Calling all cultured aspies

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I wouldn't say the only artists Soviet Russia produced were Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn. Have you read Master and Margaret by Bulhakov? A painful masterpiece.
I also love poetry of Bulat Okudzhava but I doubt his works have any good English translations.
Of course, if the revolution stopped at a resonable point, the culture would have most likely gained a lot more treasure from this country.

In Netherlands, you can communicate in English everywhere. Some of my friends spent years there and never even had an opportunity to learn Dutch.

Yes, I was exaggerating of course.

I know the Dutch speak good English, but that's not the point; it's disrespectful to go abroad and carry on speaking English, even if people are okay with it. Speaking English also impoverishes the travelling experience for oneself, rendering the local culture inauthentic.

If I had to learn the language before visiting anywhere, I wouldn't be able to travel at all. I once read a description of lack of language skills and it fit me perfectly.
Of course if I spoke the local languages, my experience would be richer - but I do have my own inherent limitations. I'm unable to learn them.

Most people in “foreign” lands are very accommodating to people visiting them. If the visitor knows a few words of the local language, they are happy.

My first thought was Bulgakov too Khachaturian is also worth mentioning and Prokofiev destroyed his life (and art) by returning home. The regime ruined him and made him completely paranoid. Ironically, he died the same day as Stalin. Are you familiar with Daniil Kharms, magz?

The Dutch have the highest English proficiency in the world, over 90% of them speak English and enjoy doing it.

Amsterdam's reputation is quite undeserved, mostly due to those who visit for weed and brothels. It's a beautiful city (full of culture) and if you stick to the "good" areas it's actually perfectly safe, more so than London in my opinion.

Prometheus18, if you speak (any) German it will be fairly easy to pick some basic skills in Dutch, it's not a difficult language. Museumsinsel in Berlin is also an experience. Berlin might be famous for night clubs and such, but there's so much more to it and it's cheap, has great food and wine culture and is chock-full of something for everybody, particularly lovers of art and history.

I didn't knew Khrams before. Hilarious!

I agree with your opinion on Amsterdam. I have visited Hague and Amsterdam and I was really surprised by how peaceful, orderly and... I don't know how to describe it, a place where you go to work in the morning and have a beer in the evening and your children are riding bikes with friends... I lack the word. Something Hygge-related?
Outside of the red light districts, or maybe even embracing them, the Netherlands are like this. Comfortably usual.

Amsterdam, to me, is like a northern-Renaissance influenced Venice.

It's easy to get around the city, too.....by tram, by train, by bus.

I never really sightsaw there, my journey was job-related and brief.
But I could do my favorite part of visiting a city: just walk and see what the life looks like. Catch the unique local air of real people living here.
Cities have their unique atmospheres and I don't mean air pollution. I find it more interesting than the local attractions, it stays in my memory.
Of course I spent several days alone in London museums and it was a worthy time. Still, what I remember of London the most, is something cosmopolitan, agreeing on multicultural diversity because of very strong sense of self-worth... I liked it, it was the opposite of cut-what-stands-out kind of provincialism I was fed up with back then.

Yes, cosy, orderly, efficient, laid-back and beautiful! I really liked Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam and have quite a soft spot for Utrecht, it's a lovely place. I'm also a big fan of the Dutch blunt style of communication. I didn't enjoy the small towns though, they're quite different.

I thought you might appreciate Kharm's absurd humour (excellent sense of humour in Russian literature, like Ilf and Petrov and Bulgakov himself and Dostoyevsky was a master of satire)

To the extent you can choose, which European city you enjoyed the most?

How about you, Kraftie, I seem to remember you travel quite often.

Last edited by BenderRodriguez on 25 Jun 2019, 9:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

I find the people of London to be quite polite on public transport---as compared with New York folk.

Even though there are many New Yorkers who are polite.

There are just more of the "as*hole/jerk" element in New York than in London.

And, in London, if the sign says a train will come in one minute, the train comes in one minute. Not so in New York!

There was this advert about visiting Amsterdam which had as its slogan: "Have an Amster-damn good time." My father milked it for what it's worth. He enjoyed it there.


I was there about three days. I enjoyed the architecture, the parks, the canals. I would call it "The Venice of the North." I also enjoyed my trips by tram. I stayed in a "sports" type of place which had as a feature a spa where nudity was REQUIRED lol

My wife really liked the flea market there. She likes flea markets everywhere. I found the people there to be rather reserved, in sort of that stereotypical northern European sense.

I took a brief sojourn a little ways from Amsterdam. To the place where they make Edam cheese. What I thought about, primarily, was how the Netherlands reclaimed land from the Zuider Zee. It just seemed a very well-organized, almost too-organized sort of place.

Bikes have a very high status there as a form of transportation. In New York, it's getting there---but I still wouldn't ride my bike on the streets of New York.

^
Having designated bicycle lanes and good public transport is really great, I tend to take it for granted though and rarely use the car in the city

I found the New York subway to be much better than its reputation and it's generally a remarkable metropolis, LA public transport though

LA public transport sucks----especially in relation to its population. It's really a heck of a lot better than it used to be, though. Though it has a VERY long way to go.

The New York Subway is MUCH better than it was in the 1980s. Back 30 years ago, it was sort of a toss-up whether a train would actually complete its route. We were thrown off trains because of "mechanical reasons" on a regular basis.

During rush hour (like anywhere else), tempers are short. People get into stupid fights over nonsense (like space on a seat), and you have your share of "crazies" (meaning "hostile crazies," not merely "weird people."). In fact, today, this guy came into a train car and imitated firing a gun at all of us.

Most people, even during rush your, are polite, though.

It's... perfect. Yet painful. Probably hard to understand if someone have never had any contact with living in the Soviet Union where things were better not said, the news constantly edited, the photos retouched...

Vienna, I think. The optimal balance of order and chaos, I believe A lot of beauty and art in public space... and even the modest districts were nice and welcoming. And the blackbirds! They sang everywhere!
And Riga. I can't really tell what I liked so much about Riga but this city just catched me by the heart. It's something very personal and hard to describe.

I think it's the main reason he's not that well known. Some experiences are universal, some require quite a lot of insight.


Vienna is amazing indeed (I think it's rated the best city to live in the world). Never got a chance to see Riga unfortunately but loved Tallinn!

This caught my eye. There is a reason why most Dutch people speak English. The Dutch dialect of Frisian is the closest living language to modern English.

Old English (spoken pre-1066) and old Frisian were identical languages which has perplexed linguists given the speakers of Old English referred to themselves as "Anglo-Saxons" and their language as English when infact the original homeland of the Anglo-Saxons they spoke Danish which (bizarrely) was/si unintelligible to both Frisian and Old/Modern English??