The city that I have always wanted to visit more than any other and still would like to visit more than any other is Athens, Greece. I have always loved Ancient Greek history and anything to do with Athens and Greece but I have been there about 7 times, 14 if you count coming and going at the airport so I need to pick out another city.

There are other citys that I would like to visit such as Edinburgh, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Venice, and Rome but none that come close to Athens on my list of citys to visit. I would love Rome for the history, Venice because it is beautiful, Paris because it seems like there is no other city like Paris, Hong Kong since reading the novel Nobel House by James Clavell, London and Edinburgh for the history and I love to listen to the accents, especially Edinburgh. Out of those I guess i would pick London though.

London has a lot of history and my two favorite historical periods are Ancient Greece and Medieval England. I have been to London, but only the airport on my way to Athens. I would love to see the historical sites and explore the city. After living so close to Detroit, I have no concerns about visiting London although my parents have visited there and the day after they left a bomb went off in the same square that their hotel had been in.

I love British television and movies so they have been a partial influence on my desire to visit there. When I was a teenager I loved anything British, especially the music so that played a part in my choice of London.

Reflections of an Interview

I interviewed a friend of mine who lived on the east side in the city of Detroit, her name is Marcie. She and her roomates lived 1 block south of Grosse Pointe and the difference in those two streets was amazing, totally different, the crime did not seem to ever cross that boundry, someone would get shot on her street but she said that she had never heard that someone was shot just one block up. I have lived all over metro Detroit area, Downriver, Warren, Livonia, Wixom, Farmington Hills, Canton, Redford, and Holly, but never lived in the actual city of Detroit.

Marcie spoke about the gunshots that went off at all hours of the night while she and her roommates lived there, but being in her early twenties at the time, never really thought that it would affect her or her roommates. The house was a huge old house where the landlord rented out the individual rooms but besides the bedrooms, everything else was common area. Once, right before moving out, she was home alone and a group of older teenage boys broke into the house. When she heard that she called her mom, telling her that she heard someone in the house, at that moment they walked into the room where she was and took the phone from her hand. She started crying and then one of the boys got on the phone with her mother and said some things to really scare her before hanging up the phone. Her mother called 911 and drove there as fast as she could, she normally lived at least 45 minutes away and arrived before the police. The boys just took her car keys and then left, not harming her.

I have been lucky that I have never had to live in fear of my life or that of my children, I believe it would be a terrible thing to lose your child. I can't imagine how terrified she must have been and being a mother myself I can't imagine the terror that went through her mother. Things like that make you think about how it really must be living in a place with so much crime.

DETROIT, WHERE THE WEAK ARE KILLED AN EATEN???

When people talk about Detroit, the images are usually not good ones. Even I am not always proud to admit that I am from Detroit, instead I tell people I am from a suburb of the Detroit Metropolitan area. Detroit has a reputation for being a very violent and dangerous place, when I tell people where I am from, they usually recoil in terror.

Hollywood and the media have focused the world's attention on the negative aspects of Detroit. Even here in the Detroit Metropolitan area there are sayings and products geared toward Detroit's dangerous reputation. T-shirts and bumper stickers say things such as Detroit, where the weak are killed and eaten. The happy face with a bullet hole in his head is another image that I have seen here in the city itself.

In some ways living in a city with a reputation for being a dangerous place can be a good thing, people will tend to respect you and not mess with you. I personally don't think that Detroit is a bad place to live and think that much of the danger of Detroit is greatly exaggerated.

One thing that I am sure just confirmed what a bad place it would be to live in is what happened with Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick was a very corrupt man who took advantage of his position and made the world take notice of Detroit and just confirmed in people's minds that Detroit is a corrupt city as well as dangerous. Several members of the Detroit City Council were charged with crimes of dishonesty as well.

Despite all of the negative images linked to Detroit, it is not a bad place to live. Detroit is right across the river to Canada and has a lot of history attached to it. The people also are not as bad as the media says. There is crime but Detroit can also be a very fun place to be, whether it is Greektown or Mexicantown or any other of the places that can be found in Detroit.