Christchurch

This town is a construction site! After being hit by 2 devastating earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011 - the latter of which killed 185 people - the city centre of Christchurch was pretty much flattened. And as demolition of damaged buildings, reconstruction and stabilisation is still an ongoing process this leaves a weird atmosphere in the city centre which has a lot of empty space now being used as car parks. So naturally, commuters are happy about the abundant, affordable parking space.

But this also leaves the city in a unique position. They have the opportunity to completely reinvent their city centre, which will definitely look very different - if only for the fact that no new building may be higher than 6 floors. The destruction was also pretty random leaving e.g. one 19th century Gothic style building - the Canterbury museum - unharmed while severely damaging the Art Centre which was built in the same style and at the same time just across the street. The renovation will take until 2019.

The symbol for the harm the earthquake caused is certainly the old cathedral. Its tower completely collapsed. On the pic you see a grey structure which was erected to stabilize a wall with a famous glass window in it after the first earthquake in 2010. The 2011 one then actually didn't hurt the wall but caused the stabilizing structure to tilt towards the wall and cause its collapse. Whoops!

Right now the city is full of makeshift solutions. They built a replacement cathedral (pic no. 2) out of shipping containers and cardboard - yes, you read that correctly. The central mall is also in shipping containers at the moment, something we obviously liked! The city is also full of little projects filling the gaps by greening them, putting an 18 whole minigolf course equipped with clubs and golf balls throughout the city, opening places for art and all kinds of projects and a common centre for activities of all kinds. Really, really cool!

We also visited a street art exhibition and one about T-shirts which were both really interesting. In the latter one we even had to show identification to see a certain Cradle of Filth shirt which is banned in New Zealand. That was definitely a first ;).

We did all that on one day as we are already on the road again. We have a pretty tight schedule planned for our last days, so we'll see how we manage this. Some compassion from you guys would be in order here ;).Read more