City Explo[it | r]ation – Midtown Atlanta: some first snaps

I arrived in Atlanta this weekend and while I am totally caught up in getting settled and resolving any possible type of administrative issue, I had some time yesterday to go out and take some first shots. I mainly walked the Midtown Atlanta area and Atlantic station, which is where I am temporarily located until I decide on housing. So here are a few first impressions from yesterdays’s walk. You will see that this is quite different from Nürnberg in many respects.

As usual let me provide you with an overview map of the area. You can see Atlantic station in the upper left corner and Midtown more to the middle lower part.

We start our walk close to Peachtree St. and 14th at the Windsor apartment buildings where this water fountain is located and continue towards Piedmont Park. My first stop was Einstein’s for brunch.

As you can see, Midtown has several high rises, some of which are office buildings and others are residential real estate…

… and yes, you will find these huge american billboards there. As you can see here and you will see on several other pictures that follow, often things look a bit rundown which is quite different from Germany. If I would have to summarize the difference in a single sentence, I would say that Germans are more “maintaining” whereas here in the US things are used, and when not suitable anymore, replaced with something new.

… here you can see the same thing. Look at the balconies from below. You can see quite some deterioration, whereas when you step back a couple of steps, the buildings looks quite nice.

While the skyline is dominated by high rises you will also find a couple of small structures. I still haven’t quite figured out what this type of building is. My initial guess is that it is some cheap structure that can be setup quickly with typically one to two levels. These are brick-and-mortar buildings, flat and spread out.

The next one shows a typical view down on one of the bigger streets (I think it was Peachtree st., the main street of Atlanta).

I then ended up on the Georgia Tech campus and its student center, where I found these umbrellas which looked quite google-ly. This was actually for a good reason, as they currently film some part of a movie, where Google plays a prominent role in, right on campus. In fact I was right on the set, which was somewhat funny, as everything that indicated Georgia Tech was removed and replaced by some google signs, so that you felt as being on the google campus. I might post some shots about that later, however it was not too spectacular either. I hope they leave some of the cool stuff for Tech, such as the big Androids…

This skyline which you might recognize from the banner of the blog was shot from the roof top of the student center. You should try this out at night – pretty cool view – in the lower part of the picture you can see some trucks that brought stuff for the movie.

One more shot from the campus. They even brought chairs in google colors.

At some point I went back for a quick nap. The jet lag was (and still is) killing me. I then went out again in the evening for dinner and headed towards Atlantic station. What amazed me quite a bit is that the backyard alleys and parking lots look so different from Germany. I am still not exactly sure what the difference is but see for yourself. The first one is a typical parking lot…

… and the next two are some alleys.

Somehow, they do not feel German at all, but I do not know yet what the fundamental difference is.

On my way to Atlantic Station I crossed a highway bridge when I found these unusual looking houses. It is like a long row of houses where each unit is rather narrow and small, and they seem to be glued together, putting a frame around this enormous parking lot right in front.