Cardiff

For those who haven’t heard yet, you most likely only need 40% to pass your first year and it contributes precisely nothing to your final degree mark. Good, eh? Now you can concentrate on making as many dodgy friends, seeing as many dodgy bands and eating as many dodgy foods as you possibly can. Luckily Cardiff is a super city to university in with a nice blend of small town and big city, mostly friendly locals and other perks such as free prescriptions for when you’ve gotten too pissed, snogged too many randoms and caught tonsillitis yet again.

Pubs
Starting off in studentville – aka Cathays and Roath – Bar En Route was a well kept secret for such a long time. Not your average pub golfing venue, more a quiet, civilized bar which is roughly the size of your parent’s living room and does an impressive selection of beers which, last I looked, can top off at the 11% vol. mark. Closer to town, the Pen and Wig is a common favourite for those who like their pubs to look like pubs and not like Ikea came up and shit its current catalogue all over the interior. It has a cracking beer garden which is always filled with merry drinkers on a hot summer’s day. Down in town you’re best heading to Dempsey’s, an Irish-themed pub which is commonly frequented by both music fans and sports fans on match days. If Arcade Fire-type indie is your thing then don’t miss Twisted by Design upstairs on alternate Saturdays. Finally we can’t leave out Buffalo which landed a couple of years ago and has kicked the bottoms of every other bar in town. It does an impressive range of nights and is where the trendy types of Cardiff prefer to be seen.

Clubs
The permanent favourite among the students will always be Clwb Ifor Bach, more colloquially known as the Welsh Club. It traditionally attracts those with asymmetrical haircuts and vintage dresses but Popscene on a Wednesday caters for all with Motown/cheese, indie and electronica across three floors. Playing almost the same music but in a much smaller venue round the corner is Barfly. Best described as intimate, although, both places will make you sweat in places you didn’t know had glands. For those who think that they could get a bit chilly in Barfly and prefer to gawp at interestingly shaped hairdos and piercings then Metros is where you’ll be headed. If nothing else the exceedingly cheap vodka will tempt you.

Venues
Well of course there’s Barfly, the queen of the indie venue, hosting all the bands that Barfly’s tend to host. Clwb Ifor Bach also has many music acts passing through its doors, with a tendency towards those who are Welsh.

The Students’ Union as a mid-sized venue is very popular with bands and chances are if acts the size of Bloc Party and the like come to Cardiff they will play here. Down the Bay there’s the double fun of the Coal Exchange and The Point, both are housed in impressive buildings that used to be something else, and attract some impressive acts thanks to the work of local promoters Plug Two and Forecast.
 
 

St Mary’s Street. Avoid it like you may catch AIDS every time you walk down it. And if you do please make sure you’re so hammered you can’t remember. Every time pissed-up idiots are on telly as an example of society being flushed down the toilet they always always feature St Mary’s Street. On weekends the inhabitants of the Welsh Valleys spill down into Cardiff and spend the evening drinking as many pints of flat Carling/Smirnoff Ice as humanly possible, whipping their arses out for public viewing and then attempting to smash each other in the face with an empty drinking receptacle.

Long hailed and loved by every music fan who passes through Cardiff is Spillers. According to local myth, legend, and the shop’s website, it’s been around since 1894 and is now the mecca of independent music. Its crumpled-looking staff know more about your favourite obscure band than you will ever do and it is also a nice haven for those hard to find music mags as well. Not far down the road you’ll also find Catapult for the dance lovers among you where every local DJ likes to say they shop. Other cosy music shopping opportunities can be found in upstairs in Cardiff Market and in D’Vinyl in Roath.



You all know about the Lostprophets, Manics, Stereophonics, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, The Automatic and, the ones the Cardiff trendy scene is still most proud of, the Super Furry Animals. As far as newbies go there’s a fair bit of buzz surrounding Los Campesinos! who all met at Cardiff Uni and were snapped up by Wichita before they had even graduated. Others pushing their way forward are Kids in Glass Houses, Gethin Pearson and the Scenery, Viva Machine, Attack and Defend and Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club.

Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital city, taking over the mantle from Swansea in 1955. It’s also Europe’s fastest growing city and regularly comes top of best places to live polls.

One hundred different languages are spoken here; it has Britain’s largest Somalian population outside of London and, is the UK’s only bilingual city. The workers who passed through Cardiff Docks from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries came from all over the world and many settled here and married local girls. As a result Cardiff was one of the first British cities to truly embrace multiculturalism.

Roald Dahl was born here when his family moved over from Scandinavia and they used to visit the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay.

The Welsh have rarely been more excited than when Doctor Who was filmed here. As the promos said: “Filmed in Wales by BBC Wales”.

Cardiff Mardi Gras is the UK’s third largest lesbian and gay event, behind London and Brighton. The city also has more green space per capita than any other in the UK.