People from the country side What made you the greater impression when you visited the capital of your country ?
May 19, 2025
For me who's the parliament massive.
22 comments
No offense, but I don’t understand your question.
Maybe put the question (in your native language) in a translator like DeepL, translate to English and post again?
the amount of people and public transport even during the night.
Tbh I didn’t really have anything like that when I visited Berlin for the first time because by then I had been to plenty of other big cities.
The concept of taking the metro/train (since we don’t even have trains in the Norwegian countryside where I’m from). I quickly got used to it though.
First time visiting the Capital, it was the ability for public transport to get easy from A to B. And the Museums.
The rest? Not so much.
For me it was the amount of foreigners, especially black people. Lisbon has a very strong African community, it has had for quite some time, and in my small hometown and other nerarby bigger cities we didn’t have as much.
Nowadays this is not the case anymore but given that I went to Lisbon for the first time almost 20 years ago, at the time this was quite important.
Well, I’m living in the suburbs – basically the countryside if you ask some idiots
The amount of tourists was astounding the first time I went to the city
My reaction when i first visited the capital of my state: Damn, Kiel is ugly.
my reaction when i first visited the capitol of my country: DAMN, Berlin is ugly.
30y ago there were like 6 or 7 McDonald’s in the main shopping street (Kalverstraat, Amsterdam).
It was a long, long time ago. My parents parked the car somewhere in the Flevopolder and we then took the train. It was my first time in a strange railway station getting in one of the big Koplopers – I had only been on rural diesels before. We then arrived under the big canopy of Amsterdam Centraal. I guess that made a bigger impression on me than the actual city.
How there is no real city centre in Berlin, but instead people just stay in their neighbourhoods. I am not country countryside, but in most other big cities in Germany you would have something like a city centre
Not exactly from the country side as you call it but every time I think of Berlin I feel dread.
As a kid I loved it but now that I’ve been there as an adult I’d say: decent to visit, horrible to live in.
The restaurants diversity, how easy it was to get a taste of so many foreign cultures.
First time in Barcelona: Damn, I love metro
First time in Madrid: Fuck Madrid
The amount of guys hanging around on the street shouting vulgar comments, following me while whistling, requesting cigarettes or drugs,… I avoid the capital now unless I absolutely need to be there and even in summer I wear a long coat.
Ppl say I’m exaggerating and these guys just shout, they won’t actually do anything… But that’s what they always say until one of them is crazy enough.
Nothing relly like impressive. As I was there always. But when I moved from village to city. And this being Bratislava so pretty small compared. But the option to just walk across the street and get groceries at 21.40. Or ordering food late. Or just walking to a shop. All the option for entertainment. Gym.
And as my village is just in the middle of field. The nature is better in the city with the woods next to it and hills.
First time was in a school trip to see the zoo and a couple of historical places. It was in primary school so i don’t have concrete memories besides too much traffic and the buildings being too talk and all together.
Due to living in Scania in southernmost Sweden close to the Danish border, my first visits to a capital as a child were actually to the Danish capital Copenhagen. As a child, we mostly went there to visit the Tivoli Gardens amusement park or Copenhagen Zoo, or to have a stroll together on the big shopping street Strøget with some shopping, dining and sightseeing. I think that the biggest difference was that the pace was generally a lot faster in Copenhagen compared to the Scanian cities I had been to, and especially compared to the countryside where I lived. Things were louder and felt more chaotic. Generally it was just a lot of different impressions all at once.
I didn’t actually visit the Swedish capital Stockholm until quite many years later, but I do remember that Stockholm felt a lot more spread out and there were a lot longer distances between different places, compared to the more compact and walkable city center in Copenhagen.
Of course though, both Copenhagen and Stockholm are still relatively small cities in an international perspective, and the first truly large city that I visited was Paris, when I was already in my teens. That city truly felt huge in an almost overwhelming and slightly intimidating way. I remember being at the top of the Eiffel Tower for the first time, and seeing nothing but the city as far as the eye could reach. That was truly mindblowing.
Dublin wasn’t far so got to it as a teenager. Lovely Georgian splendour but everytime I travel home from abroad it’s sad to see it falling apart. O Connell st is a mess. Temple bar a tourist trap with stupid prices. Hotels rip off prices. I would never move back rents are insane.
Everything is so big!
…and it keeps going! So many buildings! It never ends!
The Grand Place definitely lives up to its reputation. And so do all the monuments.
I’m lost.
So much noise everywhere. Trams, cars, so noisy!
And where is all the greenery? Just a park or two every so often feels fake if you’re used to forests and fields. It’s an imitation of the real thing.
This street smells like pee.
And this one too.
Let’s take the tram.
Even more buildings. I remembered I entered the city, but will I ever be able to leave? These buildings go on forever! I’ve been on the tram for like, more than 20 minutes and there’s still more buildings! How haven’t I reached a forest yet?
Okay, back at home. Good for a daytrip, but I think I prefer the countryside.
I grew up in the Dutch & German countryside, before moving to the English countryside.
I remember going to London with my grandparents for the first time to stay with some of my family there, when I was about 10 years old.
Things that stood out to me:
How unbelievably busy it was. I had never seen so many people in such a close proximity.
How many things there were to do. We went sightseeing, but only saw a fraction of sights over a week.
How loud and bright everything was.
I now go into London a couple of times a month for work and still live in the countryside. I love going into the capital, but also love getting off the train in my small coastal village at the bottom of the South Downs National Park when I come home. Love to visit, but would hate to live there now.
Grew up in Somerset, although I had briefly visited the edge of Bristol, been to York, and been to Manchester, it didn’t prepare me for visiting London!
I visited London for the very first time in probably 2006. My main impression was how mind-bogglingly big and busy it was. I wasn’t yet a teenager.
The first thing I remember was coming into Kings Cross Station. You could see that the streets were built upon layers and layers of old buildings, incredibly old Victorian brickwork supporting everything, weird little utility buildings that looked covered in soot and dust. Also Kings Cross looked nothing like Harry Potter! I later found out that’s because they filmed the Kings Cross scene in St Pancras.
The tube was very cool! Even the Bakerloo line seemed futuristic. The tower blocks of flats were impressive to me. Bridgwater had one block of flats that was over 5 stories tall, Kilburn Park where our hotel was had tower blocks on every street!
The city is so diverse, too! Somerset and Yorkshire weren’t very diverse at the time. I had never seen a Carribbean or African community before, nor South American!
Picadilly Circus stuck with me too. Looked very futuristic, I remember seeing a tv screen playing BBC News on the side of a building! That was the largest tv I’d ever seen!
22 comments
No offense, but I don’t understand your question.
Maybe put the question (in your native language) in a translator like DeepL, translate to English and post again?
the amount of people and public transport even during the night.
Tbh I didn’t really have anything like that when I visited Berlin for the first time because by then I had been to plenty of other big cities.
The concept of taking the metro/train (since we don’t even have trains in the Norwegian countryside where I’m from). I quickly got used to it though.
First time visiting the Capital, it was the ability for public transport to get easy from A to B. And the Museums.
The rest? Not so much.
For me it was the amount of foreigners, especially black people. Lisbon has a very strong African community, it has had for quite some time, and in my small hometown and other nerarby bigger cities we didn’t have as much.
Nowadays this is not the case anymore but given that I went to Lisbon for the first time almost 20 years ago, at the time this was quite important.
Well, I’m living in the suburbs – basically the countryside if you ask some idiots
The amount of tourists was astounding the first time I went to the city
My reaction when i first visited the capital of my state: Damn, Kiel is ugly.
my reaction when i first visited the capitol of my country: DAMN, Berlin is ugly.
30y ago there were like 6 or 7 McDonald’s in the main shopping street (Kalverstraat, Amsterdam).
It was a long, long time ago. My parents parked the car somewhere in the Flevopolder and we then took the train. It was my first time in a strange railway station getting in one of the big Koplopers – I had only been on rural diesels before. We then arrived under the big canopy of Amsterdam Centraal. I guess that made a bigger impression on me than the actual city.
How there is no real city centre in Berlin, but instead people just stay in their neighbourhoods. I am not country countryside, but in most other big cities in Germany you would have something like a city centre
Not exactly from the country side as you call it but every time I think of Berlin I feel dread.
As a kid I loved it but now that I’ve been there as an adult I’d say: decent to visit, horrible to live in.
The restaurants diversity, how easy it was to get a taste of so many foreign cultures.
First time in Barcelona: Damn, I love metro
First time in Madrid: Fuck Madrid
The amount of guys hanging around on the street shouting vulgar comments, following me while whistling, requesting cigarettes or drugs,… I avoid the capital now unless I absolutely need to be there and even in summer I wear a long coat.
Ppl say I’m exaggerating and these guys just shout, they won’t actually do anything… But that’s what they always say until one of them is crazy enough.
Nothing relly like impressive. As I was there always. But when I moved from village to city. And this being Bratislava so pretty small compared. But the option to just walk across the street and get groceries at 21.40. Or ordering food late. Or just walking to a shop. All the option for entertainment. Gym.
And as my village is just in the middle of field. The nature is better in the city with the woods next to it and hills.
First time was in a school trip to see the zoo and a couple of historical places. It was in primary school so i don’t have concrete memories besides too much traffic and the buildings being too talk and all together.
Due to living in Scania in southernmost Sweden close to the Danish border, my first visits to a capital as a child were actually to the Danish capital Copenhagen. As a child, we mostly went there to visit the Tivoli Gardens amusement park or Copenhagen Zoo, or to have a stroll together on the big shopping street Strøget with some shopping, dining and sightseeing. I think that the biggest difference was that the pace was generally a lot faster in Copenhagen compared to the Scanian cities I had been to, and especially compared to the countryside where I lived. Things were louder and felt more chaotic. Generally it was just a lot of different impressions all at once.
I didn’t actually visit the Swedish capital Stockholm until quite many years later, but I do remember that Stockholm felt a lot more spread out and there were a lot longer distances between different places, compared to the more compact and walkable city center in Copenhagen.
Of course though, both Copenhagen and Stockholm are still relatively small cities in an international perspective, and the first truly large city that I visited was Paris, when I was already in my teens. That city truly felt huge in an almost overwhelming and slightly intimidating way. I remember being at the top of the Eiffel Tower for the first time, and seeing nothing but the city as far as the eye could reach. That was truly mindblowing.
Dublin wasn’t far so got to it as a teenager. Lovely Georgian splendour but everytime I travel home from abroad it’s sad to see it falling apart. O Connell st is a mess. Temple bar a tourist trap with stupid prices. Hotels rip off prices. I would never move back rents are insane.
Everything is so big!
…and it keeps going! So many buildings! It never ends!
The Grand Place definitely lives up to its reputation. And so do all the monuments.
I’m lost.
So much noise everywhere. Trams, cars, so noisy!
And where is all the greenery? Just a park or two every so often feels fake if you’re used to forests and fields. It’s an imitation of the real thing.
This street smells like pee.
And this one too.
Let’s take the tram.
Even more buildings. I remembered I entered the city, but will I ever be able to leave? These buildings go on forever! I’ve been on the tram for like, more than 20 minutes and there’s still more buildings! How haven’t I reached a forest yet?
Okay, back at home. Good for a daytrip, but I think I prefer the countryside.
I grew up in the Dutch & German countryside, before moving to the English countryside.
I remember going to London with my grandparents for the first time to stay with some of my family there, when I was about 10 years old.
Things that stood out to me:
How unbelievably busy it was. I had never seen so many people in such a close proximity.
How many things there were to do. We went sightseeing, but only saw a fraction of sights over a week.
How loud and bright everything was.
I now go into London a couple of times a month for work and still live in the countryside. I love going into the capital, but also love getting off the train in my small coastal village at the bottom of the South Downs National Park when I come home. Love to visit, but would hate to live there now.
Grew up in Somerset, although I had briefly visited the edge of Bristol, been to York, and been to Manchester, it didn’t prepare me for visiting London!
I visited London for the very first time in probably 2006. My main impression was how mind-bogglingly big and busy it was. I wasn’t yet a teenager.
The first thing I remember was coming into Kings Cross Station. You could see that the streets were built upon layers and layers of old buildings, incredibly old Victorian brickwork supporting everything, weird little utility buildings that looked covered in soot and dust. Also Kings Cross looked nothing like Harry Potter! I later found out that’s because they filmed the Kings Cross scene in St Pancras.
The tube was very cool! Even the Bakerloo line seemed futuristic. The tower blocks of flats were impressive to me. Bridgwater had one block of flats that was over 5 stories tall, Kilburn Park where our hotel was had tower blocks on every street!
The city is so diverse, too! Somerset and Yorkshire weren’t very diverse at the time. I had never seen a Carribbean or African community before, nor South American!
Picadilly Circus stuck with me too. Looked very futuristic, I remember seeing a tv screen playing BBC News on the side of a building! That was the largest tv I’d ever seen!