas. There were such beautiful colourful reefs and fish there, and some scary predator encounters for me too. I hate to think what global warming may have done to those reefs. I always loved the people there. One visit to Caracas was the one and only time I tried a roasted Capybara, that was a new one for me!
I grew up in North Hollywood, which people assume looks like this:
But actually looks more like this:
It's in the San Fernando Valley, which makes me a full fledged '80s Valley Girl. I love the Valley, and palm trees, and the fact that half the people I know are in "the industry" (movies and TV) and that you see celebrities all the time.
Great topic, @Tom Kakanowski!!
I grew up in the small town of Cookeville, Tennessee. Not really much there except for Tennessee Tech University, where I got my college degree. It was about 20,000 people when I lived there. It's not much more than that now, but was a good place to grow and folks like to retire in that area.
I grew up in Flensburg, a small town in the north of Germany close to the border of Denmark.
Flensburg is famous for it's beer: "Flensburger Pilsener" also called "Flens". 🍺
The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (roughly: National Driver and Vehicle Register) with its Verkehrssünderkartei (literally: "traffic sinner card file"), where details of traffic offences from all over Germany are stored.
The greeting "Moin!"
Moin means “Hi”, “Hello”, “ Good morning”, “Good night” and everything in between, as long as it is used to greet people.
😂
Well, I grew up in a rather small city (according to greek standards) in the center of Greece, called Karditsa. I'll borrow @Monique vdB example and say that when people hear the word Greece, this comes to their mind:
Buuut my hometown isn't close to the coastline and kinda looks like this (warning: image with no filter coming your way! :) ):
No complains here, since despite the high levels of humidity in winter and summer, Karditsa is located in zero altitude (Greece is all mountains and hills), thus playing on the streets and riding the bicycle was easy! Nowadays my city is called (within Greece of course) a "small Amsterdam" since the vast majority of its citizens are riding bicycles instead of using cars.
Karditsa is also know for on of the biggest in altitude artificial lakes in Europe, "Lake Plastiras" (a must to go visit)
