Its been less than a week here but Ive already seen frames that seem to be part of some serene,make-believe world that exists only in tourist brochures: Children playing frisbee in the soft sunlight on neatly manicured lawns; a well-fed dog jumping around as his owner reads a book on an easy chair; brightly-painted farmhouses with white,knee-high picket fences in the middle of lush meadows dotted with grazing sheep; old couples sitting on street-side cafes,enjoying muffins and waving to tourists in flower-decked trams; an old woman perched on a bench next to a little stream full of ducks,with a group of sea gulls lazing on the bank. Is this suburban Christchurch,or a brochure for a pension plan? But the one stand-out feature that gives this city a distinct air of casualness is the sight of several bare-foot walkers. When I first saw a group of young girls holding their pencil-heel shoes in their hands while walking into a McDonalds,I thought they were merely relaxing their toes after a long walk. But as days passed by,the shoeless fashion manifested itself repeatedly. Passengers walked into buses minus footwear,amblers on the Cathedral square let their soles get a feel of the cold,clean concrete,and even in malls I had to cautiously manoeuvre the shopping cart with the fear of stepping on an uncovered toe. Why do they do it? This is how we feel free, replied a local. Not entirely convinced,I found a Guided Walks kiosk and asked the man at the counter. He told me that many children around New Zealand go to school without footwear because shoes arent a part of the dress code. There is also a bare-foot course to course race in Christchurch that is a big annual event,he said. When the sun is out after slight rain,try to walk bare-foot on the grass and tell me if you dont feel relief flooding through you, he challenged me with a smile. I tried it straight away,and he was spot on. Five days into the tour,Im still not entirely convinced if this is a real place or some make-believe world.
