Above - it's definitely worse than Marseille and possibly worse than Brighton. Could this be the UK's worst case of 'find your own grain of sand?'
Above - Bournemouth Pier and somewhere, if you look hard enough, you'll see the beach!
This morning I went for a walk around Bournemouth. I figuered that as I'm going to be working full time (never before in my life have I worked 8h30 to 17h30 5 days a week! It may well kill me! so if blog entries stop you'll know I've falledn victim to the world of work!) I wouldn't have a lot of time for sightseeing or exploring the area. I walked from my appartment (funny how I always used to refer to my appartment in Marseille as an appartment and never thought anything of it but now, being here in Bournemouth, it feels strange to refer to the accommodation as an appartment, I feel that 'flat' would be more appropriate. I can't explain why, maybe because it's lacks the glamour of my central Marseille mediterranean appartment on the south coast of France? Somehow a flat on Britian's south coast just doesn't seem to, well, have the same glamour to warrant being an appartment...) Anyway, I left where I'm now living and walked to where I will be working. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to find it in the morning, I also wanted to know exactly how long it would take me so that I wouldn't be late or ridiculously early on my first day. It takes about 20 minutes so if I allow 25 I should be fine. I carried on to The Square (I had a map of Bournemouth that was in the appartment? flat?) and walked to the sea front. I didn't actually go on the beach and I think if you look at the photos you might understand why - there wasn't exactly a lot of space!
When I first thought of Bournemouth when I saw the job advert I thought of a little seaside town full of elderly people. I was later told that it was a similar size to Brighton. I then discovered that it has a lot of language schools and therefore a lot of foreign students. The reality seems to be that Bournemouth is a little bigger than I imagined. It is a city rather than a town. It is in some ways similar to Brighton - there is a pier for instance. There are lots of 'touristy' things around the seafront. But every young person I walked past was foreign. I heard so many different languages. And, in comparison with Brighton, there are more eldery people. However Bournemouth does immediately have one up on Brighton as it's beaches are sandy as opposed to a collection of stones! It's pier however, is a little disappointing by comparison. From walking aorund this morning in the glorious sunshine my first impressions of Bournemouth are that it is cleaner and well, as silly as this may sound, a seaside town in the more traditional sense of a seaside town. But these opinions are based on first impressions, it will take me a little more exploring to draw concrete conculsions on this town? city? that is not at all what I originally expected when I thought of Bournemouth. Quite when I'm going to find time to fit this exploring in remains to be seen - weekends perhaps? But if there's one thing I've learnt - things are never as their stereotypes would have you believe, and images of things you have in your head of how something should be are often completely inaccurate!
