A Room with a View - "The Lovely, Ugly Town"

We're headed toward City Center in a coach (charter bus for all ya'll Americans), heads following the finger of our British professor as he points out historic buildings and tosses Doctor Who shooting locations to the four fans now whispering excitedly about nerd things - I'm one of these people (I know, shocking). Swansea rolls by outside, an odd amalgamation of old brick and grey office buildings, beautiful stone churches and glass fronted modern gyms. There's a reason for the pockets of old and new clustered together. As our professor informs, Swansea was, "meter for meter," the most heavily bombed city in the UK during World War II. As an strategic port city, location of an oil refinery, and home to a university working on innovations in wartime engineering, the Axis powers essentially decided to bomb the hell out of it.

It was reconstructed by the post-war planners of the 50s, who threw together inexpensive structures in an attempt to rebuild the city, foregoing beauty for the sake of recovery. For the air raid and the 'ugliness' that resulted, we get an apology from our professor - it's not the first time. When I was considering Swansea as a candidate for study abroad, so many reviews warned of the unattractive city center. Even Dylan Thomas, the famous poet Swansea loves to remember as its own, calls his home city "the lovely, ugly town." But as I weave side-to-side, trying to glimpse the train station, the library, the 14th century castle ruins in the middle of the city, I'm nonplussed. The puzzle piece city is beautiful. I really can't understand how anyone could call it ugly. Odd, yes. Unique, different, but not ugly. Then, a week later, I see Bath.

Bath is beautiful. We, along with the other camera toting, backpack lugging people, wander about the Roman Bath museum, as it tries to instill in us a vision of what the city was like when spear toting, toga wearing Romans occupied the city, and constructed its naturally hot baths.

After tasting the iron rich waters of the spring (which really is quite hot), Brenna, Conner, Jordan, and I (AKA: the nerd group), explore the rest of the city. Every bit of Bath is old, from Jane Austin's street, to the Circus (a ring of homes encircling a grove of ancient trees - I unconsciously start singing 'Who will Buy').

We find a bookstore. It's old and wooden and warm. Before we leave - Brenna with Pride and Prejudice in her hand, a Le Guin novel in mine - our clothes are soaked through with book smell. We stop for ice creams (holy hell there was a Ferrero Rocher flavor) while a man fiddles away at a violin in the square in front of the Cathedral beside the Roman baths. I understand now how Swansea could be ugly.

In the US of Merica, we don't judge our cities the same way. We call New York a concrete jungle; we don't expect it to be beautiful, not all of it anyway. We expect an American city to be effective, economical, commutable--sleek maybe, impressive, but not beautiful. In Britain, a city is meant to mirror the venerable agelessness of London or Oxford or Cambridge. Swansea does not. It reflects the postwar decline Britain suffered. In sidewalk cracks you can see the mines closing, the riots breaking out. In colorless office buildings you can see poverty. Unlike Bath, Swansea cannot hide its history in heritage. But in the cracks too, you can see the rebirth, the new growth, the juxtaposition of an ancient city and a modern one. You can see the lovely, and the ugly. Maybe Dylan Thomas was on to something...

"... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ... by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world" (Thomas).

P.S. - The tortishell's name is Pumpkin, the other cat ACTUALLY LIVES INSIDE!