Much of Kassel was destroyed in the war so there are three distinct kinds of buildings in the city: the first are the pre-War buildings which are made with brick and are more earth toned in color. These appear to be from the late 19th century and if you look closely you can see the scars in the stone work from the bombings. The second are the buildings that were rebuilt after the war. Everyone has the same decorative style but they use stucco instead of brick for the body of the building which gives them an almost plasticy feel, like these were mass produced knock offs (which in fact they were). The last kind of buildings are the modern ones. These range from classic Bauhause to poor-man’s Bauhause, from Soviet housing blocks to elegant towers-in-the-park. All these buildings are built literally right next to one another, seemingly everywhere. It makes for quite the juxtaposition.

The neighborhoods out near the big park which I walked around are very nice, Beverly Hills nice, with giant mansions, both old and modern, giant trees and nice cars where ever you look. The area from the ICE station to the city center, West and Wehlheiden, are a lot like the Back Bay with very nice side streets, large townhouses and attractive apartment houses. Here is where parts of the University is and where you find the mix of old, rebuilt, and modern buildings I talked about. The area along the tram line feels very much like Comm. Ave in Boston as it travels above ground near BU and through Brighton.

Leaving this area, which is mostly residential, we enter the city center. The nicest parts of the city are behind us and it’s all downhill from here (metaphorically and geographically speaking). The downtown, or Mitte, was pretty well destroyed during the war and the only buildings that remained were the major churches and the Rathaus, or city hall (well, sorta like a city hall). The rest of this center area is all modern and pretty dreary. There isn’t much character and street after street of mall stores, of which there are many duplicates of each, wear on the soul. There is a central plaza area, Königsplatz, which is where they hold all the festivals and where you can sit and watch people, but the place is pretty soul less (not as much as Government Center, however.)

Just north of the downtown is the dirty area of the city where the Soviet block housing can be found and where I’ve noticed most of the Middle Eastern immigrants live. There isn’t much here and it’s pretty depressing to travel through, but all the trams go this way so you have to see it. This area doesn’t have a name on the map but this is where the city splits to the north, Nord Holland is one way which is where the main University is (the main drag, Hollandische Strasse, feels very much like the BU stretch of Comm. Ave) and there are some cool bars up this way. This area seemed to survive the war ok but it being so close to the major industry and rail lines it isn’t as desirable as the West area. Just to the east is Wesertor and Iringshauser, both middle class areas which are residential but nothing to write about (seriously, I can’t think of the words to describe the mediocrity).

Here are a few more pictures. More to come.

[Show as slideshow]

Boston was described by a geography friend of mine as a “baby city”. I’m sure no one in Boston would feel that way but coming from New York it is easy to see how you could look at Boston like a baby city. Boston was comfortable. It wasn’t noisy, the streets weren’t filled with a sea of people (in some places they were but it wasn’t a rush, more like a slow crawl where people were stopping to see the sights.) It was also clean, which I don’t think I would ever say had I not lived in New York. Or maybe that just speaks to how dirty New York is (it is, but that’s how we like it, isn’t it?)

I came up for the Geography Conference but only went to a couple of seminars and blew the whole thing off for most of the week. I really came up to hang out and walk around and that’s what I did. But I came to Boston with the idea in my head that I knew what I was doing with my life, that I had a path and I could see the end of it. I come back to New York questioning what it is I really want to do. I still want to do Urban Planning, I think, but the closer I come to graduation the less I know what that means. Maybe I just got a giant dose of academia and realized that that wasn’t what I wanted, though I think I already knew that.

I remember when I was a kid, I was totally obsessed with dinosaurs and I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. Soon that passed and what I wanted was to be was an astronaut. Space was my life. But then I grew out of that too. When I first went to college I went for Industrial Design, and though I don’t think I ever wanted to do that professionally, I knew design would play a big part in my life. I remember the day a professor recommended urban planning as a major, since I was very interested in the city and very much not interested in designing products. The more I learned about it the more I liked the idea. But always in the back of my head I remembered the times when I was truly passionate about something else, only to wake up one day and lose total interest. It scared me that this would happen again some day when it would actually matter. As a kid you can think you want to be whatever but when you grow up and need to find a job, having fleeting passions isn’t going to work out when you need to pay the bills.

But perhaps that was the problem, that Boston was my passion all along. I kept up the T website and would look longingly at maps of Boston, remembering the great times I had there and remembering how it sparked my interest in cities. Maybe going back was what I needed to realize that that was the wrong direction, that I left the city because there wasn’t anything there for me and there still isn’t. Maybe this is the city telling me to move forward, to focus on the new possibilities in New York and in greater cities still. Perhaps the reason I am so conflicted is because I was looking for something that wasn’t there, something that I only remember, and that may have not even really existed in the first place. I think I finally saw Boston as an outsider and it shook me up. Maybe this was the world’s way of saying keep your eye on the prize and don’t look back.

I remember walking down Centre St in JP to the Orange Line to get to Back Bay and I thought I heard someone call my name. I looked back but I didn’t see anyone, but as I was doing this an image of Lot’s wife flashed in front of my eyes as she looked back on her burning home, only to be instantly turned into a pillar of salt. I turned back around, thinking that if I kept looking back I too would transform into a pillar, a monument to all that I have left behind. I think that is the fatal flaw of Boston, that it recognizes and fetishists it’s past, looking back longingly to an era that was perceived as being greater, but in reality wasn’t. The city cannot get past the past, and that is something I cannot do.

Here is a map of all the places I walked last week, some with links to images I took on my Flickr page.