I’ve often wondered, while exploring one
foreign city or another, how the locals see their hometown. Do Londoners ever
stop to admire The Palace of Westminster? Do Parisians ever go up La Tour
Eiffel and enjoy the view? Do Barcelonans ever stop while running
errands and admire the architectural masterpieces scattered all over the city?
On my trip to Barcelona a couple of days
ago, while sitting on the wall of Castell de Montjuïc and admiring the
panoramic view, I caught myself wondering how many times I visited Ljubljana
castle. How many times I cared to go up there to enjoy the view? If I remember
correctly, the last time was a couple years ago when my friend from the
Netherlands was here and I was one of his local ‘tourist guides’. A couple of
days later, when we came back from Barcelona, we went straight to the
centre of Ljubljana and I found myself standing in the middle of Kongresni
trg, admiring the architecture of a building across the street and thinking
‘What is this’. After seeing the bell tower I realized it’s a church and, to be
honest, I was quite disappointed with myself for not noticing the beauty of the
city I’m living in.
After thorough consideration I came to the
conclusion that locals and tourists see the same city from two completely
different perspectives; in fact, they may not even see the same city but two
entirely different ones. A tourist goes to a city which is, in some way,
appealing to him; he buys a tourist guide or googles the facts about the city,
reads about its history and decides which landmarks he wants to see. A local,
on the other hand, takes that same landmarks for granted, his local history
doesn’t seem so very incredible to him.
I still hope though, that Londoners stop in
front of The Palace of Westminster from time to time, that Parisians go up La
Tour Eiffel at least once in their life and I hope that Barcelonans are at
least aware of the fact that they are lucky to be living in such an
architecturally diverse city.
