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Holiday not ruined, it's just jarring to see all these beautiful buildings covered in tags. It's not just store fronts, all surfaces below 8 ft (2.7 meters?) seem to be fair game. We went to pizza just outside the Napoli train station and my wife likes it better than my carefully researched Roman pizza. It was good. Edit: neither Amsterdam nor Dusseldorf were like this, and I don't remember seeing much in London or Dublin, or, to jump continents, Sydney. Beachcomber fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Sep 4, 2018 |
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Sep 4, 2018 12:50
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The graffiti thing is a very fair criticism of much of continental Europe. I'm not sure why you got the reactions you got here.
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Sep 4, 2018 13:06
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I think population density plays a big part too.American cities are so spread out that there's plenty of places for kids to do their poo poo away from where the tourists (and police) are going to be. So there's just as many kids doing graffiti or whatever but far far fewer places to do it. I can't be bothered to really check for good sources so I'll just use the same website since they hopefully use the same criteria to build their tables but here are the most densely populated cities in the US and Europe from here and here.  OK in fact those stats do suck a lot so go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density NYC 10,431.1 per square km San Francisco 6,226.3 Boston 5,143.4 Chicago 4,582.3 Yes there are more dense areas but let's not compare Hudson County, NJ to Paris and Rome in terms of tourist expectations.  Also, let's not pretend that Roman graffiti is anything new. For my parents, at least, I don't think they were prepared for Europe to be a place where people actually lived and worked and not just an amusement park. They were constantly remarking about how dirty everything was and I think were expecting Paris to be like the watercolor painting I brought home from my class trip senior year. greazeball fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Sep 4, 2018 |
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Sep 4, 2018 13:13
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I think graffiti is also a maintenance thing? Like in Australia, there's definitely parts of cities covered in graffiti but the local council will generally have a dedicated amount of their budget dedicated to cleaning graffiti. Certainly in Italy they aren't the best at maintenance (as we've seen again recently), so it kinda makes sense that graffiti just piles up. I hadn't thought about it in terms of population density though that definitely makes sense. As a side note it always amazes me, driving into a major European centre and the sign on the freeway says "Prague 10kms" and you're still in the middle of fields. In Sydney, 10kms from the centre is still considered the inner city 
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Sep 4, 2018 13:59
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webmeister posted:I think graffiti is also a maintenance thing? Like in Australia, there's definitely parts of cities covered in graffiti but the local council will generally have a dedicated amount of their budget dedicated to cleaning graffiti. Certainly in Italy they aren't the best at maintenance (as we've seen again recently), so it kinda makes sense that graffiti just piles up. Yeah, it's definitely related to how much money there is to maintain buildings. As a general rule poorer places have more graffitti. I'm surprised Zurich has a lot of them. As for the freeway signs, that means 10km to the border of the city, not to the center.
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Sep 4, 2018 14:50
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My dad is going to Spain (Madrid as first stop) and someone's told him that he can have a mobile 4g hotspot delivered to his hotel. Is this an actual thing? Just getting a local sim card and putting it in his phone is not an option for him.
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Sep 4, 2018 17:42
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Yeah it’s a thing. If he doesn’t mind paying more. Or rent one in the airport, not so sure about price premium difference I imagine delivering to the hotel with airport drop off would be the most expensive but most convenient
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Sep 4, 2018 18:14
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Commenting on the amount of graffiti in Europe is one thing, but when you say it “reflected poorly on the Italians” you sound like a huge jackass.
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Sep 4, 2018 18:45
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Work is sending me to Brussels for a week! I'm going to have a day or two in the city where I won't be working (and evenings to grab a drink/dinner). It seems the general advice of this thread so far has been "Skip Brussels, it's boring", which is probably fair, but I'll be there for a conference for work, so are there any recommendations you all have in terms of places to eat or things to do other than Mannekin Piss? Or should I just buy the Rick Steve's guide and just consider that to be solid enough? Also, is Uber A Thing there? The main thing I'd want to do outside of the city is the Jean Claude Van Damme statue, which seems to be in the middle of a road somewhere, so I'd need a way to get out there and back, if I didn't want to wait on a bus
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Sep 4, 2018 20:41
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Sorry, I totally have been forgetting to follow up with this...webmeister posted:How long do you have in each? And why Palermo, out of interest? While you're there make sure you check out the royal chapel in the palace, the mosaics are incredible. The main cathedral is cool too, and there's a few other interesting buildings. It's a legacy of the place being part of Arab North Africa, who subsequently got booted out by the Normans of all people. Our itinerary puts us in Zurich 1 to 2 days in Zurich at each end of the trip, so we'll just explore locally there. Otherwise, we have 3 days in each location. We picked Palermo because we've both always wanted to go to Sicily, and just a bit of research said Palermo was a more enjoyable experience than Catania, and those were the two cities with airports. Thanks for the advice on Sicily and Malta! I will forward this info and others' info on along. I was actually pretty interested in Gozo, myself. Saladman posted:Zurich doesn't have much to do, but it has a bunch of nice outdoors bars and stuff, Frau Gerold's Garden being probably the #1. The tiny and hidden Jules Verne Bar off Bahnhofstrasse is also a gem and extremely hard to find even if you know where to look for it (it is accessed through an elevator hidden inside the restaurant indicated on Google Maps). Uetliberg and Honggerberg have great views of the city and surroundings. For Honggerberg, the best views are from the restaurant Die Waid, while Uetliberg the best views are from the top. Prime Tower also has a cool bar on top which is closed for summer but I think should reopen soon. Outside of town within easy daytrips, there's the easy hike up Grosser Mythen or Rigi Kulm which offer great views, there's the massive Einsielden monastery in the middle of nowhere, and then there are the Rheinfalls and nearby the cute town of Stein am Rhein, and also Schaffhausen has a notably interesting castle. All are easily accessible on public transport. I'm probably out of town based on your "in 3 weeks" timing, but if that time in Zurich is after the 17th of September then I'd be willing to buy you a drink at Frau Gerolds. As I said above, we are only in Zurich a few days total. One day at the beginning, and 2 at the tail end, so some local spots were appreciated as suggestions! We fly in the 13th and have all day, then we are back from on the 24th and fly out the 26th, so maybe a beer is in the cards! We were thinking of maybe daytripping to Lucerne on the 25th? I don't know how well that would work out with our condensed Zurich schedule. Malta we have the most time in. We are staying in St. Julians at the Intercontinental right near Paceville, which I heard might be a fun time (but according to you may be a bit annoying)! I redeemed a poo poo load of hotel rewards points for this trip and we're basically staying for free for most of it, so I had limited options on Malta. But yes we have plenty of time to check out some of the stuff you suggested. Thanks, goons!
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Sep 4, 2018 21:42
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SgtScruffy posted:Work is sending me to Brussels for a week! I'm going to have a day or two in the city where I won't be working (and evenings to grab a drink/dinner). It seems the general advice of this thread so far has been "Skip Brussels, it's boring", which is probably fair, but I'll be there for a conference for work, so are there any recommendations you all have in terms of places to eat or things to do other than Mannekin Piss? Or should I just buy the Rick Steve's guide and just consider that to be solid enough? Yes Uber works in Brussels; you can just open up your app and then change your starting destination to any city and then look at what's available, and right now there are plenty of ubers available. Note that their list of cities ( https://www.uber.com/en-CH/cities/ ) is not accurate, e.g. they list Copenhagen, even though it has not had Uber in well over a year. Brussels is fine, it just—like Zurich—isn't a city where anyone would specifically choose to go as a tourist, but if you're there then it's nice enough and there's plenty to do. Mannekin Piss is worth a hard skip. It's a statue of a boy peeing water, which I guess could be funny except that there are like 500 other "weird statues" across Europe. Water coming out of nymphs' nipples is like the bread and butter of 19th century European fountains, and at least those statues don't have tour groups full of elderly people waiting to take badly framed photos on their 2009 cell phone of it directly into the sunlight. The Magritte Museum is pretty cool, although I love that style so YMMV. Rick Steves usually has pretty solid suggestions, between that and checking a handful of Brussels travel blogs I think you'd be good to go. Get a Belgian waffle if you want from any of the stands in town. IMO they are like someone made a good waffle in the morning, but was in a rush and forgot about it, then came home in the evening and thought "poo poo, I shouldn't let that go to waste even if it's all stale and gross now" and then poured creme chantilly on it with some strawberry slices and called it a day. And then that accidentally turned into a national dish. Also I was just in downtown Zurich and on the lookout for graffiti, and while there isn't any on the high street, even there you can see where they've done a mediocre job painting over or scrubbing out graffiti. Outside of high street, there are tags everywhere else in the center of town, typically clearly done by drunk teenagers. It's not as pronounced as in Italy since stores almost never use full metal shutters but there's still a tag on every other building. Saladman fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Sep 4, 2018 |
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Sep 4, 2018 21:44
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MilkDud posted:Sorry, I totally have been forgetting to follow up with this... Make sure you go see the cathedral in Monreale just outside Palermo as well. It's sort of the same thing but when that same thing is a breathtaking cathedral, it's definitely worth it.
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Sep 4, 2018 23:56
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Saladman posted:Might be partly that, but I think it's also a random cultural difference. yeah but you see, you all have guns, the rest of the world is civilised despite a bit of grafiti. Julio Cruz posted:Commenting on the amount of graffiti in Europe is one thing, but when you say it “reflected poorly on the Italians” you sound like a huge jackass. he sounds like a big baby you mean underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 00:49
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To devils advocate for a minute, I think that growing up as a non-European you absorb this belief that Europe is the height of cultural sophistication, particularly in France and Italy. So when you arrive and discover that their cities are covered in what to you is a sign of a bad neighbourhood, it’s a big surprise. Almost a form of culture shock I guess. The big gap between expectations and reality.
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Sep 5, 2018 07:31
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The graffiti is a bit of a downer but as long as it’s not tagging on ancient artworks it’s no biggie. I was in Bologna and a little surprised with the graffiti but no one tags or vandalizes the sculpture. On the other hand, Europe has more leeway for underground counter culture like Berlin (not anymore) and hipsters blend into the city aesthetics a lot more than USA
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Sep 5, 2018 07:59
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SgtScruffy posted:Work is sending me to Brussels for a week! I'm going to have a day or two in the city where I won't be working (and evenings to grab a drink/dinner). It seems the general advice of this thread so far has been "Skip Brussels, it's boring", which is probably fair, but I'll be there for a conference for work, so are there any recommendations you all have in terms of places to eat or things to do other than Mannekin Piss? Or should I just buy the Rick Steve's guide and just consider that to be solid enough? The Africa museum is nice. I haven't been there after the recent renovation though. It's in a nice part of town (exactly how nice depends on the time of year), away from the city centre but with a direct tram line (last time I checked anyway).
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Sep 5, 2018 09:54
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Pro tip: do not take someone who has MS or other walking difficulties to Napoli. Or Pompeii. Or Rome. Or Italy.
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Sep 5, 2018 13:30
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It looks like I am going to be in Warsaw for a week for work sometime in the next month or two. I'll be busy 9-5 every day, but looking for stuff to do otherwise. I'm a climber, so I will check out the climbing gyms out there. I'm also a runner and will need to get some long runs in on the weekends. I don't know yet how much weekend time I'll have there yet though. Any must do/see things in Warsaw I should look into?
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Sep 5, 2018 15:11
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The old town is pretty impressive, because you have to remember it was completely destroyed in World War 2, and later reconstructed pretty much brick for brick. It's not the best old town I've ever seen, but very impressive when you bear the reconstruction in mind. There's the huge Palace of Arts and Sciences that was Stalin's gift to the Polish people (which they all hated then and still hate now), but worth having a look at. Some good bars and restaurants around Chmielna street. There's a castle too but it's more of a Renaissance palace. Make sure you see the main Warsaw Uprising memorial.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:23
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Haha who the hell is bothered by graffiti Prague is fun but about as touristy as Amsterdam. Here's an owl in the castle garden, want to take a picture of him? That'll be 4 euros please. gently caress you. The Vietnamese food is good, I had some great Banh Mi. I went to the communist museum expecting it to be biased but I was hoping to at least see some good artifacts from that period, but it was pretty disappointing. All the information was shallow wikipedia stuff and there were just a couple of mopeds, banknotes and a few paintings and little else. This is a general tourism thing but it always baffles me how caricaturists and stuff and lovely tourist shops actually attract people. Like what kind of person actually pays money for a caricature done on a touristy street in Europe? Or who gets excited by a guy painted to look like a living statue? What kind of numbskull goes to a lovely nutella shop to buy a soggy donut drenched in chocolate sauce? Just make a law that says that a city can make ordinances that bans all that cliched tourist poo poo and keep some standards. At least the Amsterdam city government is now trying to close down shops where the staff only speak English and where they sell lovely overpriced cheese. Shibawanko fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 18:53
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In Warsaw, there's also Ulica Próżna which has the best preserved fragment of the Jewish ghetto.
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Sep 5, 2018 22:07
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Shibawanko posted:Haha who the hell is bothered by graffiti Probably anyone in Canada or the US who grew up in a city with a significant crime rate and who hasn't spent much time in Europe. In the US if you find yourself at night anywhere where the shops' metal shutters are down and everything is covered in graffiti, you're running a pretty substantial risk of getting robbed, especially if you go down a side street. Looking up robbery statistics, the robbery stats where I grew up in the US are literally 50x higher than where I am now for a city of the same size. Robbery statistics in the US are also super biased towards certain neighborhoods (probably in Europe too but no idea). In the US—while I won't be able to find such statistics—robbery will also have a strong correlation to neighborhoods with full metal shutters and graffiti.
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Sep 5, 2018 23:45
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Saladman posted:Yes Uber works in Brussels; you can just open up your app and then change your starting destination to any city and then look at what's available, and right now there are plenty of ubers available. Note that their list of cities ( https://www.uber.com/en-CH/cities/ ) is not accurate, e.g. they list Copenhagen, even though it has not had Uber in well over a year. Thanks! I love Magritte so I'mma definitely check out the museum. EricBauman posted:The Africa museum is nice. I haven't been there after the recent renovation though. It's in a nice part of town (exactly how nice depends on the time of year), away from the city centre but with a direct tram line (last time I checked anyway). Haven't heard of this one - I'll check it out as well!
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Sep 6, 2018 02:09
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Saladman posted:Probably anyone in Canada or the US who grew up in a city with a significant crime rate and who hasn't spent much time in Europe. In the US if you find yourself at night anywhere where the shops' metal shutters are down and everything is covered in graffiti, you're running a pretty substantial risk of getting robbed, especially if you go down a side street. Right, in Europe it's mostly something skaters and X-Treme types do in weird places like bridges or railway cars or on walls, I think most people here simply filter it out of their field of vision since it's so omnipresent and most of it is near-identical tags and stuff.
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Sep 6, 2018 03:48
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Shibawanko posted:This is a general tourism thing but it always baffles me how caricaturists and stuff and lovely tourist shops actually attract people. Like what kind of person actually pays money for a caricature done on a touristy street in Europe? Or who gets excited by a guy painted to look like a living statue? My kind? While I never actually had my caricature taken on a street, I wanted to, once or twice. I was travelling with three friends on a one-of-a-kind trip for us through Ukraine and I thought that it would be neat to get a group caricature portrait. Certainly more interesting than a photo of four of us sitting in a restaurant or something like that. And on my first trip to Spain I was more impressed with living statues on La Rambla than with Prado. I'll take a few good living statues over church #226 most of the days. I don't know where you've been travelling but I don't find neither caricaturists nor living statues all that often.
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Sep 6, 2018 17:37
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I really love graffiti and think it can show you a lot about a place. The graffiti in Athens three years ago was fascinating, dissent and anger dripping from the walls. Wonderful stuff. I had no idea that Americans found it so unpleasant!
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Sep 6, 2018 20:18
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Bollock Monkey posted:I really love graffiti and think it can show you a lot about a place. The graffiti in Athens three years ago was fascinating, dissent and anger dripping from the walls. Wonderful stuff. I had no idea that Americans found it so unpleasant!  And this reminds me of oldschool Amiga demos and cracktros. Just needs a sine wave scroller with shoutouts behind it. 
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Sep 6, 2018 23:01
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Doctor Malaver posted:My kind? While I never actually had my caricature taken on a street, I wanted to, once or twice. I was travelling with three friends on a one-of-a-kind trip for us through Ukraine and I thought that it would be neat to get a group caricature portrait. Certainly more interesting than a photo of four of us sitting in a restaurant or something like that. And on my first trip to Spain I was more impressed with living statues on La Rambla than with Prado. I'll take a few good living statues over church #226 most of the days. The Prado is amazing, did you look at Goya and Hieronymus Bosch? Living statues and caricatures have nothing to do with the place you're in and are in every European capital and probably other places as well.
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Sep 6, 2018 23:42
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Doctor Malaver posted:I was more impressed with living statues on La Rambla than with Prado Yeah, maybe tourism isn't really for you.
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Sep 7, 2018 00:00
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An image of the ancient Greek god of time and father of Zeus consuming the body of his son with an expression of utter deranged depair on his face? Actually, I prefer this man who covered his clothes and face in silver paint, thanks.
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Sep 7, 2018 00:22
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Just shred his passport.
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Sep 7, 2018 02:02
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Just last week I randomly walked through London to hunt for graffiti and it's like visiting a totally rad art museum in some places there. https://imgur.com/a/pEtk71f
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Sep 7, 2018 02:09
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Graffiti is cool but the ratio of awesome art work to random lazy tagging is still quite low 
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Sep 7, 2018 02:15
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caberham posted:Graffiti is cool but the ratio of awesome art work to random lazy tagging is still quite low Yep. I'm not talking about the actually cool street art in Florence, but it's just lazy to tag initials on the catwalk up the Duomo (which, yeah, I saw). It looks lovely. It looks lovely in the US, too, but it tends to get power-washed off the federal buildings in DC at least.
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Sep 7, 2018 04:37
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Betazoid posted:Yep. I'm not talking about the actually cool street art in Florence, but it's just lazy to tag initials on the catwalk up the Duomo (which, yeah, I saw). It looks lovely. It looks lovely in the US, too, but it tends to get power-washed off the federal buildings in DC at least. That's the benefit of all your big important buildings only being 200 years old.
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Sep 7, 2018 04:54
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Collateral Damage posted:I found this in Reykjavik a few years ago and it's awesome. Yeah I wouldn't even call this stuff graffiti tbh. It takes a lot of artistic talent to pull off something like that; tagging and putting up stickers does not.
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Sep 7, 2018 05:13
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Julio Cruz posted:Yeah, maybe tourism isn't really for you. Hey uh, you don't need to enjoy art or history or anything specific really to enjoy visiting foreign places. There's so much to enjoy everywhere. Local culture, nature, shopping for local products, you name it. Also, the worst thing about European graffiti is that people in my country (Netherlands) tend to pronounce "graffiti" like "gravity" with an f.
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Sep 7, 2018 06:46
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I can recommend going to smaller towns and cities in Europe if you want an "authentic" experience. The cities tend to end up looking like cities everywhere but there are hundreds of charming towns which are unspoiled due to the simple virtue of not being within spitting distance of an airport. One particularly lovely town is Metz in France, which nobody has heard of. We were staying overnight on the way to Switzerland a few years ago, just wandering aimlessly looking for food from the hotel. We found a 15th century square full of people eating and drinking in the sunshine, and a little jazz band set up with people dancing, and local children running around playing completely safely. Further on was Strasbourg, which is a lot bigger but has wonderful medieval streets filled with people and food, and a fractal-looking Gothic cathedral (I remember seeing it and for the first time being stunned by how a building could be so complex and so beautiful.) Into the Alps you have gorgeous villages in valleys and on cliff sides set against the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world. Gigantic bearded men (and women) will serve you cheese that tastes of sunlight. That, to me, is what is really worth seeing in Europe; making your own way and soaking at the atmosphere, not just following a carbon-copied list of landmarks.
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Sep 7, 2018 08:36
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I don’t think living statues is anywhere close to local culture, that we can agree on. Cities can’t be easily discounted though. Not just for its convenience but cities are places where you find centers of culture, history and civilization. All the good food in the countryside gets shipped to the cities (inflated). Don’t get me wrong, rural areas can be great. All in all, you go to Europe enough times you can explore however you want because doing the same thing can easily get old
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Sep 7, 2018 08:44
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Shibawanko posted:The Prado is amazing, did you look at Goya and Hieronymus Bosch? Living statues and caricatures have nothing to do with the place you're in and are in every European capital and probably other places as well. It was my first big trip and I made the rookie mistake of trying to see the entire museum. By the time I got to Goya I was already exhausted. But even now with more experience, I don't like huge museums. I've been to Pergamon, The Met, British Museum, Rijksmuseum, and none of them were highlights of my trips. Also lol at saying that living statues having nothing to do with the city, while recommending that I see Bosch in Madrid.
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Sep 7, 2018 08:57
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