Maybe the place you live in isn't much of a travel topic, but there you are, you can't write about the same things all the time. And I'll be describing some of my first impressions of Bristol, from the time when I was still a tourist here.
It’s been nigh on nine months since we moved to Bristol... There’s a month and a half to go, but the time’s as good as any to do a little summing up.
August 2008. The smiliest stewardesses I’m ever likely to meet – already I feel we’re in the West. Then there’s their accent, a reminder that, try as I might, I won’t be able to understand everything people are going to say to me. Well, that premonition sure wasn’t an overstatement.
Next was – ah, yes, the hotel TV. I’ve no idea how it happened, but we ended up watching CBeebees – BBC’s toddler program. It was nice to see Postman Pat alive and well after all these years (and considerably more British than I had remembered him from the Polish version); but the real hit was Brum – a show dedicated to – you guessed it – a cutely stupid car. “Brum, brum, brum, brum, brum!” my brother and I chanted the main theme and rolled to the ground laughing.
I distance myself from the childish extravagances of my 18-year-old self. I am now, after all, 19, and long past such bad taste. And so I’ve never watched CBeebees since.
The fact remains that British telly (as they call it here) is a universe better than Polish TV and at least half a world ahead of American television. Even their commercials are funnier (except the ones that boast “Prepare your funeral with us and we’ll give you a free pen!”). Britain is possibly the world’s only country in which you can spend a whole day watching national television and not consider your time wasted.
Continuing on the track of unimportant technological innovations – hurrah, Bristol has double-decker buses! Before I got used to left-hand traffic, sitting in the front seat of the top floor had the hang-on-for-your-life quality of a rollercoaster. Then, as the views out of the huge front window lost their shiny new appeal, I began to notice that the front seat is rather uncomfortable (you can’t stretch your legs out in it), and so I moved my strategic seating position to deeper reaches of bus space. But I’ve always remained on the top floor – partly out of habit, partly because the idealist in me believes I’ll someday lift my head up from my book and look out the window, and partly because the lower floor is taken up largely by old ladies who can’t climb stairs.
During one of those first days we visited Bristol cathedral. I never bothered to look around too carefully, there was an evensong concert I wanted to listen to; besides, I could always come back later. After all, I was going to live in the same city. Guess what, nine months later, that coming back still hasn’t happened, even though I pass the cathedral every day on my way back from school.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the only times you ever notice the place you live in are the days you move in and move out. (Presumably for those who spend their whole lives in one house that would be the day they’re born and the day they die?)
Nonetheless, writing this text has got me into a state akin to that of someone seeing their home for the last time. I almost wish we didn’t have to leave Bristol in July... Then again, as I’ll probably be heading for Oxford next, maybe I don’t. Bring on the ochre-colored arches of Oxford’s Gothic cathedrals, the long-benched tables in its medieval halls, the evil-faced grotesques adorning its buildings, so that I may fail to notice them for a few years, and open my eyes only to say goodbye.
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