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What’s better, to live in a big city or a small village? Hey, there’s a thought: what’s better, to live in a small city or a big village (and does that phrase make sense)? I was born in a metropolis with a bit over 4 million inhabitants. I lived there until I was 17 – hence, a massive influence on my personality. Then I moved to another metropolis, about the same size (maybe very slightly bigger in absolute numbers, but covering a larger area it always felt smaller).

And then, I moved to a hamlet with about 100 inhabitants. Don’t ask why or where, it doesn’t matter. Life just happens. And life just happened when, after about two years in that village, I moved to a town that was larger by about 2000 people – and colder by about 40 degrees F (20C) on average. There, I lived for another two years until I moved to the place I currently live – a city of about 350.000 inhabitants.

A “Nice” Big City (Yawn)

The place I live now is very nice by Western-World standards (and a utopia by more general ones). It’s not a big city, but neither a small one. Sometimes it’s a bit too quiet – I don’t mean that in terms of life, activity, or happenings, but literally. Having lived in metropolises of 4+ million people, sometimes I miss this low-level humming during the night, produced by countless of vehicles moving everywhere around you.

If at this point I asked you to take a guess, which place from the above I would like to live the most, what would your answer be?

• The place I was born and lived until I was 17?
• The second large metropolis?
• the tiny hamlet?
• the town?
• the city I currently live?

A Big City of the Mind

Perhaps most of you would place your bet on the first option, thinking in terms of nostalgia (we’ll talk more about it in a moment). Others might opt for the tiny hamlet – ah, the idyllic pastoral romance, huh?

The truth is, I would not like to live in any of the above options. And, to complicate things further, no, I do not have another option in mind either. There isn’t some other place on this planet which I’d like to live in.

The place I’d like to live in exists only in my mind.
It is an ideal, a city in the Platonic world.

Sounds, Sights, and Scents of a Big City

Many times I think that I miss the metropolis I was born and lived until I was 17. I miss its sounds: the nighttime humming I talked about; the way the city is waking up after dawn, with drivers honking the horns of their cars; the hot, summery sound of neighbors chattering on the sidewalk in the evening.

Moreover, I miss its colors: blue-tinted shadows on the street until noon (the buildings are tall and so close together, the sun doesn’t really reach everywhere until well into the day); superbly blue sky, at least when it’s windy; warm yellow with reddish shades as the sun sets over the park trees.

I miss its sights: the long, endless narrow streets with cars parked literally everywhere; the old people sipping coffee watching the passersby; the sea, a couple of miles away (I can see it from the rocky knoll).

I miss its scents: the fumes from passing cars (it reminds me of an airport, which reminds me of traveling); the slightly rancid smell in the air when waste collectors empty the garbage cans (it’s morning, the city is waking up); the matchless perfume of May flowers, when the temperature is almost (or over) 90F/30C already.

From Ideas to Fiction

Hang on a minute, you might say, how on earth can someone miss the smell of trash? How on earth can someone ask for more noise? And now we’re getting to the bottom of this. It’s not about space or time; it’s about feelings. And that’s the reason why I wouldn’t want to live in the big city of my childhood, but in its version that exists in my mind. It’s safe, predictable, and even the trash have an attractive scent there.

In fact, anyone who has read my novel To Cross an Ocean: Apognosis, might have noticed a certain similarity with the scene described in the previous section. Ultimately, perhaps that’s how fiction is born: You pick a reality, you play with it in your mind, you convince yourself it smelled good, you write it down.