People from quiet places: how do you feel when you visit loud cities? And vice versa?

3 comments

1. I don’t think there are that huge differences in this between cities. In some Mediterranean or South-European cities you might hear a lot more honking and occasional yelling, but apart from that a lot of noise comes from cars, buses, trams, stuff like that. I don’t know if it’s the way you intended, but having been to both Athens and Zürich I’d say the latter is maybe a bit more quiet, though still noisy.

   So the question becomes “people from the country side, how do you feel visiting cities, and vice versa”.

2. I moved to a big city for University. Whenever I visit my hometown it’s like I’m stepping into another dimension with no civilization.

   No trains beeping, no airplanes above the head, no neighbors playing Barka on a trumpet at 2am. There’s no soul outside and nobody screaming bloody murder at night.

   I love it but sometimes I can say that hearing nothing but my thoughts is quite unsettling. Got too accustomed to chaos at all times I think.

3. I mean I grew up in Finland in a relatively rural area some 400km/250mi north from Helsinki, moved out the country at 19 and have lived in both major (capital) cities and smaller towns around Central Europe as well as travelled to close to 30 countries since.

   Cities are more or less always the same, of course coloured by local culture but cities also tend to always be melting pots with plenty tourists and migrants, so cultural differences are always more clear between smaller towns and the culture shock vs noise shock is imo quite separate matters and not connected. Most of the noise in cities isn’t from people’s way of communication which could cause a Mediterranean city to be louder than a Nordic one, but more from the matter of how densely populated it is and how much traffic there is. Bigger and denser city will always be noisier by default regardless of culture. Nordic cities are quite calm as they are in fact, quite small and loosely populated in comparison to places like Paris or London.