So what do you think of New Zealand?
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- Category: Blog Friday - Steve
Famously the first thing a visiting dignitary gets asks (pretty much as they get off the plane) is “so what do you think of New Zealand?” So just before we leave, after six weeks and a thousand kilometres here are a few lasting impressions for you cultural historians to chew over.
- I think I can at last differentiate the accents of Aussies and Kiwis. Kiwi is like Australian only funnier / cuter. Why?
- The countryside is beautiful but suffers from multi-personality disorder; one minute it looks like Scotland, then its Wyoming, suddenly there is Mt Fiji!
- Travel times; either we are hopelessly slow or the Kiwis are wildly optimistic. As long as you add 20%-40% on to any given journey time you can plan your day quite well.
- The national dish is fush and chups (see point 1).
- The children’s playgrounds are universally excellent and frankly I should know, the hours I’ve spent in ‘em.
- Maori spoken by Maori has a wonderful lyrical sound. I’m guessing this stems from not having a written language, with a strong tradition of history and tales passed on via song – rather like early Homer and certain Albanian folklore.
- Maori spoken by non-Maori often just sounds like a strangulated mock-South African (I include myself in this).
- Many of the NZ TV adverts are excellent, they remind me of the ones I watched in a 1970’s Taunton cinema.
- They are very serious about their coffee – which is a good thing.
- Their museums (even the tiny ones) are excellent and look like they have had huge amounts of cash spent on them. The national museum in Wellington can certainly rank as one of the world’s best, and is a benchmark for how to engage children.
To conclude, New Zealanders. Nice people, with nice manners.
Interesting footnote: The Kiwi’s are currently having a major rewrite of their constitution, but chopping the Queen and becoming a Republic is not even being considered – unlike those bolshie Aussies a few years ago.
