Ever since I arrived here in Dunedin, I've noticed a very strange phenomenon: Dunedin is covered in broken glass. Brown, green, blue, clear....shiny, sharp confetti collecting in the gutters. Car parks shimmer with a sea of glass shards and jagged bottles lie scattered in the weedy empty lots. You could make a mosaic of ancient Roman proportions with all the glass in the streets and on the sidewalks. It seems that young (and perhaps older) Dunners find much satisfaction in breaking glass bottles after emptying them. It's possible that allowing drinking on the streets, combined with the lack of adequate rubbish bins (forget recycling!), contributes to the abundance of broken bottle glass that litters the town. Glass from vandalized storefront windows also accumulates on sidewalks, turning a shopping trip downtown into a hazardous hopscotch.
And here's another strange thing: many Dunners walk barefoot. Now I understand wanting to be barefoot in the park, at the beach or in the botanical gardens, especially on the few precious hot days here, but walking barefoot on the glass-strewn streets of Dunedin just seems plain stupid. One wrong step and you have just landed yourself in the Dunedin hospital for a tetanus shot. Not to mention the possibility of toe amputation from the hypothermia-inducing icy winds that regularly blow through town. OK, a bit far-fetched, I know.....but those who walk barefoot in Dunedin have rocks in their heads. And glass shards in the soles of their feet.
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