On a similar note, I had certain expectations for Prague, and was blown away at how much nicer, cleaner and generally more beautiful it was when I saw it in person. ...amazing city. The architecture is amazing.
good eating and good people...I love spain myself...as a fast paced cuban i found it hard to sit at a table with my relatives for hours upon hours eating and shooting the shit..and this was lunch..i was like dont you people have to get back to work??
Great recent article on the restaurant scene in Spain (Barcelona): http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/travel/03choice.html I would love to try the 35-euro prix fixe menu that Inopia offers.
Spain, Slovakia, Europe in general, LOL arent these all "brutal backward socialist regimes" according to local neo cons? LOL maybe there IS a better way then perpetual US war economy.
I had high expectations for Prague, went and was miserable because of the excessive amount of tourists. I ended up spending an extra week there alone just wandering the streets and not nearing the downtown of the city and had a great time. It's a gorgeous city no doubt...Krakow is my choice though although I assume it's changing. NYT ran an article on Krakow last week. Some cities can accomodate tourists en masse and some can't. In Prague you can hardly ever view town center in a quiet and calm setting...just like in Times Square...in Krakow or Sarajevo you don't get those tourist crowds and the city itself comes out more I think. If you were in Prague more than 5 years ago you were extremely lucky I think. Barcelona should be able accommodate more people without bleeding tourism. Although, since I've lived in NY I've found it fairly easy to avoid the must-see tourist sites as almost none of them are places you really want to spend time anyway.
See, I thought Costa Rica was spectacular, and Poland was crap. Poland had a few nice places, but for the most part it reminded me of a slightly more developed Ukraine.
You will only find out if a country is "nice" or not if you live there. Rent an apartment/house, buy furniture, buy services, employ people etc. See how you get around there paying your bills, trying to get customer service, trying to get products/services you're used to from back home. You could visit any POS city on earth and say "WOW IT WAS BEAUTIFUL I WAS THERE 3 DAYS IT LOOKED SO GREAT AND EVERYBODY WAS FRIENDLY", while possibly only scratching the surface.
Very true as it pertains to the standard of living for the native population. But you can glean a lot about a country and the true standard of living about where people eat, how they eat, the cleanliness of the streets, the architecture, and their demeanor. I'm not talking about visiting the tourist traps, but going where the natives go. Prague = Best pilsner in the world, bar none. That says a lot.
And they still party like it's 1999! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6208877.stm Seriously though, nice people..I worked with a group in Madrid for a while a couple years ago.
I think you're personally speaking from what I assume is a less than spectacular experience. You can certainly know whether living somewhere will be nice or not after visiting. I had thoughts of moving to Poland or the Czech Republic before visiting and then knew that I wouldn't be comfortable there after just a few days of visiting. Spain was the opposite. You have to be able to weigh the people and be content with what you see in front of you...if you don't know that's because you don't know...but I think to say you can't know without doing everything it entails to live somewhere is incorrect.