New Zealand adventure: last stop Christchurch

So this is one of the last posts on my trip to New Zealand. After our trip to Dunedin we had to drive to Christchurch where we were due to take a plane back to Auckland and from there fly to Hong Kong.

We had a full afternoon to spend in this really cool place with this still weird atmosphere about it.
The earthquake that shattered this community with a 7.1 shock in 2011 cost the lives of a 185 people and caused billions of dollars of damage.
This trauma is still present today. The city feels empty in a way. For me there was always the feeling that there should be more people around. And there are still a lot of buildings that need to be renovated.
I did like that a lot of blank walls had been used to put giant and beautiful grafiti art on them

On the other side there are also things that show the human spirit at its best and the perseverance of a community as a whole to overcome disaster and move on. I especially liked the last picture here where they just had loads of white chairs of different kinds that were set up as a kind of open air church. I am not the most religious person but I did really see that this would be something to respect and would bring people together at a time like that.

We wandered around the city center and took in the container mall, the half destroyed cathedral and the side streets. I am happy that I have visited there but would not want to live there and I guess not having lived through the trauma would in a sense always make someone an outsider. The people of Christchurch are all united through this event and I think it would be hard to integrate in a sense. But I could be completely wrong as well. If you are from there please let me know.