The capital cities. If you want authentic Europe, find the weird local festivals where people chase cheese down a hill or celebrate local culture or something. That’s real Europe. Fuck the big cities and their galleries and museums.
https://www.egremontcrabfair.com/
https://airguitarworldchampionships.com/en/home/
https://www.latomatinatours.com/
https://www.theshed.co.uk/independent
https://cipc.pipeclubs.com/events/british-pipe-smoking-championship-2/
https://www.visitvoss.no/en/smalahovetunet
https://www.sbf.se/sportgrenar/folkrace
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinkensport
https://eukonkanto.fi/en/front-page/
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/man-shatters-toes-winning-world-8977482
These are a few things off the top of my head mostly northern and western Europe because it’s what I’m familiar with. Also if you want to see something bizarre, go to Finland on free bucket day. But seriously Europe is full of unusual things to do. Or you could go to yet another gallery and pretend to be interested in paintings.
Usa
Here’s what I would avoid when traveling to Poland:
- Zakopane, it’s overpriced and very crowded. If you want to visit the area the town is in your better off staying in smaller villages, unless you have to use public transit.
- Szczecin --not an ‘avoid at all cost’ but more of a ‘there are better cities to visit’-- this-or-that part of the city is always being remodeled/reconstructed and there’s no ‘old city’ with day and night life focused between two shoping centers and some roundabouts in the city center. If you want to go sight-seeing Kraków, Wrocław or Gdańsk are much better choices.
- Mazury lake district, beautiful lakes and decent nightlife, shit infrastructure - roads are narrow (two bigger cars can’t pass eachother without going offroad) and often lacking sings and other markings
- Podlaskie Voivodship, even worse infrastructure than Mazury, it’s rural, mainly towns and villages with nothing a tourist might want to see. You might think it’s a good place to go star-gazing but Bieszczady are a lot better for that (Tho you should probably go to a Dark Sky Site for that, there’s one close to Bieszczady, in Slovakia)
- THE SEASIDE, it’s crowded, expensive, the sea is cold and it’s fumcking wimdy, go to like Italy, Croatia, Portugal or Spain instead
Also in general avoid capital cities, they are often the worst of major cites in a given country.
I forgot two places - both as bad as Zakopane - One is the Hel(l) Peninsula, it’s as overcrowded as Zakopane; but it has a single road (one lane each way) that gets jammed very fast, you can be stuck there like 5 hours, even though it’s only 30 Km long. The second one is Krynica Morska, a town located on the Vistula Spit(separating Vistula Lagoon from Gdańsk Bay, in the Baltic Sea) and it has the same problem as Hel - it’s a popular destination with only one road in and out.
My wife an I were on a Roadtrip from Germany to Poland for a holiday and did go to a lot of beautiful places. But Zakopane is stuck in my mind as the most touristy place I did ever go to. The High Tatra mountains are still beautiful but we had to wait in line to even enter the hiking trails. And on the trails it was just hundreds of people trying to make photos without other people in the background.
Jes and moorsky okko is brutally filled with tourists
Common tourist places during tourist season are usually the worst. I took a 10 day trip to Paris one summer and it was a mix of the most popular tourist places (Louvre, Eiffel tower, etc) and some underground shit my sister found.
Every tourist place was jam packed with annoying tourists, costly and had tons of scammers surrounding it. Every less known place was really awesome, aside from one sketchy neighborhood we had to walk through where we were followed for a while.
I’d also say that Northern Europe has generally been much more pleasant to travel through, for me.
Depends. Are you white? Would you be recognizable as a “foreigner”? In the latter case avoid all of Germanys provinces, especially in the former East. Do not travel alone and be wary of the cops. They are usually the same groups as the local Neonazis.
Those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.
love me some rage
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In the east maybe, its definetly not bad at all in northern germany (Schleswig Holstein).
Rostock is okayish too, we’re a tourist town with quite a few foreigners. Just don’t go to the rural areas as a non-white person.
I’m white af, but, as an American, I didn’t get treated as rudely anywhere else in Germany than Berlin. Still had a great time overall in the city, but, not really in a rush to go back.
My friend and I were standing at a bar mulling over the menu, just kind of murming to one another over what drinks we wanted while we were waiting for the bartender to finish up with his other customers. It wasn’t busy, but he was attending to other people. When he was finally done, he approached us and I said “Hi how are you?” with a smile. He didn’t say a single word to us, just took the menus from in front of us and put them on the back shelf, and then turned away.
So we left. Our money clearly wasn’t good enough there, and we spent it in another bar across the alleyway instead.
When he was finally done, he approached us and I said “Hi how are you?” with a smile.
There’s probably the problem. Don’t ask a german “how are you”, they will interpret it as the start of a conversation, not a greeting. You might either get weird looks or a detailled personal and medical history of that person. In food service, you get to the point. A “Excuse me” or “Can we order please” is a way better way to initiate an order.
Well berlin is certainly a different place than the rest of germany. They are famous for their “berliner schnauze” like new york or paris are famous for honest and/or rude people.
I mean, it’s still a place I’d tell people to go visit. The bars/restaurants are awesome, and the (not so distant) history is sobering. I found the Stasi museum hella interesting/terrifying.
I’d just mentally prep people before-hand for the, ah, “bluntness” 😂
As a Dane I’d guess they didn’t realize Americans use it as a greating and so assumed you to be initiating a conversation unrelated to ordering, possibly with bad intentions.
It would be a little like starting the conversation with a “how is your mother”, it would signal way more familiarity than was had, come way out of left field and be generally unwanted when you are working if you don’t have time to stop for the conversation that would ensue.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you did anything wrong necessarily, it’s just a cultural difference that likely causes misunderstandings if none of the parties are aware of it. I’d liken it to a Eurpean going to a restaurant in the US, not tipping anything and how both parties may feel the other party to be rude after the fact if the server let their dissatisfaction show.
I could of course be wrong and they may just have been an ass, plenty of those in tourist heavy areas for sure. Just something to consider if it could have been the case.
What did that mean ? I’m not sure how to interpret. Why would the barkeep do something like that ?
My friend and I just assumed he could tell we were American and didn’t want to serve us. We didn’t stick around to ask. And he didn’t tell us off or to leave or anything, but just more blatantly ignored us.
Like I said, overall still good time. Everyone else was nice and happy enough to chat/serve us (or at least appeared to be lmao)
So, shitty service one place but fine across the street ? And Berlin kinda sucks?
Do you mean “provinces” as in federal states or as in hillbilly regions?
“hillbilly regions”. But that can include cities with up to 200k 300k inhabitants in the former eastern Germany.
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France is becoming a far right country on two weeks. Do yourself a favor and stay as far as you can.
So, should I stay on the left side of France?
Hold up, let’s see what happens with the front populaire
Honestly, I’ll vote for them. But they disgust me with all their power struggle about who’s going to be prime minister. In doing so, they’re tearing apart the whole thing. They swore that they wouldn’t betray us. They’re betraying us everyday by showing everybody it’s just a struggle between egos. They’re paving the way for the far right too with this ridiculous display of inflated heads.
I’ll vote for them, then I’ll puke. The only frontliner I’m feeling like supporting in the future is, maybe, Manon Aubry.
Yeah, I’m not getting my hopes up unfortunately
Do get your hopes up, and your neighbours voting, please.
Who talks to their neighbors in this day and age? They’ll probably vote for the party who wants my death anyway so yeah…
I mean yeah sure we could be surprised, but things aren’t really going in the right direction
And Italy, and Switzerland, and Hungary, and Finland…
Berlin
France.
Foreigner in France here. Couldn’t be more wrong Beautiful country, amazing food. People are… People. Good and bad, as with every other place. Plenty of places I didn’t feel welcome. France wasn’t one of it. Except Marseille. Yeah, avoid Marseille. (Altho it has its good parts)
Fully agree. I’ve been to France a few times and a properly used (if not pronounced) Bonjour and Merci and my rudimentary and poorly pronounced French went a long way there. Even in Paris. Be polite and try to learn even a little French and all but the grumpiest French will be very pleasant to and likely be amused by you. I LOVE France. Interesting that you suggest avoiding Marseille. I spend some time nearby (Aix au Provence) and I could easily see living there.
Aix is beautiful! The whole coast is too like Nice etc.
Marseille though is like the dumpster of France.
That is such a weird take. I’ll temper it some, if you don’t mind. Nice is a far right shithole, has been for a couple decades. Marseille on the other hand is the definition of a mediterranean harbour : diverse, rich, populous, mysterious. One will never know Marseille without dipping one’s toes. Then perhaps it will reveal a couple of its secrets. It’s an ancient place full of nooks and crannies, fiercely antifascist and mesmerizing for anyone versed in urbanism. It’s definitely earned -a skim on the surface will likely not get you far.
What makes you say that about nice? Been there many times and I’m not a fan of the city, but for other reasons. I’d have imagined a far right shithole to be…whiter, if nothing else.
I mean the actual city, not the stuff around it. Mostly because there’s a lot of gangs and thieves and such. There’s actually a few streets that ste fully controlled by gangs afaik. Like barricades made out of couches and shit and ambulances need an escort to get in and such.
Otherwise yeah, Aix, Cassis, and most of Provence are awesome.
That is legend, only legend. Far right propaganda. Marseille has a drug & gang problem (it’s nationwide really) but none of that “no-go zone” talk is true.
Can’t find the original anymore as it’s been a few years, but there was this post on reddit about a street view car in Marseille. This is an article covering the thing. Nobody claimed it was fake at the time. Showed it to people that used to live in Marseille and they didn’t seem surprised either.
Just make sure to avoid Brussels. Belgian myself and I hate the place.
Was recommended the same by someone from Brussels.
(He was not 6 foot and full of muscles, to be clear)
The vegemite sandwiches are enough to keep me away.
Back when Australia was still remote and exotic, before Crocodile Dundee even, a lot of people back in the day thought he sang:
“He just smiled and gave me a bit of my sandwich”,
which would have also made for a fantastic lyric in a very silly way.
Did he speaka your language?
I wanna move to Belgium. Not once have I considered Brussels as my new demeure. It’s got some cool stuff, but it has little to no revisit value.
Quite a lot of the cities in the Flemish region look absolutely beautiful (Bruges especially), yet everyone I know of just sees Brussels and thinks of it as all of Belgium, then comes to the conclusion that the entire country is basically rubbish.
But I personally think that Charleroi is way worse.
Just got back from a 3 day trip to Brussels, we loved it. Plus, Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) everywhere. We did take a day trip to Bruges though, that was even better than Brussels IMHO. Especially since I could walk around saying to my wife “If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”.
Kinda enjoyed my 2 day trip…
I visited Brussels this a month ago, I loved it.
I went to Charleroi once and it was awful. Brussels is fine.
Charleroi is super depressing indeed.
Olten
Shhh Olten doesn’t really exist. It’s just a railway junction.
Gelsenkirchen and Duisburg are kinda famous atm.
Had a couch surfer stay with us a while in Kuwait. He’d been everywhere. He said that, of all places, Moldova had no redeeming qualities. Granted, things might have changed in 10 years. Does anyone care to weigh in?
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Kursk
The news say Eastern Ukraine, though take that with a grain of salt as I haven’t been there personally.
