Boston : Melbourne

As many people have remarked over the years, Boston resembles Melbourne in lots of ways. It's being driven home to me every day as I head into my temp job, because the part of Cambridge I'm working in looks a lot like South Melb... which is not an entirely flattering comparison, but it's not meant to be: the resemblance lies in the way that both cities have taken what should be lovely, water-adjacent land and managed to turn it into stark, concrete-laden bleakness. That's quite an achievement when you think about it, but I would encourage you not to think about it.

Other ways in which the two cities are similar:

• They're on the water but not quite of the water in the way Sydney is
• There are beaches in the city but you wouldn't want to swim in them (South Boston and Revere : St. Kilda)
• There are quite nice beaches a bit of a drive away (Cape Cod : Mornington Peninsula; though our beaches aren't anything like that nice - and the water's way colder - the scenery is really pretty and surprisingly not dissimilar)
• We have above-ground public transport (trolleys : trams)
• There's a big arts/music/education culture (admittedly we're not as good on fashion, but our music scene would blow most other, bigger cities out of the water, so that's the trade-off)
• The weather is extreme, and quite grim for several months of the year (hence all the cultural hoo-ha mentioned above: when you're stuck inside a lot of the time, you have to do something to keep busy)
• There's a strong (and not always entirely successful) blending of old and new architecture
• We have an intense rivalry with our biggest neighbour city, about which the smaller city cares much more than the larger does because we have an inferiority complex that informs pretty well everything we do, not that we'd admit it (Boston-New York : Melbourne-Sydney)

I wish to god this weather would break.

XOXO