What you see when you come to the city center in Christchurch? Ruins. Lots of empty slots. Huge cranes and trucks. Ongoing construction. All what the city needs to recreate itself. Despite this, I enjoyed my stay in Christchurch for couple of reasons: lovely weather, interesting spots, freedom of movement by bike, staying for longer than one day at the same place, and meetings with people. One of the best meetings during these few days in Christchurch was the one with Marc from The Press. He is a journalist with strong focus on the earthquake related issues so he was absolutely perfect to walk around the city with and talk about the disaster.  The earthquake Nobody expected this earthquake. Just like nobody expects many other natural disaster. It is true that both islands of New Zealand are located in seismically active terrain but the earthquake was expected to hit other parts of the islands. Not Christchurch. It all went differently than expected and when the first shock hit Canterbury everyone was surprised. In the worst of possible ways. In early morning, September the 4th, 2010, at 4:35 a.m. it all began. I can easily remember this feeling as the earthquake I survived hit Italy at 4:10 a.m. when me and thousands other people were deep asleep. It is shocking when a moving house wakes you up, all shelves and wardrobes at home fall down and you are left with impression that within a second you will be quite death, crushed with a falling ceiling. Traumatic event that leaves you agitated for long weeks and what is really annoying it is magnified with every aftershock. In Christchurch aftershocks were numerous and powerful. One of them brought even more damage and terror than the first one: on Tuesday, 22 February 2011, at 12:51 the earth shook again. One of the damages was particularly dramatic: the CTV building at Madras Street collapsed killing 115 people in a second. I could go on this way and report here hundreds of aftershocks, numbers of wounded and death, but I’m not going to report here every detail of these events. You can easily find it elsewhere. I’d rather report the guided tour around this destroyed city and – what’s even more important- a process of the city reconstruction. The disaster It is useless to describe any natural disaster: if you have never experience anything like this you will never imagine how do you feel when it hits. It’s just inexplicable. It is even more surprising how easily you share the traumatic events if you experienced it. Just like with Marc and other people from Christchurch: we could easily understand each other just because of the very similar experience we went through. Very few people are able to imagine the fear and panic that floods you in a second. And makes you act like a hero or a coward and you can’t really predict which one is your fate. Let’s leave these difficult emotions behind and think about the panorama after the earthquake. The city was badly damaged. It is said that about 80% of the buildings in city center were ruined. After the first few weeks filled with saving what’s left people started to clean the center. Those who haven’t left the city started to think about the future of this place and started from the basics: they decided to bring back some life to the city center. What’s next? Despite the annoying aftershocks people from Christchurch continued their effort and after few months the so called Re:Start was established. Below you will find a timelapse clip of the final week of construction. Sixty one containers arrived on the 29th August 2011 at the port of Lyttelton and were subsequently placed in the city center recreating the shopping space called Cashel Mall. All construction process was nicely done and currently I can assure you this is a very beautiful part of the city. People use this area for shopping, meeting friends, eat out or simply walking around. The feeling is pretty awesome, especially if you look at the close sites of bare land. It is also a powerful message that this city sends: the residents will not leave it just because it was so badly hurt. To see physically the strength of the wounded community  is really impressive.  To remember This is just the beginning of a large scale reconstruction plan. The scale is a challenge itself: New Zealanders need to rebuild almost the whole city from scratch. But even when they finally do people who survived want to remember it. How the city looked like before the disaster and they also wish to remember those who lost their lives under the ruins. A modern museum called Quake City was established. Firstly to explain to the visitors what happened, then, to keep some iconic elements of the buildings collapsed, to educate about the geology of the earthquake and to remember all who died. I think this is really important for the collective identity to keep records of traumatic events and I found the Quake City very interesting. Let me share two pics from this museum I find really inspiring (apologies for lousy quality – taken with a cell phone).   There is controversy behind the scenes, just like elsewhere in the world when a natural disaster occurs and the government tries to deal with it. Some people were not happy about the way the issues related to the earthquake were managed while the others were quite content about it. When the earthquake hit Christchurch received a substantial help from other cities and from abroad. The emergency squads were sent from many places and people hurt were not left alone. Human solidarity is always impressive but the longterm activity and final results matter. One of my blogger fellow – Ari – went to Christchurch earlier in 2013. She has slightly less optimistic thoughts about it. Read here story here to get the full picture of this disaster. I didn’t go into enough...

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Christchurch is not just another easy place to visit. This city is extraordinary: first, because of its British heritage and second, because of its recent history marked by the earthquake. I found this city fascinating for many reasons. Mainly because my own personal traumatic earthquake experience (yes, I am an earthquake survivor!) but I think it is simply interesting to watch any city re-creating itself. So, if you’re a community enthusiast, ongoing construction fan or natural disaster watcher this is the place for you! Bicycle The best way to see this city is by bike. It might be very true for many cities around the world but regarding the earthquake detriment it is even more so here. I rented bike in a very special place called Vintage Peddler where literally old bicycles are available to be rented for couple of hours or days. The owners are charming and they provide helmets and lockers along the bikes rented. What I really appreciated was the fact that bikes were old, the helmet was used and so I could easily melt into the local environment. At least I didn’t look like a tourist from a 10 km distance! And felt a bit like a local. I was enjoying Christchurch and my bike for five days in a row. I could easily go to a Botanic Garden or public park in a minute! What is really nice about this renting place is that each bike has its own name and history. I was riding Blue Monday Bike so if one day you’ll visit Christchurch and will ride the same bike please let me know! We could become bike mates. See it from the distance Christchurch is flat. As flat as you can imagine. No hills whatsoever. What is beautiful about it it’s the location (Location, location, location!). Although the city is totally flat it is surrounded with a mountain range and with Pacific Ocean. To fully appreciate its location you need to see it from the distance. So, riding my blue vintage bicycle I went about 12km one way to enjoy a ride on Gondola. This was a sunny day so the first thing I did was that I burnt my skin. I used a sunscreen but apparently the UV filter was too low (lousy European one!) so in the afternoon my hands were burning badly. But before I realized that I enjoyed amazing panorama of the city and surrounding. The whole Gondola ride is really nice and the function centre at the top is impressive. It’s not only the views over Christchurch, Lyttelton, Southern Alps and the Ocean: it’s a very nice interior design. My favorite part were posters with Maori myths of the Sun and the Earth birth and explanation of “How to find south” using the Southern Cross in the night. I find it most astonishing that being in the Southern Hemisphere means that the sky changes. I mean, if you think about it, that’s awesome. Sky and earth are something I (we?) take for granted. They never change. They are stable and persistent. And here we are: you go out from caravan at night, you look at the stars and all is different! And in this particular case of Christchurch the earth is not as stable as usually considered. So many astonishing things in one moment! Gondola ride was a fabulous start of my holiday: sitting in comfortable armchair, drinking coffee and watching all of these wonders! Chill out OK, so here I am: I have a bike rented for five days and skin burnt after one day of riding it. Where should I go? International Antarctic Centre, where else? Riding a bike to the Antarctic Centre was weird. I mean, it is 12km from the city centre and there is no bicycle road at the very last part of it, but who cares? My question at the desk about the bike parking was confusing to the staff but- lucky me!- there were some places to lock my vintage bike. You might wonder why international antarctic center is located here, in Christchurch. Well, New Zealand is one of the closest countries to the South Pole (second to the southern shore of South America) so many antarctic expeditions are organized from the airport here. There are four things to see here: penguins, 4D movie, antarctic storm and hagglund ride. Starting with penguins I went to see the feeding ceremony, just like all other visitors. It is nicely organized as you can see it from 3 different angles, including underwater through the glass wall. All penguins are blue penguins and almost all of them are here to recover from all kind of mishaps. Some of them are limping, others have no wings or can’t swallow any food by themselves. The feeding involves caretakers and their individual help to each penguin. Penguins are cute. And very small, these little fellows. New Zealand is their natural habitat so their home here is in open air. 4D movie brings you to a short cruise in Antarctic Sea, including special effects of splashing water and shaking your armchair when a ship crushes iceberg. It is nice to see the penguins and the blue ice so close but I wouldn’t call it “extreme” at any measure. What really amazed me was an anorak worn in Antarctica by the researchers. I put such anorak on and this was the only cloth that warmed me spontaneously in my life! Two minutes I tried it on I was warm! This was extreme, I would say. The antarctic storm was somehow less impressive. They give you an anorak and put you in a large fridge and then they turn the wind on. It’s -8 degrees inside and with the wind the temperature drops down to -18 C. But hey, what’s the fuss? It might be impressive to someone who lives in a tropical climate but not for me. I’m from the north and here when it’s -25 and it is windy (which gives you feeling...

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