Best European cities for pretending it's 1937

[Deleted member 16736]

Everything is relative. Crime in Chicago is worse than New York, but better than Milwaukee. Anyway, Chicago is a city I've never been to and should go before I say how unsafe it is. I go by statistics, and you are correct that some areas will naturally be safer than others. Here's a list of 1920's Chicago high-rise apartments near the Lake. Pretty amazing prices considering you're downtown:

http://www.zillow.com/homes/chicago....864777,41.534282,-88.599243_rect/9_zm/0_mmm/

I spent a summer in Copenhagen and that's an excellent suggestion. Copenhagen probably hasn't changed much since WWII. You still see girls on bicycles with picnic baskets riding down cobblestone streets lined by pristine old buildings. They even have the shortages from WWII. I remember when none of the grocers in my neighborhood had bacon.

I wasn't serious about it exactly looking like 1937, more like circa 1937.

By the way, all this talk of atavist intolerance has me a little freaked about London. That was at the top of my list. At least they have a vintage scene there, and I know the dancing is good.

 

[RichardH]

I can see that because of all the European languages Swedish seems in many ways to be the closest to English in terms of vocabulary and grammar.

Swedish/Danish/Norwegian are mutually intelligible, I think that you'll find that if you travel there, (unless you already have) most people speak better English than the average guy in a non-english speaking country. We're (Norwegians) certainly better than the Germans!

 

[Flicka]

Swedish/Danish/Norwegian are mutually intelligible, I think that you'll find that if you travel there, (unless you already have) most people speak better English than the average guy in a non-english speaking country. We're (Norwegians) certainly better than the Germans!

I think a major reason is that we've always subtitled rather than dubbed tv-programs and movies in the Nordic countries. We've been exposed to a lot of English at a young age for generations by now. And randomly, I find Danish hard to follow sometimes, and I've had Danish people ask me to speak English with them because they find me hard to understand!

I have a friend whose father used to live in the Netherlands and he claims that once you get past the pronounciation, Dutch is really very similar to Scandinavian languages and you can learn it very quickly, and vice versa. I think he's right -- I've read legal documents in Dutch with very little difficulty. On the other hand, I understand absolutely zero when I hear it spoken.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Depends which part of London, as I say. Once you get out to the fringes (like where I live, because it's affordable), you're essentially into small towns and villages that haven't really been swallowed up for very long (my area didn't get the tube 'til 1968). Small-town attitudes tend to prevail and anyone doing something different is seen as suspicious (not "normal"). No-one bats an eyelid at 50-70 year old men drunk and fighting in the daytime (that's a normal part of "Britishness", after all), but wear a hat and you instantly stand out, become a lightning rod for all the pent up frustration that a miserable life (life is truly miserable for most people in London) produces.

I find living in a minority-rich area (mostly Indians, Bangladeshis, and other Indian subcontinent ethnicities) helps. The youth of these cultures appear to me to be far more tuned in to fashions and seem to get what one in trying to do with the vintage look. More than once, youths of minority backgrounds have correctly identified that "you're doing the vintage thing, innit" in a non-confrontational and appreciative way. I think Edward has similar experiences.

I'll end by saying that what we are describing about London is going to be the same in pretty much every large city you visit/live in. People, as they say, suck.

By the way, all this talk of atavist intolerance has me a little freaked about London. That was at the top of my list. At least they have a vintage scene there, and I know the dancing is good.

 

[Two Types]

Out here in the London suburbs it's black blokes (thirty or fortysomethings) who make positive comments about hats. It's nice to have someone stop you in the street and ask questions about where you bought a hat.
I was speaking to a fellow lounger yesterday about the reaction he gets in Streatham (for those who don't know it, a once rather nice area that was latterly famous for prostitution and murder) from his locals when he walks around in a boating blazer and straw boater. He said that these days it's like central London -no one bats an eyelid.

 

[ButteMT61]

Paris to Normandy.
New Castle to London.
Southern California.
All places where the few vintage things I wear get positive questions and no grief. I agree that most cities are smart choices. People go there or stay there to be absorbed to an extent. You can be totally "you" and nobody really cares.