Going to do my last year of uni in one of these places, not sure of the pros and cons of living in either of them. I'm a northerner, I've spent 2 years living in the midlands but never down south. What do you lads reckon?
Southampton is alright. Bit pricey, but relatively decent people. I technically went to uni there, but not really. People from Stoke seem to loathe the place.
Southampton is fairly grotty. The town center is full of Chavs. Portswood, to the north of the city center is mostly students, fairly chilled with some ok shops. The Hobbit pub is filthy but fun.
To be fair to Southampton, I did live in several parts of it for five years and only had trouble once where I was punched in the face on a Saturday night. I lived up the top end of Saint Marys, which was supposed to be rough, and I never had any trouble there.
And on the subject of your image, you can get stupidly cheap drinks in some of the student nightclubs. They are shitholes, though.
I haven't lived there, but from visiting I would definitely choose Southampton over Stoke. For a student it's got far more going on, and in the summer you occasionally get some sunshine. Stoke is just grim.
I've not been to Southampton since I was a nipper but Stoke's a weird place.
I live on the outskirts of Hanley which is one of the nicer areas; but having said that the center of Hanley becomes an absolute ghost town past about 4pm and everything in the center bar the big Sainsbury and the big Tesco shuts by 5pm. Not sure what its' like oop noorth but down in Lahndahn I was used to be being able to toddle into my local M&S until 9pm most nights.
On Friday and Saturday nights most of Hanley center becomes something like a scene out of one of those BBC documentaries on broken britain. Every pub (every pub, even the old granddad ones) has security on the door. Not sure how pervasive that is around the UK but in London I used to avoid pubs with door security on general principles.
So far I've found two nice-ish pubs: The Exchange on Trinity Street which is really nice for late afternoon drinking, has a nice selection of different booze, but is on the pricey side and tends to fill up with what must be stokes only dozen or so hipster twats around 5-6pm. Weekends it's the same bouncered-up shithole as everywhere else. It's also the site of the town's original old telephone exchange, which is now situated in an unmarked BT building next door, which is nice if you like that kind of thing.
The other is the The Glebe on Glebe Street which sells a really rather nice locally produced craft lager called Green Monkey and has a nice back terrace. Alternative staff and music in general and I have the slight sensation it's a gay pub, although that doesn't matter a jot to me.
The main local 'spoons (The Reginald Mitchell) is, well, a 'spoons but it's not the worst I've been to in that it's huge, chill, and cheap. Never seen any agro in there other than a few old sots asleep on tables and if you're ever locked into a multi-day depressive bender (and if you spend any real time in stoke you will do) it's a good place to go because you'll be left alone and Strongbow is only £2.50 a pint. I think possibly as cheap as £1.50 in the day.
Now that I've shown myself up as a thoroughly resting actor....
The main problem I have with Stoke is that unless you like heavy drinking, kickboxing, weights/gym, judo or fighting sports in general there really is bugger all else to do (luckily I like all those things). The only other thing I've found to do is cheap Ten Pin bowling on Sundays which is fun the first few times especially if you're on drugs, although you do start to worry that you're about to be picked up by Operation Yewtree.
I've been out to over a dozen restaurants. So far I've found two that are worthy of the title. One of them cost me almost £100 for two people, so there's that.
Mainly I've rambled on about Hanley because by all accounts it's the only place worth being at all. Areas to particularly avoid include colbridge, shelton and tunstall.
Actually if you've read all that and still come to stoke I'll be your personal Virgil, guiding you all the way from your first flat pint in 'spoons to scoring shit speed from a junkie at the bus station all the way to getting arrested for noncing a precocious teenager in a bowling alley.
Come to stoke! We're shit!
The above is an excerpt from my upcoming memoirs "Stoking the flames of hell", soon available in all bad bookshops. Sage for utterly rambling. I live in Stoke for fuck's sake, It's surprising I haven't killed myself yet.
Pic related: it's literally the first thing you see when getting off the train at Stoke station. I wish I was making this up.
well you're officially put me off Stoke lads. Worth mentioning I spent two years just in Stafford at the other uni campus but I tired of small old Stafford. I've been to Hanley a few times on nights out. The womenfolk seem friendly enough.
So my choices are either Manchester or Southampton (few places do my course you see, just found out Manchester does it as well)
Manchester, easy. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's a genuinely cosmopolitan city with a rich cultural life. Southampton is the kind of city that people escape from, Manchester is the kind of city that people escape to.
From personal experience Southampton seems like a decent place, good town centre with plenty of pubs etc. The campus is one of the better I've seen for a campus uni but it does seem to be strangely far from the student halls (maybe not an issue if you're getting your own place though).
From other people I know, I've heard mixed things. One guy going to the city college loves the place, but he's off his face on K and mandy most the time so he'd probably have an equally good time gurning in and abandoned barn in Yorkshire so maybe take that with a pinch of salt or whatever else is your poison.
Another guy who graduated a few years back seemed to have had enough of the place, in particular he said that it felt very generic and lacked the individual character of cities like Liverpool, Norwich etc.
Don't know so much about Manny, from what I've heard it's a great student city but as with any large city there are some seriously dodgy areas.
If you're a student in Manchester you generally don't even have to go near the dodgy areas. Fallowfield is a bit shitty but it's not that dodgy and it's mainly students so there's no real issue.
Yeah it's a bit bland. For some reason, my three favourite things about Southampton are that you can get there from Waterloo and it's not far from Portsmouth, whose high street I prefer. The third is that it's next to the New Forest.
