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Shoutout 2 Gabe Part II

Sweden take me back.

So I just finished going through all my photos, uploading them to Facebook and tagged everybody and it made me sad. I miss it already.

im-in-sweden

Shoutout 2 gabe

very enjoyable start off to my travels back home, they forget the “-n” but I think these doodles are worth it

Best nachos of my life

Final project exhibit set up of my “Opinionated City Slogans” posters for Malmö

thecityisee-blog-blog

I had too good of a day today to want to go home on Saturday.

pocket-journal

Those last few days were perfect, it’s killing me to leave

(pocket journal quotes)

(quietly freaking out that I leave on Friday)

Jean’s quote for my final project is just so beautifully worded that I got a little sidetracked and instead of making my poster for it I felt the need to write it out, though I didn’t quite do it justice.

(Thanks Jean!)

street art in Copenhagen

Not all who wander are lost...in Copenhagen

Today I visited Copenhagen with a friend visiting for the week from school, Becca. We didn’t really go into Copenhagen with a plan so we sort of just let ourselves get lost. And while getting lost leads to walking way more than we needed to and my feet currently throbbing I can’t imagine following a map or seeing the sights any better than our own created experience in Copenhagen.

Honestly I found it kind of funny throughout the day how I could have no clue where we were and not feel lost. I mean we were completely turned around, attempting to find the central train station, just wandering on our gut feeling (which for me is usually a terrible idea) and we came across a huge, beautiful canal, with running paths along the side and random parks next to the bridges and this group of people gathered around a band playing on a corner of one of the bigger bridges. We saw the mermaid, a bunch of other interesting statues, got invited on a trip across America to research about climate change in a converted bus by two guys from Norway (which was either a very elaborate lie or a slightly creepy invite to an amazing adventure), and saw an amazing church which awed everyone in it.

This basically sums up my day.

(My feet hurt.)

Visiting Malmö

I have been seriously slacking on posts this week but I have a friend from school in town and I’ve been attempting to show her around Malmö on top of class, day trips, readings and final projects.

One of the big things I’ve noticed while showing her Malmö is the simple fact that Malmö is not a tourist town, there aren’t “must-see” places or major things to do. But what Malmö is, is relaxing, welcoming and quiet, everything a tourist town is not. My friend had spent the first half of her week of traveling in Oxford and London, England, and according to her while there’s less to “do” in Malmö and the surrounding areas she’s been enjoying them more because there’s less people and less noise. In my own words, I’d say the city is breathable, something as a designer I often strive for in my final products so it’s an aspect I truly appreciate and admire.

It’s been interesting to see the city through the eyes of someone who displaying Malmö for someone is here for less than a week instead of five, or even through her own eyes, as someone who has every moment of everyday to explore this city. I didn’t realize how much time impacts the way you see and experience a new place until now. A week or even a weekend in a new place calls for a completely different mindset, plan and experience than a month or two. Once I looked back to my past experiences traveling or even my recent one in Amsterdam in comparison to my way of thinking here in Malmö I’ve found this whole idea of “time” quite interesting to think about.

I may have gone overboard on panos but Nimis and the surrounding town were overwhelmingly beautiful.

So far in Imagining Malmö we’ve talking about how your personal background can affect your view of a city: your belief, upbringing, arrival to it, previous knowledge or expectations of it, previous cities you’ve visited, how you experience it: walker or voyeur, any hopes and dreams for this city or place. You have somewhere in the back of your mind your postcard-picture-perfect experience. What we have yet to seem to discuss is who we experience a new city or place with and how that might impact these first impressions. How your travel companion’s upbringing, beliefs, hopes, dreams, and aspirations might also alter your own impression. And how your relationship with this person might alter it as well, them being your family, friends, lover, or 15 other students from your college you’ve never met before. Who you experience a new city or place can completely alter your impression.

City Image

Kevin Lynch’s “The City Image and its Elements” was an enjoyable, straight forward read and I couldn’t help but relate it to our previous guest lecturer, Dr. Decker, and her talk on “Museum Displays and Visitors”. As I read I couldn’t help but relate the different types of museum visitors: the explorer, facilitator, experience-seeker, hoppyist, and recharger, to the five types of elements in Lynch’s piece: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. I think that the way a person sees a city, how they come into it, navigate it and identify certain parts of it id very similar to how one approaches a museum. In both cities and museums we have the people who like to get lost and see what they discover, the people with their checklists that have to see the sights that place is famous for, etc., either way they’re both a certain type of experience. In my opinion this also goes to show that the displays in both museums and cities are also similar in a way, the landmarks, the set up of the paths and edges, the dividing of the districts all are a way for a city to display itself to visitors or residents. The more I think about it the more connections I see simply in Dr. Decker’s lecture and Kevin Lynch’s piece.

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