HCMC, Medellin

Now that I've traveled around Europe quite a bit more (been to 25 of 27 EU member states) plus a handful of non-EU countries. Thought I'd post the 5 worst places I stayed in while traveling through Europe (so I'm excluding day trips to other cities).

5. Zurich, Switzerland: Obscenely expensive, incredibly boring, incomprehensible transport system populated with unpleasant people. Benefit is that it is close to places that are worth visiting.

4. Luxembourg City, Luxembourg: After a day looking at the city, I spent the rest of my brief stay on day trips to Germany and France. It's clean but that's pretty much all it has going for it. There's really nothing interesting about the city or Luxembourg in general.

3. Zagreb, Croatia: Boring city with bad food, ****ty weather, rude people and seemingly no coherent urban development plan of any kind. It was an incredibly depressing place to visit. My stay here was short and I was grateful for that.

2. Dubrovnik, Croatia: Massively disappointing. Expensive, overcrowded, overrated beaches. Countless tour groups bump into each other as they all look at the same things at the same time. Restaurants in the city walls are enormous tourist traps overcharging for mediocre food. The whole city is saturated with commercialization to the point where any charm that might have existed in the past no longer does. Walk around the city walls, have a drink and go to Kotor, Montenegro instead. I cut my stay here short by a day to travel to Montenegro and didn't regret it for a second.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Nicosia, Cyprus: Half the city is fairly nice and appears modern while the other half has one attraction and looks it just survived an earthquake. The appearance and reappearance of sidewalks combined with haphazard driving and inadequate public transport make travel outside of the old town a pain in the ass.

Tallinn, Estonia: There wasn't really anything here that tickled my fancy. Some nice sights in the old town but beyond that it was a really dull place. Pretty disappointing given that it's the city that everybody talks about when it comes to the Baltic states.

Helsinki, Finland: The highlight of this trip was trying to interact with dueling pro and anti-refugee activists in the city center. Nothing of real interest in the city and everything is very expensive. Only stayed here a couple of nights.

And the #1 worst city I stayed at in Europe:

1. Split, Croatia: Pretty obvious trend. The main advantage of Split is its proximity to the islands which are the real attractions of the country. The main disadvantage is everything else. There is a horrible stench along the waterfront. The nightlife is comprised of douchey teenagers being ****ty drinkers. The rooms and beds are overpriced and are of low quality. Locals are bitter, cynical and look at you with disdain for daring to visit their city.

So yeah, Croatia was really ****ty. Probably the one country I wish I skipped over.

Bit too down on Croatia imo. It's overrated for sure but it was OK. I haven't been to Zagreb, though. Split didn't smell when I was there. Dubrovnik is touristy but pretty regardless. You're definitely better off in Slovenia.

I've been to something like 25 countries in Europe but managed to avoid the rest of your cities except for Tallinn and Helsinki. Definitely wouldn't be rushing back to either but they were OK. Worst places I went in Europe were Warsaw and Podgorica, Montenegro. Also a shout out to Italy for generally sucking. Everything is dirty and broken, the people seem irritable and miserable, the politics is horrendous. Food and coffee is good at the top end but is surprisingly bad on average. The place gets bailed out because it has such great scenery, history etc but if you took that away it would be a dump.

It's generally a credit to Europe that most of it doesn't suck. Even the bad parts aren't that bad.

Edit: Definitely an expectations game to some extent too. I expected nothing from Croatia so I found it fine. Italy I expected to be really nice and then was disappointed when it wasn't. The two places are actually pretty similar in their downsides.

Took a day trip to Podgorica while I was staying in Kotor. Not a pleasant place by any stretch.

If I wasn't interested in Polish history, I would have hated Warsaw. A sprawling, dusty, chaotic metropolis with seemingly half the city still under construction. Krakow and Wroclaw were infinitely better.

Italy looks like a challenging place to live if you live in one of its major cities or a city with an iconic tourist attraction. Florence and Rome were packed with tourists in *February*. A day trip to Lucca helped in avoiding tourists at that time. I can see myself living in a small town or lesser known city in Italy such as Lucca and enjoying it quite a bit. But the major cities were way too hectic for my tastes.

As for the people, I can't say I had the same experience as you. I was invited to eat with my host's family in Florence on a whim and it was joyous. Nothing weirder than speaking 5 words of Italian to people who speak 5 words of English and still being able to have a humorous conversation.

Italy is easily the most overrated European country. They do have gelato and the fire breathing six legged dog, tho.

I'm curious what were the good cities and why , what were your interests ?

I'm more a fan of museums and the history of different places I go, especially related to war. I like looking at different types of buildings and people watching. I despise nightclubs but not don't mind some time at a pub. I'm not necessarily a foodie but to go to a country without trying its local cuisine would be a sin. I tend to avoid bus tours unless it's the only way to see a certain place that I really want to visit.

But that's not what I often remember about the places. Sure the pictures I took inside The Louvre were nice but everybody's been there. Nobody is going to see anything new. It's really who I spend my time with that makes for good memories. So my interactions with people, especially locals, are quite important to my perception of a place. With every place you visit, your mileage may vary. My views are obviously based just on my experiences.

Good cities is a tough one because the truth is that most of the cities I've been to in Europe are good ones. That's what makes the bad ones stand out so much. It's a matter of what you enjoy. For example, I thought Berlin was the ****. Other people find it dirty and ugly. Those people are correct. But because of how awesome the monuments and museums were, I looked past that pretty easily.

As for good cities, in no particular order and in no way exhaustive (again, only including ones I stayed in rather than just took a day trip to)

Amsterdam
Edinburgh
Porto
Prague
Berlin
Krakow
Budapest
Seville

Berlin is a candidate for best city in Europe. Edinburgh and Krakow are great. I liked Budapest too (although was only there a night) but I know a guy who lived there and hated it, so who knows.

Living in a place is super different from visiting for obvious reasons. Visiting Rome, Paris and London is great. Living there seems absolutely horrible. The quality of life in places like Zurich and Frankfurt is really high but they're insanely boring places to visit.

It's rare to come across a city that is both great to visit and appears to be (or is) great to live in.

Been to 23 countries , few hundred cities. Hanoi, Vietnam is my least favorite. Not a lot to see unless you make the 3 hour drive to Ha Long bay (which is amazing). Food is meh and the best spots have American prices. Crossing the street is a nightmare as hundreds of bikes zig zag around you.

Also would not recommend Heraklion, Crete. So many better Greek islands.

Favorite city- Tokyo

Thanks for answearing makes sense.

Helsinki is my home city and I have to tell you that there is plenty of history and museums that are at relatively low cost and very well maintained. Aswell out of the city center and even on near by islands which are all reachable by ferry there is plenty of awesome nature spots. Nightlife is pretty bad here though..

Its quite hard to judge a city by visiting it once for couple days which is what most people do here. Its more like sharing a personal experience as its so subjective on your mood and other personal things such as your company, time of the year / weather etc. as you already mentioned.


Cheers!

Yeah I did like Suomenlinna though my impression was that it was outside of Helsinki given that it was on islands.

If you like that kind of stuff you chose the wrong cities to visit. If you wanted lots of interaction with locals you would be better off visiting some smaller coastal cities then 2 biggest cities and one overcrowded turist city.
You would have much better chance to meet locals, hang out with them, eat local food and whatever you like to do.

We had a war not long ago so there are plenty of places you could have visited if thats what you like. Also some places to visit from earlier wars.

We also have lot of roman architecture and other kind of monuments/buildings worth visiting if you like history.

So i think your experience might be bad because of that.
Hope you will have better experience if you decide to visit again

Bakersfield

Boston.

Medellin and Saigon are tier one ****holes

Managua, San Jose and Panama City tier two, but still ****ing awful

Saigon isn't that bad.

San... Jose?

Worcester

Always liked Saigon when I went there. D1 ftw?

Manila still deserves more hate. The worst I have been to

So many hate on Vietnam ITT, I’d like to hear more details

+1 I was 17 senior in High School and visiting colleges. I was going to Worcester to see Clark University, as we were driving into town I turned to my Dad and said we dont need to see the campus I cant imagine living in this city for next four years...

I'd add Rochester, NY AKA Crotchfester to the list of worst cities.

My worst 5 list would include;

Barranquilla, Colombia (The Newark of Colombia)
Newark, NJ
Rochester, NY
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Baltimore, MD

How could I forget Manila?! Total sh*thole, terrible traffic, awful pollution, and horrible weather, other than that I guess it was oK

The Vietnamese are insufferable. They seem quite proud of their country, despite the reality that it is an absolute ****hole. Thais appreciate tourists and are polite and friendly (if a little braindead); Vietnamese are just dickheads.

Saigon is all the bad parts of Asia thrown into one imo. The pollution/traffic is awful, it’s overpopulated, dirty. It’s not safe(know 3 people who got mugged there) you have beggars, street venders are loud and repetitive, hygiene levels non existent(got worst food poisoning of my life there, which might make my bias worse, but this is a list based on opinion). I could go on.

It’s not shockingly bad, in terms of poverty and the state of humanity, if that’s how you gauge a bad city, if that’s the case there’s probs 10+ worse cities than Saigon in central/South America alone.

LMAO at all the hate on Saigon.

Been living here for 10 months, renting monthly via airbnb and moving all around the city renting a new apartment every month, lived in Binh Thanh, D1-Binh Thanh border, D3, D7, Nha Be and in Tan Binh. I have been walking here late at night a ton of time, often alone, I have never felt unsafe. Thb the only one time here that I almost got involved in a street fight was when I was living in Nha Be, with... a latino dude lol, who was living there as well. Never got food poisoning here but I eat where the locals eat. For the air pollution, I agree, I have checked some data and Saigon is the worst, even worst than the biggest Chinese cities. And for the beggars, lol, every megacities have beggars.