The latest episode of the Urbanist Agenda is now public (it's been on Nebula for a week).
In this episode, I talk with my wife, Mrs. NJB, about our 5 year anniversary of living in the Netherlands, as well as about some of the other places we've lived.
We got in some complaining about Brussels and even Edgware Road in London! :)
@notjustbikes Interesting discussion about the perfect city. An observation as Australian just back from six weeks in Europe including 10 days in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht and Leiden, is that Europeans do almost everything better than Australians except smoking. The smoking is so unbelievably obnoxious is almost completely outweighs everything the Europeans do well.
@dmichie66@notjustbikes The smoking? It is very rare I encounter anyone smoking here. But then again, I live and work here, am not a tourist. Didn't know that there are degrees of obnoxious smoking. I think all degrees are equally obnoxious. Where did you find smokers?
@rrustema020@notjustbikes Literally everywhere, but most especially eating outdoors which has been banned for decades in Australia. Much as Australians don't appreciate how we live in a culture dominated by cars, Europeans don't appreciate how much second hand smoke they inhale.
@dmichie66@notjustbikes really, where did you go to eat outdoors to find people smoking? I guess we don't frequent the same venues. I haven't inhaled any second hand smoke for years, except for a few seconds when passing some on a doorstep of some office building or café.
@notjustbikes@rrustema020@dmichie66 We could do better. Smoking is banned in restaurants, but not on the terraces. Still allowed to smoke in parcs, or busy shopping streets. Hence cigarette butts everywhere.
@notjustbikes@rrustema020 We avoided the touristy areas like the plague. In several places we had to move indoors to escape the smoke. Honestly, I think Europeans are blind to it (and the comments here confirm this) in the same way Australians and North Americans are blind to their car dependency. No doubt there has been lots of progress in recent years but the tolerance level for cigarette smoking is far higher in Europe than it is Australia.
@dmichie66 My wife is very sensitive to smoke. If people smoke a lot more here than Canada, we'd definitely notice it.
The difference between 22% in NL vs 16% is very minor, and probably has huge regional swings. We just got back from a month in Canada and have not noticed any difference.
OFC we should have less smoking, but we just don't see much smoking where we go in Amsterdam, even on terraces. 🤷
@notjustbikes That wasn't our experience. Almost immediately my wife and were shocked by the smoking when we arrived in Europe (we flew in and out of Schiphol BTW). We hadn't been to Europe since 2016, and both remarked that we'd forgotten how bad the smoking was. Certainly the Netherlands wasn't the worst place for smoking -- it was more prevalent in France, Italy and Germany -- but we had at least one experience in every country where an outdoor dining experience was impacted by smokers.
@notjustbikes wow... that was, even 10 years ago, a very tourist perspective view. I live here since 15 years (with 4 years of Paris in between), so if you ever want to come back I can show you how much it has changed (for better and for worse). There's car free Sunday next Sunday, ideal occasion ;)
@notjustbikes interesting. I listened to the part about Brussels in the podcast, still can’t see your perspective at all. If ever you're back we should have a coffee and discuss ;)
@notjustbikes Ok, so the trick is to buy a cheap but good second hand bike outside of Amsterdam and bring it home. That way you get a bike that has spent the majority of its life in a shed instead of abandoned on the street.
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