Mixed bag.

[sister_luck]

Half my friendslist is travelling the world, so my already small readership has been reduced even further. So, rambling on about my own holidays seems slightly pointless, but as school starts on Monday and things will be more than hectic then, I'd better post now or I'll never get round to it.

Today was the big meeting at school before lessons start on Monday and I'm so not ready for school to begin. Probably because I'll be having visitors over the weekend - paranoid_blonde and forgiveninasong - looking forward to that very much.

I'm not usually prone to what Germans call Lokalpatriotismus but I love my corner of the city, slightly run-down, multicultural and colourful. Last year or so, it was decided that the court buildings in the centre of town had become too small and outdated and that they were going to be moved to our quarter housed in a shiny new building on a big empty spot of wasteground. Yes, there was one early 20th century town house plus restaurant that had to be pulled down, but in that location even a complete remodelling wouldn't have returned the building to its former glory.

In today's paper (or rather in its online edition) I found out that the judges of the Amts- und Landgericht aren't happy with the move. Leaving the Altstadt with the river close by is bad enough as it is, but going to work where real people live that's terrible. In what I perceive as a thinly veiled racist remark one of the judges, Peter Rose, chairman of the judges' council at the Amtsgericht called my part of town "the backyard of the city" "wo ausländische Nischen-Ökonomien expandieren". Yes, a lot of people with foreign sounding names, some of whom I expect to have German citizenship, have opened businesses here, restaurants and travel agencies and internet cafes and 'callshops' and clothes shops and the usual assortment of import-export dealers. Yes, they're filling a niche - what's so bad about this? Yes, some of these enterprises might be somewhat dodgy - he doesn't say it directly, but it's certainly implied, but most of them pay their taxes

I guess they're just worried that they can't go to their favourite Italian restaurant anymore or nip over to one of the breweries to have a glass of Alt. Well, the best Lebanese is just around the corner and there's an Uerige across the street. They'll even have a view of the Kiefernstraße.

Comments

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

I always like the offbeat and ecletic areas of a city. When I lived in Memphis I loved my little downtown warehouse neighborhood full of artists and happy-fun types of people. But then the city went and did a renovation of all the old buildings and now it's just a tourist trap :-/

Seems to be something all the city governments think will be an improvement instead of ruining it, which is what it usually does.

Have fun with your friends this weekend. That would be nice to have some internet friends visit :)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the other thing - this new "Justizcenter" will probably regenerate my part of the city and in a way it's been doing that on its own quite nicely, thank you. We don't need snotty judges who look down on us.

On the other hand, all the lawyers and judges and defendants and what have you will probably spend some money here and we might get a few more cafes and restaurants that won't shut down after a couple of weeks, but should a Starbucks appear then it's probably all over and we've been streamlined.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm cruising the world and reading your blog. Probably getting stuck in every tourist trap that's here. We didn't go to a baseball game. That's a tourist trap I didn't walk into.

Poor you, having to go to school next week. I have until the first of September. You do get some nice folk over though.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Sometimes doing as the tourists do is exactly the way to go about it. I'd give baseball a miss, too. *psst* *whispers* It's boring!

Yay for the visitors. Got to do put this place in order now and organise some stuff for Monday...

And thanks for reading!