Yac

Poland
Pros:
tons of culture and history
really, tons, can't swing a dead cat without hitting a museum or a monument or something
relatively inexpensive
Lots of great, open minded people.
Surprisingly tasty food
People are very down to earth
Polish sense of humor is great, as its modern version developed under the communist rule - there was a ministry of censorship back then and artists of all kinds had to really sweat to get through.. which they did. Unfortunately it's too dependent on context to be universal.
Gorgeous women.

Cons:
The catholic church owns half of the country and seems to run it too
there are some "catotaliban" as we call them spoiling everybodys fun and making the country look like it's should be put in the dictionary under the definition of conservative. luckily they are a vocal, but a minority.
the state is .. well, corrupt. And populist.. generally the whole country is still in transition from being a satelite of the soviet union - for example the law system is based on a 50 year old communist law system and while it's been reformed, upgraded etc, it it still in some cases very complicated and unintuitive, stupid even. Like when it says that offending someone's "religious feelings" is something you can go to jail for, but doesn't define what these feelings are exactly...
generally it's getting better, but not fast enough
Another con is, people perceive Poles as thieving simpleton racists, we're the butt of many jokes and stereotypes.. which is somewhat true but isn't as funny as it might seem when it comes around for the 10,000th time. But I guess it's like this for many countries..
And historically, the biggest con is that geographically, we're located smack in the middle between "west" and "east", making Poland one of the most frequent battlegrounds of Europe... And you can see the effects clearly, though I don't wan to turn this into a history lecture

The Batlord

Luckily, as an American, the only stereotype for Poles I have is the screen door submarine thing.

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Janszoon

Poland is definitely high on my list of European countries I want to visit.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Plankton

Our best welders/fabricators are Polish, and are highly respected around my place of employment. Also, I frequent a Polish deli that's located in a predominantly Polish area with some real cutie's that work behind the counter. I don't hear the Polish jokes too often, and when I do, it's usually some half wit ignoramus that no one pays attention to anyway.

Heck, my ex was Polish and she was always the first one to make fun of herself, and blame her heritage when she did something of questionable intelligence.

Which she did quite often.

Which is why I now refer to her as my ex.

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See location...

ribbons

New York City

Pros:
exciting and high energy
very diverse population
thousands of diverse restaurants
art galleries and museums
great walking city
you can find entertainment and interest everywhere
great music scene – music venues ranging from very large to tiny clubs
Central Park – beautiful, and an endless oasis
Greenwich (West) Village
East Village (the West and East Villages are the best parts of NYC, imo)
the skyline
The Highline
Williamsburg (growing by leaps and bounds musically/artistically; yes, it’s hipster-ridden, but I don’t mind hipsters at all.)
Long Island City/Astoria (growing artistically/film industry-wise)
Upper West Side (there’s a saying here: On the Upper East Side they line their walls with mirrors, on the Upper West Side they line their walls with books. An unusually family-oriented neighborhood for Manhattan.)
Lower East Side

Cons:
hectic working life and everyday life
very expensive – astronomical rents and prices in general
rude people
snooty rich people, especially in SoHo
crazy cab drivers
incredibly competitive in every way
New Yorkers sometimes think the world revolves around them
dirty streets and garbage (much cleaner than it used to be, though)
overpopulated – crowds and lines everywhere
overbuilding and high rents have driven out interesting “mom & pop” stores in favor of chain stores
sardine-can subways
train delays
traffic
tourist trap Times Square
extremes of weather: sweltering, humid summers / freezing winters with dirty snow and ice

Trollheart

This is ****ing incredible! A city that walks! I have GOT to go there! (Or maybe it'll find its way here...)

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

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New Yawk is made for walkin', and that's just what we'll do. One of these days we'll walk to Eire and walk all over you.

downwardspiral

So, Liverpool is the city I'm from and have lived in my entire life, so the pros and cons..

What I like:

How aesthetically beautiful it is, there are some truly amazing streets and lots of beautiful and imposing architecture around the city.

The layout of the city centre and how accessible it is, you can get from one side to the other in about 20 minutes flat (although where the city centre begins and ends varies depending on who you talk to, I don't think it's as definitive as some places).

How much ethnic diversity there is, but obviously that isn't exclusive to Liverpool and you'll often find that in most/all big cities in the UK now, however I found Newcastle to be very white when I visited last summer..

The amazing culture and how much there is to do, we are spoiled in Liverpool and do very well for ourselves considering we're next door to the 'capital of the north west' (Manchester). We have four amazing museums, numerous amazing art galleries (including a Tate), a beautiful central library, tonnes of great restaurants and some brilliant venues (one of which being the Kazimier which is, imo, the best small venue in the country) and a really great independent scene. And tying in with what I said before about the layout of the city centre, everything is within spitting distance of one another too, you don't have to take a bus or a train or a tube to get from one thing to the next, it's all within close proximity.

How Liverpool has reinvented itself over the past 7 years. If you're from the UK you'll no doubt know that Liverpool was a bit of a derelict hole up until about 2008/2009 when its regeneration really started taking place, the city was crowned Capital of Culture which obviously helped a great deal. Now, the city is thriving and it's the best it's ever been and it seems to just keep growing. The economy is the fastest growing outside of London and there are new and exciting things happening here all the time, it's so lovely to see.

What I dislike:

The fact that you can barely go anywhere without seeing/hearing about something to do with The Beatles. I get that they were huge and influenced a lot of modern music, but come on!

Obnoxious tourists. It's not particularly hard to avoid tourists, you just need to stay away from The Albert Dock and Mathew Street, but sometimes it's just exhausting. Though, without tourism, Liverpool would struggle a lot more than it does, so obviously I understand its importance.

The current rise in crime rates, Liverpool has never been a utopian paradise and anyone that claims it has and ever will be is delusional. It's always had its problems and that will never go away, but lately there has been a huge increase in violent crime and it's getting out of hand. We have our fair share of gang rivalries too and stuff like that happening in the city you live in is just really unpleasant. I've personally never experienced any issues and I feel safe here and have walked around different parts of suburbs in the dead of night and have felt fine, but I know there are some dangerous and awful people out there but I don't know of any major UK city that can say they don't have that, really.

Peoples misconceptions about the city and its people. As I mentioned earlier, before its recent generation a lot of Liverpool was run down and derelict and for years the papers targeted Liverpool for that reason and published a lot of propaganda about the city and how all Scousers are thieves, yada yada. It bothers me that to this day there are still people out there with these views, people who either have never ever visited Liverpool or haven't visited in 10+ years and have no idea what it's like now. People are legitimately shocked when they walk around and see how nice a place it is and how much it has to offer and sadly a lot of people also seem really annoyed that Liverpool has managed to come back from what was deemed the point of no return and become the place it is today. I'm not really sure I can use this point in my dislikes *about* the city, it's more about clueless outsiders, but still.

All in all, Liverpool is great, and I would wholly recommend it to anybody who hasn't visited before or who hasn't been back recently.

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Cuthbert

This post is spot on. Only just seen it. I used to have that ignorant opinion of Liverpool (dump, thieves etc) but having been there, it's a really nice place. It's better than Manchester.

Your point about Newcastle is interesting cos that's always been my view of the North East.

Re: Misconceptions, I know that feel. Once you've got it, it's nearly impossible to change.

downwardspiral

Sorry man, I don't come on here often, so only just seen this.

Yeah Liverpool is genuinely a beautiful city and in terms of niceness, absolutely knocks Manchester out of the park. The only thing Manchester really has over us is the gig scene there, but that's just down to logistics cos it's bigger and therefore it has more people, more venues, more promoters. Nothing else.

I suppose you're in a similar boat with being from Birmingham, hardly a city with a good rep but it's such a beautiful place and has some of the most imposing, wonderful architecture I've seen. Before a couple of years ago, I'd only ever been to Birmingham to change at New Street on my way further down south or through on the coach and I thought the place was a dump, cos the coach station is in Digbeth (iirc?) and it's just not a nice area at all, but every city has that and once you get past that (and the absolute eyesore that is the Bullring, let's be honest) it's SO lovely. Went to the Institute to see Melvins a few years ago and my friend who's from Stoke and knows Birmingham fairly well took me around parts of the city centre I had never seen before and I was genuinely dumbfounded at how lovely it was.

I'm generally not a fan of huge city centres like London and Manchester and to some degree, Leeds, but Birmingham does it well. I'm just used to Liverpool being small and compact and having such a well thought out layout that other city centres just do my head in.

Birmingham is probably the only city further south to Liverpool that I actually like, though. Well Sheffield too, which I discovered recently is EVER SO SLIGHTLY further south to Liverpool and that blew my head off.


EDIT - with regards to the North East, I've been to Newcastle, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. All of them are pretty awful bar Newcastle, I've been to NCL a few times for nights out but never really seen the city. Went for a day out there last year and scaled the whole city centre and drove around some of the suburbs as a friend and I were actually considering moving there for a bit of a change as we'd both enjoyed it on previous visits. It's very very similar to Liverpool in lots of ways, we kept noticing similarities and then we'd follow it up with "..but it's just not as good as *whatever we were comparing it to in Liverpool*" - like their Quayside is such a poor man's version of The Albert Dock, their Chinese arch on Chinatown is tiny compared to ours (ours was crafted by 20 craftsmen who were flown over from Shanghai just to build it and is the biggest outside of China, second only to one in Washington) and the Tyne river looks pathetic compared to the Mersey. Even down to stuff like one of their main shopping streets, Northumberland Street, is very similar to Church Street in Liverpool but it's just nowhere near as nice, aesthetically.

One thing I will say though, is Grey Street in Newcastle is genuinely one of the most beautiful streets I've ever seen, even if the buildings along there are a bit repetitive and there is no diversity, it's still gorgeous.

Must say, though, very few streets can rival Castle Street here in Liverpool.

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