I’ve been in Dunedin now for about a month, so I feel like I have a bit of liberty to offer a fair depiction to you about this place, my little home on the other side of the world. Before arriving here, my only real ideas about Dunedin could basically be boiled down to this: that the town revolved around the university, that there was a fairly pervasive Scottish influence dating from the way back when, and that there would be penguins. As you might imagine, this mental construction was still in need of a couple nails here ‘n there and, I dunno, maybe some walls and a roof… but everything, after all, has to start somewhere. And now that I’ve delved into architectural metaphors, I may as well mosey on to the literal.
Without having any concrete experience of what a traditional Scottish building may look like, I’d have to say that these are it. Many of the homes are very old-looking Victorians, with lots of fancy gingerbreading and funny color combos that only really stately, deep-rooted houses can seem to pull off. On campus, numerous adorable Victorians are scattered amongst the larger buildings and house various offices and departments. The larger buildings are a much more curious contradiction of magnificent stone structures and those rather unfortunate geometric products of the 60s.
Similar sorts of clashings/blendings of old and new (depending, I guess, on how you look at it) can be spotted all around town. One of my favorite examples of this is the old-time church that’s been turned into a bar. At least there’d be lots of seating, right? Heh… anyways, you can probably imagine that this place is has ‘college town’ splattered all over it. In people-watching on a walk down George Street, the main thoroughfare for shopping and a veritable rainbow of ethnic eateries, you kind of get the feeling that a punk song is rocking through some collective brainwave. Lots of tight pants and converse shoes. And lots of leather boots, which is the first thing most of the American girls noticed. Luckily, the school just had a giant hoodie sale and my favorite bit of clothing has boosted numbers in the last week.
Between a pretty sizeable number of international students in our Uni and the thriving tourist industry there’s a pretty noticeable foreign influence around town—especially Asian (which isn’t that far away, all things considered). This makes for lots of different flavors of noodles for cheap cheap cheap. But I really only mention the international thing because I just can’t get over the way that people walk on sidewalks. The Kiwis and Brits want to walk to the left and everyone else wants to walk to the right… a battle of wills that feels oddly like a people-dodging version of Frogger.
Last weekend we international students finally got our promised tour of the Otago peninsula—it was postponed the first time. There isn’t any organized system for plowing or salting roads here, since snowfall is pretty uncommon, and so the dusting we got was apparently treacherous (her eyes roll skyward as she shakes her head). Anyhow, with the trip successfully underway we hopped on a couple coach buses and rolled around coast hugging roads that no coach should ever really traverse. The driver didn’t seem to concerned… though I’m not sure whether that should be comforting or not.
We didn’t spend too long at any one stop along the way, but it seems like we must have covered most of the peninsula. We stopped at a beach that was sadly lacking penguins and seals (buggers probably set off for Figi), as well as a gardens area and a Maori place that I can’t remember the name of. It all wrapped up with a barbeque set up next to a collection of little buildings, one of which read ‘Harvey’s Happy Hens.’ Hum.
This past Saturday a handful of my friends and I took a scenic rail tour on the Taieri Gorge railway. I’m continually struck by the diversity of landscapes that are crammed into this little country, and the train chugged through several. It headed up and inland, and at parts it felt like I was back in Colorado. But then I’d see a palm tree or some ferns amongst the seas of pines. I was really hoping that there would be a snack trolley and compartments on the train (and maybe we would end up in Hogwarts?), but having only ridden commuter trains before it was pretty cool just to stand on the little landing at the ends of the cars, and to walk across that connecting platform as it pulled left and right. Got to collect these little thrills, you know.
Note: This post was originally published on a Blogger site I made for my college semester at New Zealand’s University of Otago (the second of four). Welcome to the mind of my college-self 🙂
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