Guess where I've been today?

[Olham 164]

Of course it is, CJ! As your town isn't too big, I found it impossible

to come up with an interesting bit you might find hard to spot.

 

As for the clock - those old things were made to last. And they do!

[themightysrc 5]

Hi Olham,

 

I'm lurving this quiz - but please ask "whose town is this?". That is grammatically correct. I apologise for being so pedantic, particularly when I don't have a working grasp of either spoken or written German, but it's a bit like having someone pass a cheesegrater over your nads when I see grammatical errors.

 

So - come on then: when do I get my town pop up? I bet no-one will get it, including me.

 

Cheers,

Si

[Olham 164]

You've been pedantic to me, now you must wait! Mmuahahahahahaaa!!!!

 

No, I'm trying to zigzag across the planet a bit, and with Newcastle I had been around your area already.

But who knows - maybe still before Christmas? You won't be forgotten.

Edited December 5, 2010 by Olham

[Creaghorn 10]

nr. 9 is part of old town in nürnberg or nuremberg in english. although not the town and country where i'm from, this is the town i live in since many years and where i feel home, next to my homeland croatia.

[TaillyHo 2]

nr. 9 is part of old town in nürnberg or nuremberg in english. although not the town and country where i'm from, this is the town i live in since many years and where i feel home, next to my homeland croatia.

 

Hey Creaghorn, Di Simo looks like a nice spot to Latte sip and swap old dog-fighting tales. Believe there is a rather famous race track nearby too!

[Cameljockey 3]

Hey Creaghorn, Di Simo looks like a nice spot to Latte sip and swap old dog-fighting tales. Believe there is a rather famous race track nearby too!

 

That wouldn't be the Nurburgring would it?

[Olham 164]

Creaghorn is right, of course - it's Nürnberg - home also of Gremlin.

Sorry, I had forgotten your town's name in Croatia, otherwise I might have chosen that one.

 

Well, here are the next ones.

 

Whose town is No. 10 ? St. Francisville - near Bullethead

 

...and this one should be easy: No. 11 Bury in the frozen north of England - home of themightysrc

Edited December 12, 2010 by Olham

[MikeDixonUK 5]

It's interesting how the picture quality seems to vary quite a bit between different areas - I'd have thought that Google would use the same setup for all their Street View Cars, wouldn't have thought that Camera technology has advanced that much between when different images were taken.

 

Maybe I'm just thinking too much into it.

Edited December 6, 2010 by MikeDixonUK

[TaillyHo 2]

That wouldn't be the Nurburgring would it?

I believe so, Cameljockey! I've greatly enjoyed its virtual replications in both modern era F1 sims, and classic 60s sportscars on the old Nordschleife layout. <BR><BR>No. 11: Windsor perhaps? Edited December 6, 2010 by TaillyHo

[JimAttrill 24]

I recognise that glassy building on the left - it used to be the Stock Exchange. I haven't been in that part of town for at least 15 years as I don't own an armoured car. Downtown Jo'burg is rather like downtown Detroit it seems.

[Creaghorn 10]

That wouldn't be the Nurburgring would it?

 

no. nürnberg has a famous circuit (not for F1 but for stockcar etc.) called noris-ring. famous because it's the only city-circuit in europe (a circuit which is open for traffic in the times between races) next to monte carlo.

but nürburgring, the F1 circuit is from nürburg, not nürnberg. nürburg is somewhat near the french border and many miles away from nürnberg.

nürnberg is one of the history richest towns in europe regarding medieval times and knighthoods etc. with lot of culture and inventions and firstintheworlds over the centuries. that's why hitler chose it as the town for the reichsparteitag instead of berlin (the events everybody knows from footage, him beeing on a podest in front of thousands of people blah)

that's why nürnberg was badly bombed in WWII and why nürnberg was chosen as place for the trials where the surviving NS members got trialed (nürnberg trial).

 

nowadays the hughe podest and tribune and marching fields etc. still exist and look like the events happened last week and not 70 years ago. but it's now used for skaters, field hockey, squash, sitting about in the sun, showing off cars and bikes etc. a place to meet and sit and relax, looking for chicks etc.

 

@olham

gremlin is in munich i think.

Edited December 6, 2010 by Creaghorn

[Dej 17]

No. 11 IS indeed easy, googled my way to it in one hit

[Olham 164]

The racing course "Nürburgring" has nothing to do with Nürnberg, although it sounds very similar.

Here is the Wikipedia link to it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring

[Olham 164]

A bit too late, JimAttrill - I was wondering why no one from Joburg jumped at it.

But maybe Winder is up to his ears into P4?

 

Gremlin gave me "Nürnberg" for his location, when I started the maps - but maybe he is in Munich now.

Haven't seen him here lately, Creaghorn.

 

Dej, that's the weird thing about the web. I walk around in other peoples backyards so to say.

But the person from this town won't need to google it, I'm sure.

[Olham 164]

It's interesting how the picture quality seems to vary quite a bit between different areas - I'd have thought that Google would use the same setup for all their Street View Cars

 

Yep, there are places outside L.A. where one side of the highway is still old pics, and the other side it's new already.

I think, over long time, they will re-do them all.

[Bullethead 12]

Whose town is No. 10 ? (Well, he's only living somewhere near it)

 

 

This is St. Francisville, Louisiana, looking north along Prosperity Street. This is the closest so-called town (more of a big village) to my house, but I live in the woods about 12 miles from it and I don't think any OFF pilots actually reside there .

 

St. Francisville's main claim to fame locally is that it was the capital city of the short-lived West Florida Republic, which few folks even in Louisiana have ever heard of. Otherwise, it got shot up fairly badly by the yankees in 1863, which is why most buildings today date from 1880-1900, when the economy opened up again after the end of yankee occupation. 100 years ago, it was something of a boomtown due to being located adjacent to Bayou Sara, then one of the biggest ports on the Mississippi. But that washed away in 1927, then there was the Depression, and since then time has passed St. Francisville by. Today, it's sole industries are tourism, political corruption, and the litigation both involve. It's probably one of the most useless collection of buildings in the world and is doubtless doomed to disappear in a generation or 2.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Keep 'em coming Olham. I am loving this: getting a glimpse at where other fellow OFF'ers live. Very neat!

 

.

[Olham 164]

Thank you, Lou!

Bullethead, you know your history - thanks for the detail; I enjoyed to learn a bit more about St.Francisville.

And a useless collection of buildings - well, according to an old Zen master I love, nothing exists without the spirit

(and I don't mean that stuff you and many others like, although this old master liked that spirit a lot too).

 

My own hometown - the town I grew up I mean - is now a pretty unimportant town of ca. 30.000 souls.

The oldest document mentioning it is from ca. 1200, but as it is lying on a long sand elevation higher than the marshes,

which got flooded by the north sea, when there were no dykes yet, it was settled already in the neolithic age.

After heavy floods in early times, a huge bay had been broken into the land, following the small river Ley all the way up

to Norden. That made the town a perfect harbour, and from the early Hanse trading times until ca. 1910 - 1920,

the harbour was one of the important trans-shipment places in Germany. Wood, salt and turf were shipped from here,

and all kinds of ware was brought to Norden for further transport on waggons.

 

But the people regained the land bit by bit into that bay, and the land came closer to Norden and it's harbour.

So, siltation made it harder and harder to keep the harbour open, and the Dyke Counts and owners of grand farms

decided to close the dyke at much the same point, where the land had been before the great floods.

Now it is all regained and farmed again, protected by a high dyke - for the cost of Norden's harbour.

On some of the old houses, you can still se the wealth, that once was possible there.

But now, Norden is a town with no special function or reason, and it is loosing more and more, and one day, there

may be another neolithic settlement, where once the proud houses of wealthy merchands stood.

 

Well, that was a special edition of "Whose town is this? Answer: Olham's"

PS: the house bottom right used to be the bakery Emil Themann (now it's a pub) - he made the very best

Schwarzbrot (black bread) and also the best Brötchen (brown, crispy rolls you don't get anywhere anymore).

My mum had to buy both on saturdays, for the weekend. They only bought there for weekends, because it

was some pennies more expensive than elsewhere, and the people didn't have so much money.

They used to live much more humble back then - something we may have to learn again...

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2010 by Olham

[Creaghorn 10]

very nice städtchen there olham .

[Creaghorn 10]

This is St. Francisville, Louisiana, looking north along Prosperity Street. This is the closest so-called town (more of a big village) to my house, but I live in the woods about 12 miles from it and I don't think any OFF pilots actually reside there .

 

St. Francisville's main claim to fame locally is that it was the capital city of the short-lived West Florida Republic, which few folks even in Louisiana have ever heard of. Otherwise, it got shot up fairly badly by the yankees in 1863, which is why most buildings today date from 1880-1900, when the economy opened up again after the end of yankee occupation. 100 years ago, it was something of a boomtown due to being located adjacent to Bayou Sara, then one of the biggest ports on the Mississippi. But that washed away in 1927, then there was the Depression, and since then time has passed St. Francisville by. Today, it's sole industries are tourism, political corruption, and the litigation both involve. It's probably one of the most useless collection of buildings in the world and is doubtless doomed to disappear in a generation or 2.

 

the thing i know best from lousiana is tony joe white with his swamp rock. interesting dialect btw. in lousiana (where even a non-native english speaker like me hears the difference. if at all, then most non americans can seperate between texas dialect and eastcoast dialect.)

[Olham 164]

All I knew of "Lousy anna" was Cajun music and Cajon spiced food (hmmm!).

Here is some music (bad sound, but good mood).

 

 

Edited December 10, 2010 by Olham

[Olham 164]

PS: ...forgot the Cajun Shrimps Jambalaya video - god, makes my mouth water!

 

 

I wonder why the other town is not identified yet - I thought that should be easy???

Edited December 10, 2010 by Olham

[Bullethead 12]

the thing i know best from lousiana is tony joe white with his swamp rock. interesting dialect btw. in lousiana (where even a non-native english speaker like me hears the difference. if at all, then most non americans can seperate between texas dialect and eastcoast dialect.)

All I knew of "Lousy anna" was Cajun music and Cajon spiced food (hmmm!).

 

Due to it's position at the mouth of the Mississippi, Lousy Anna is literally the grille over the floor drain of an open sewer as big as all of North America between the Rockies and the Appalachians. It's the only thing stopping all the continent's unspeakable trash from being flushed out to sea where it belongs. In fact, this is probably what created the so-called dry land in the state .

 

This is what makes the place seem so weird to outsiders. All visitors see something very familiar from back home because they threw it away some time ago and then find it stuck in Lousy Anna, but there it's mixed in with the detritus of the rest of the continent, so is jarringly out of context (and still worthless). Some of them enjoy this effect as a form of post-modern art but the saner visitors make sure they have all their vaccinations up to date and touch as little of Lousy Anna as possible. Some natives can't imagine anything better and see each new day as an adventure, anticipating finding something useful amongst the night's leavings along the bayou banks and roadside ditches. Such folks write odes to the mind-boggling squalor of Lousy Anna, thinking that a pile of garbage thrown together by chance is somehow more romantic than the piles of garbage in every landfill. Most natives, however, along with all marooned expats from elsewhere, long for a chance to escape. In the meantime, they eat as well as possible, drink way too much, and sing the blues, which gives outsiders the mistaken impression that Lousy Anna is a happy place.

[OvS 8]

... Lousy Anna is literally the grille over the floor drain of an open sewer as big as all of North America between the Rockies and the Appalachians ....

 

Not sure if this tops the 'Armpit of America' aka... Newark, New Jersey.

Edited December 7, 2010 by OvS

[Bullethead 12]

Not sure if this tops the 'Armpit of America' aka... Newark, New Jersey.

 

Having spent a fair amount of time in Newark, I think it's a "bad" place in terms of the normal US standard of living. But that's a relative term. Such places as Rwanda, North Korea, Iran, Haiti, Myanmar, and Los Angeles are far, far worse. And that's all most civilized people can contemplate. Lousy Anna is in its own infernal region far deeper into the Pit of Dispair, unimaginable to most sane humans.