I was a little apprehensive about visiting Christchurch again after many years. This was in 2016. Long absences do strange things to places especially when in that absence disaster strikes.

I have many memories of Christchurch and mostly pleasant ones. Numerous bus trips with the Nelson College for Girls choir to compete in the annual Secondary Schools Choir Festival in Christchurch certainly made some great memories. That may sound a little boring yet it wasn’t at all about singing but a highly sought-after opportunity to check out the choir of Nelson (boys) College. When you’re (un)lucky enough to be enrolled in an all-girls school that is exciting. Unfortunately, nothing much escaped our conductor’s stern gaze who took her supervision of us quite seriously.

Memories of the city itself were fading slowly and longing to be refreshed on my return. Instead, they were lost to the earthquake of February 22nd 2011, which killed 185 people and destroyed most listed heritage buildings and historic landmarks in the inner city. Not to speak of some 10.000 houses in suburbs, which when we visited had been or still had to be demolished. Earthquakes in New Zealand are a rather frequent occurrence. The islands sit on the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and earthquake drills at school were as common as fire drills. So New Zealand knows that sooner or later there will be another one. Like the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 2010, very close to Christchurch, that caused surprisingly little destruction. But then in 2011, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck and its epicentre was basically right underneath the city centre of Christchurch at a shallow depth.

We knew about the earthquake of course and had been forewarned countless time that the city was unrecognisable. And anyway, me being deprived of refreshing memories is a ludicrously insignificant predicament. Mum said people were still using port-a-loos five years after the earthquake. I cannot begin to imagine what five years on a port-a-loo might do to you.

‘You’re in for a shock,’ our B&B host said at breakfast, ‘most of the city is gone’. Still, this did not prepare me for the vast emptiness of vacant rubble lots right in the city centre, already overgrown with small sturdy bushes, where once office buildings stood.

Tame rabbits were scampering across these lots. I wasn’t quite sure what Tobi thought of his first visit to Christchurch but he hadn’t expected rabbits for sure. Five years after the quake nature was still mocking the human effort to restore urban life and find replacements for the icons this city lost. Many buildings had been demolished; others were still barricaded with warning signs prominently displayed all around the mesh wire fence, patiently waiting for their imminent destruction. Of the very few buildings that had survived many were still awaiting major repairs and would remain closed for years to come.

As shocking as the abandoned emptiness was, I didn’t much mourn the loss of office buildings. But my eyes filled with tears as I stood in front of Christchurch Cathedral, or the ruin that is left of the former city icon. This, to me, had been the heart and soul of New Zealand’s most beautiful city. Cathedral Square in my memories was the vibrant, colourful meeting place of the city, but without the cathedral, its identity and beauty were lost. That is nevertheless an insignificant loss in light of 185 casualties.

185 Empty White Chairs memorial, remembering the lives lost in the earthquake, is an installation by artist Peter Majendiex called Reflection of Loss of Lives, Livelihoods and Living in Neighbourhood. On a vacant lot, where once Oxford Terrace Baptist Church stood, he placed rows of chairs in all shapes and sizes that pay tribute to the unique personality of the victims. We arrived in the dark when the site is floodlit and the light reflected off the white paint on the chairs emphasised the simplicity of the memorial. My eyes wandered up and down the lines, pausing briefly on an armchair, wheelchair, bar stool, baby capsule, and wicker chair. At my sister’s wedding, her father-in-law played with his band. One band member died in the earthquake. I had only seen him once, at the wedding, and didn’t know anything about him other than that he was a gifted musician. Still, I wondered which of the chairs was his.

I am completely ignorant of the tremendous effort required to rebuild almost an entire city, but we did ask ourselves why five years after the earthquake the destruction was still so visible and overpowering. Why so many prime-location lots were still disguised by scars of abandoned, half-demolished buildings. Not even graffiti could distract attention away from the grotesquely distorted empty shells as their insides were being ripped out by heavy machinery.

When on the surface everything seemed to have changed for the returning visitor, I thought, I noticed a similar vibrant spirit to before. International food stalls outside the fenced-off cathedral sold Nepalese momo, tacos, and New Zealand gelato (a very distant cousin to the Italian original). Each stall was supplied with its own vibrating generator that added a low hum to the background buzzing noises. New Regent Street with its cute pastel-coloured little 2-story houses that are home to many bars, cafes, and restaurants was well frequented by dressed up Christchurchers and tourists in crumbled shorts and Havaianas enjoying a Friday night out.

We were perched on barstools at a small round table at the Twenty Seven Steps restaurant when between our starters and mains a little earthquake hit and for a few seconds gently shook the ground. The locals remained completely unfazed by the small aftershock while all tourists were frantically grabbing table tops in disbelief. I think Tobi was most excited as this was his first-ever baby quake.

To revive the city centre, a brightly coloured transitional shipping container mall had been assembled, and it was definitely not the usual type of mall that bores me after a half-hour. Home-decorating stores, souvenir shops, funky eateries, food trucks, and retro-chic hairdressers started as a temporary replacement but the colourful, unconventional potpourri might have acquired a permanent right to stay.

The one place in the city that has not changed is Hagley Park. The magnificent rose garden was in full bloom, sending a sweet scent into the dry, hot air, and the Avon River was patiently winding through manicured greens alongside a gravel footpath. The lawns were dotted with family picnics and bright flowerbeds in various shades of yellow and red and some parsley, dense as spongy moss, framed the outside.

Some countries apparently believe that the beauty of a park is measured by the number of park rules enforced. I could fill pages with mostly silly rules: no alcoholic beverages, no glass containers, no littering, no horseplay or fighting, no fires, no camping, no motorised vehicles, no excessive noise or loud music, no swimming (wait, there wasn’t any place to swim?), no biking, no skating, no drugs, no profanity, no fishing (again, there wasn’t any place to fish), no firearms or knives, no idling (I’m confused, is that not the very purpose of going to a park?), no bare feet or flip-flops (honestly, why?).

In some parks, several signs were needed to display all the rules in the smallest font size. Hagley Park however is a very different sort of place where small kids splashed in water fountains while a bagpiper in a calf-long Scottish quilt was playing a polka.

There are ambitious plans in store for Christchurch and I no longer hope to refresh past memories but that by the time we next visit, the most beautiful of New Zealand’s cities will again be that.