Friday Fun : Where did you grew up VS where you live now !
Hi everybody.
Last week I hit 30. Ouch.
This made me think about the place where I grew up, more specifically the environment, people and pets I grew up with.
I spent my childhood in a small village of about 1.000 people in Ardèche, France.
So as a kid, I used to wake up every morning on that type of landscape :
And that soft lady was my neighbour :
(Well at least that lady looks like the the one I grew up with, the original one certainly is in cow heaven now, but it might be her daughter, who knows ? )
30 years gone by, yadi yadi yada. I live in Lyon, France. A city of 1,5 million people. What a twist huh ?
Now, my view is a little bit more artificial and mineral :
And she is my neighbour :
The bonus is she can sleep with me at night, and she is more manageable on a daily basis.
To be honest, I miss the countryside a lot.
Don't get me wrong, living in a big city has a lot of perks, in terms of job opportunities, friends and activities. I would not go back to the place I grew up in a million years... but having a little garden patch and breathing a cleaner air could honestly be very big advance !
And what about you fellow Community-ans ?
- Where did you grew up ? City or village ?
- How was it (pics !!!) ?
- Where do you live now ?
- How do you feel about it ?
23 comments
I grew up on a farm just north of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. There is literally nothing there. If your dog runs away, you can watch it run away for 2 days. -40C in the winter 40C in the summer. it's a good place to be from (my brother and I both say we "escaped" but at least it HAS been mentioned as a joke on The Simpsons)
I now live in Southern California. There are things here. I could put all the typical pictures of beaches, Disneyland, Hollywood, Traffic, etc etc etc that are all right in my close vicinity but the surprising thing is that mere minutes from my house, I can go on a hike with this kind of view
I think I prefer... here... especially the part of it NEVER being -40C. Mind you, I WAS chilly one time....
Oh yes that's one of the reasons I want to move in the next years to a house with a garden : having a little puppy.
I know you can have one in an appartment but that would be really inconvenient for me to have to take it for a walk several times a day. Plus I want a big one.
I was born and lived unitl 18yo in a rather small city in Central Greece. Now, and for the past 14+ years I live in Athens Greece. I do often miss how good life was in a small city, but I do love the anonymity that large cities provide (among other things of course).
And I can't complain about the view I have from my window
(in case you miss it, you can see the Acropolis and the Parthenon)
Alex
SoT is lovely! As is North Midlands
My sister has live for agggggges in the Birmingham area, the last decade or so in Sutton Coldfield.
(Just to name drop... my nephew plays for Aston Villa and is contracted to age 18. We believe they sold Greelish to make way for him in the senior team... hah!)
From the whole region I would say Chester City always held a special place in my heart, whilst Alton Towers delivered INSANE amounts of awesome memories... we went as much as we possibly could growing up!
That's good to hear !
Sometimes growing up (and moving) is indeed a great start to getting better.
Glad for you that it turned out this way !
I grew up in a mining village in South Wales UK.
Many changes later, I live in the suburbs of London. Completely different. Unplanned journey but all worked out well.
This is me in front of my parents' house where I grew up in Peoria, Illinois. Illinois is a nice place to grow up really. I was kind of joking about the upgrade. My parents still live in this house and it is near to my other relatives so we used to spend a lot of time visiting with my cousins and grandparents when I was younger. Food is another story. I didn't learn to cook until I moved out. I started working when I was in high school but I would just grab fast food or something. It wasn't until I was living independently that I needed to figure out how to feed myself and to try to make balanced meals, which I didn't really manage to do until I was out of university and working on a small island near Seattle, on Vashon in Washington state.
I had the great pleasure to live in Bristol, England for about 10 years. I originally moved there for my ex to retrain as a teacher but I was really fortunate to start work in a high school with a group of other people my age and we are still close friends. Bristol is a great place to live, full of cinema and lots of other activities and culture. The food is great and you can find everything there.
Now I live in Padova, Italy. I moved there in 2019 because my partner won a sort of 'brain drain' competition to get Italians to come back and inject some new energy and ideas into their economy. I like living close to one of our families as I said before, family is very important to me and it was hard for both of us in the UK to be away from our close family. The food in Italy is obviously amazing and I am again fortunate that my mother-in-law is an amazing cook so I am getting exposed to new delicacies all the time. I have also greatly improved my own cooking, like focaccia, pesto, pizza. I would say that I have found it a bit harder to break into socially in Italy than other places I have lived but you cannot remove the impact of Covid from that. Anyway, if anyone is curious about living abroad, learning to live in a second language at the ripe old age of 35! or moving around, ask away! and have a great week!
Where I grew up:
In Caracas, Venezuela, it was a beautiful place, and I miss it very much: great city, perfect weather, and beautiful scenery. I had to escape from there because the quality of life went to the trash caused by political chaos:
Where I live now:
Since I left Venezuela I've been living in several places, and the place I always come back is to Madrid, Spain, where my work is, and the closest thing to home I have nowadays:
I suck at saving pictures; these are referential but capture well the spirit of both cities-
I grew up in southern Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls and Toronto.
I have since lived in New York, California, London, Glasgow, Georgia and am in British Columbia now, likely sticking around.
Happy birthday @Flavien Gache :)
I grew up in a small village Bernartice nad Odrou, Czech republic. I moved to Brno (second biggest city of the Czech republic) for 3 or 4 years. But I moved back to my original region to city called Novy Jicin which is only 6km to Bernartice.
And I'm going to move to Bernartice nad Odrou next year, so the circle will be closed :).
I thought I will like living in a city and it was working when I had time to go to pub almost every day. But now I really like just spending some time in garden and grass cutting :D
I grew up in Flensburg, a small town next to the border to Denmark in the north of Germany.
Now I currently live in Lüneburg. Lüneburg is a city in Lower Saxony but also in the north of Germany.
The cities are 216 kilometres apart and Lüneburg is slightly bigger. But to be honest, the cities have a lot in common and look kind of the same.
I like both cities a lot. I'm pretty excited about where I'll head in the next couple of years.
I grow up in a small village in the north of Antwerp.
And now I moved away from there and live 10 minutes driving from my old place :-) in a sub-village.
Both near the, of course, same canal :-)
And a lot of leftovers from the World Wars
