30122011

Disappointing exterior design and irrelevant thoughts on travelling.

I suppose this is the point of the travelling graph when most of the things you see, experience, imagine, start to be disappointing, annoying even. You've seen so many amazing things, learned a thing or two about a new culture, unraveled faults that were buried beneath a slim surface.

Things that slightly annoy me in New Zealand:

1 Sweet as – Every person in New Zealand seems to be quite on terms with this term. I'm not. Not anymore. When you hear every other person repeating the same phrase as if they have nothing better to say has started to get on my nerves. They even use the same phrase in every commercial, advertisement, radio show, etc. Sweet as sour – coming from a fox who never quite reached the berries.

2 Infrastructure – New Zealand is not a poor country, and yet they choose to live in a constant building set of the 90s. The houses look worn out, on the verge of collapsing and just generally ugly. You can see that the locals have put absolutely no effort into making their neighbourhoods, towns, cities, look decent. Yes, the nature is beautiful but if your houses don't support the view, it's redundant.

The roads are atrocious. If I were to buy a car in New Zealand I wouldn't necessarily want to drive it too often because I'd be scared to death from breaking it on the bumpy road from my garage to the supermarket.

As previously mentioned, the public transportation system is in a dire need of improvement. I mean honestly, since when have you had to book a seat for a bus, wait in line outside the bus for the bus driver to call out your name and listen inside the bus as the driver points out the emergency exits of the bus. Emergency exits of a bus.

3 Local food – No, fish and chips are not a delicacy. They are something you grab after an evening that streched a bit too long, not something, which you place on a platter that says National Food. In general, the local food is quite tasteless, bland, simple – very suited for the lifestyle here, though. It's not like I come from a country of spices myself but at least I'm aware the top side of the table can have something other than custard, bacon 'n' eggs, fish 'n' chips N 'n' N.

4 Talking – Conversation is good but I find it tedious to endure the continuous blabber, small talk, casual chit-chat, how're-you's and remarks about the weather. Yes, I'm quite aware that it is raining again today, as it has been for five days now. No, I will most certainly not have a good day. Thank you, you too.

5 Extended self-image – Every poll in the newspaper, every study in the magazine, every questionnaire on the internet says that New Zealand is the best country in the world, no matter how you look at it. People here are the most content with their lives, Auckland is the best city to live in, the quality of life is better than anywhere else in the world. Get real.

6 Laid-back lifestyle – Such lifestyle is good, and I appreciate it. But when you want something to be done, when you want to get from place A to place B in a certain time, it hits you sideways with a sucker punch. When we got on the bus in Auckland, the driver asked if anyone would be going to Thames, which is a bit off the route. No one was. At this point I thought the driver would say something along the lines of: 'Good, then we'll be in Rotorua earlier'. Instead, I got: 'Good, then we are not in a hurry'.