NationStates Jolt Archive

This is a spin off thread from Sinhue's Culture Shock...tell us your tales of woe! (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=424314)

This is to compare the difference between the city and rural folk. Either tell us your tales or differences you've noticed.

No flaming, please...and go!

For me...a friend of mine when I lived in Ottawa used to live out in the rural parts of Ottawa.

Most of the people in had small families. She lived with a family that had six children... That's just crazy.

I live on a secluded island, thats about as rual as you can get. people seem to be closer (at least in a greater percentage of the population) you know almost everyone on a first name basis or atleast by sight. rumors travel like lightning, so you better hope yu don't do anything that you don't want people to know, cuz everyone knows everything. i mean everything. but its cool. i'd rather live here than in a city any day, but thats just me. i find thee people out here to be a lot easier to deal with.

i live in Bristol, UK atm but i'm from Edenbridge, a tiny village in Kent, UK. I much prefer the village. The pace of life is slower, ppl r nicer and every1 knows every1 else.

In the country round where I live people will say hi, good morning/afternoon, to everybody they pass regardless of whether they're a stanger or not. In the city your lucky if if people acknoledge your existance long enough not to barge into you. :D

Damn thief! Stealing my idea;)

The big difference I think is this: you'll be hard pressed to find a rural person who has had no experience with an urban centre...and yet you can find many urbanites who have had NO experience with the rural. Imagine it...never once leaving your city...the very thought gives me nightmares!

In the country round where I live people will say hi, good morning/afternoon, to everybody they pass regardless of whether they're a stanger or not. In the city your lucky if if people acknoledge your existance long enough not to barge into you. :D
in your city maybe :p

This is a spin off thread from Sinhue's Culture Shock...tell us your tales of woe! (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=424314)

This is to compare the difference between the city and rural folk. Either tell us your tales or differences you've noticed.

No flaming, please...and go!

For me...a friend of mine when I lived in Ottawa used to live out in the rural parts of Ottawa.

Most of the people in had small families. She lived with a family that had six children... That's just crazy.
Ha. I'm right in between-suburban girl all the way. I'm very much middle class, but some of the kids I grew up with are so upper class it's absolutely disgusting.

Imagine a kid from rural (we do have a couple of cities) Arkansas stepping off the train in Tokyo and looking at an office buidling that has more people working in it than lives in your county. Life in the Big City!

Another thing was the rudeness of everyone. No eye contact. In the South we usually smile and say hi when we pass someone. In Tokyo IF anyone would make eye contact, they would have that same "I was hit over the head with a frozen fish" look and ignore my salutations. Children always smiled and waved back prompting the question I asked an office lady, "Who teaches the children to stop smiling?"

Back in the States I came to realize this was not a Japanese callousness it's an urban callousness that comes from crowded proximity. I prefer my compound in the woods.

You people can keep your rural communalism. I love the dynamism of the city, the perpetual opportunity of seeing new faces and having new experiences. There is also a comforting anonymity to being in the city as opposed to the stifling "everyone knows everyone" feeling of living in a small town.

I live in a small, former mining town in the North of England but have friends and often have nights out in the city of Newcastle. I find the latter to be vastly preferable and am soon moving there. The town is ugly, boring and devoid of opportunity and the notion that city folk are comparatively hostile is an outright myth.

As for rural villages, my uncle lives in Northumberland countryside and while it might seem okay and quite pretty, the people there are a little too set in their ways and again, there is simply nothing to see or do.

As for rural villages, my uncle lives in Northumberland countryside and while it might seem okay and quite pretty, the people there are a little too set in their ways and again, there is simply nothing to see or do.
well there is plenty to do around here :D
and its not like the city is too far away either so its the best of both worlds

I've never lived out in the countryside for any extended period of time, but I have lived in Fort William for the last two summers.

And it was boring. Sure it was scenic, but there was nothing to do!

The city, at least, is interesting should you want to be interested.

That said, just looking out over the loch kept my attention for a few hours. And the satellite TV.

I come from the suburbs right outside of New York, and I've been in the city many times. I don't mind spending a short time in remote places (the peace makes for a welcome change), but small mid-western towns bug me. I recently spent 3 days in Evansville, Indiana for a martial Arts competition- complete hicksville. I can't stand how flat everything is, I can't stand how it's nothing but highways and strip malls for miles, and I can't stand how there's nothing to do. The country has a wide variety of landscapes, and some of it is very beautiful, but out there it's nothing but asphalt and department stores.

Anyway, I really dislike the suburbs most of all. It has that overriding closeness where everybody is the same as everybody else which I hate about the rural areas, but it also has some of the things which make cities ugly. I'd take a city over this any day.

Country folk are far more helpful than city people.

But I will never be able to stand the mosquitoes and lack of night life. So forever I will stay in a city....

I come from the suburbs right outside of New York, and I've been in the city many times. I don't mind spending a short time in remote places (the peace makes for a welcome change), but small mid-western towns bug me. I recently spent 3 days in Evansville, Indiana for a martial Arts competition- complete hicksville. I can't stand how flat everything is, I can't stand how it's nothing but highways and strip malls for miles, and I can't stand how there's nothing to do. The country has a wide variety of landscapes, and some of it is very beautiful, but out there it's nothing but asphalt and department stores.

Anyway, I really dislike the suburbs most of all. It has that overriding closeness where everybody is the same as everybody else which I hate about the rural areas, but it also has some of the things which make cities ugly. I'd take a city over this any day.


it really depends where you are. i live in the suburbs of cleveland and i love it! there are some neighborhoods where everything is the same and close together but not mine. in fact every house on my street is completely different. and people arent the same as everyone else, a lot of the time people in the same city are the same but there are plenty of people that are different. suburbs dont have the impatientness of the city, but they dont have the excessive relaxation of a rural area.

I liked the point about city-bred folks never leaving. They do seem to build or develop a dependance on the metropolitan life that just won't quit. I would far prefer an independent life of farming, but I don't have the land. I have to be satisfied with the garden and the chickens.

I prefer urban areas. I do have a soft spot for a specific island town called Port Aransas, though. It's small (about 4,000 people), but it's very vibrant and active. 'Tis a very nice place.

I lived in a rural area when I was 3... It was horrible. There was absolutely nothing to do. How awful.

City kids in the country have nothing to do, that may be true. But as a born and bred farm boy, there's tonnes. Mudding, field parties, bbq's and pig roasts, camping and hiking. Now I live in Hamilton for school, and everyone around me are city kids. They're great, but they just don't get how it feels to work a full day (16+hours) and then go out and party 'til three, go to bed and wake up at 6 to go back to work. They don't appreciate physical labour, often seeing it as unskilled or less important than office work. And even though they are my friends, they're still arrogant and sure of their own knowledge of the world, though that might have been contributed to by the fact that they're at university. Anyway, nothing against cities, just can't stand them.