Every place has its sound, that ambient noise which you become accustomed to over time. Here in Summerside, the wind is the one which has impressed me. The days without wind or a breeze are remarkable.
Our few days in Halifax recently did not give us time to settle on a sound which represented that city. However, the sounds were different from those we hear daily.
The fog horn was busy. While we are Newfoundland born, for most of our lives we lived in central Newfoundland where there was little fog. Now in Prince Edward Island, Summerside has fog occasionally but we have not heard a fog horn. Halifax was reminiscent of my youth in eastern Newfoundland where fog is a way of life and the fog horn signals a way through the atmospheric pea soup.
We stayed downtown in Halifax, not far from the train station. The sound of the train is also reminiscent of our younger years. As children, both my husband and I knew the sound of a train but it impacted our lives in more important ways as family members worked with the railway. That sound put food on the table. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island lost their railways in 1989. The sound of the train in Halifax was a welcome comfort.
The air conditioning in the hotel room was noisy. Living in eastern Canada, there is usually a breeze and temperatures are rarely high for long. At home, our air conditioner is an open window, not a noisy machine, though we have one which we have used on one occasion.
We turned off the air conditioner in the hotel room and opened a window. The downtown traffic was much noisier than in our neighbourhood in Prince Edward Island where many nights, not a car goes up our street. The question became, traffic noise or noisy air conditioner? We opted for the traffic which decreased on the city streets over night.
What is the ambient sound where you live?