• AquaTofana@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Conversely, I, as an American who had the opportunity to spend a few months in Germany, was surprised at how close all the countries were.

    Great culture in all the places I went (Brussels and Prague were my two standout favorites!) Traveling was hella cheap. The food was fire everywhere I went. The architecture was INCREDIBLE. And the knowledge that you could go to the hospital for less than $100 was nuts. Don’t even get me started on how legitimately cool it is to sit in a 1000 year old pub.

    I didn’t want to come back. I nearly cried when I got the return flight info.

    It still shocks me to tell people “Yeah, I lived in Germany for a bit and some weekends we would fuck off to France.”

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      10 hours ago

      The borders of European countries are great because there’s all this security infrastructure that they’ve built but then they don’t use any of it. There’s always just a bunch of ballads and you have to drive around little security checkpoints but there’s never anyone around.

      My personal favourite is Geneva which is kind of just an extended bit of Switzerland because the city was already there, but really by any logical sense it should be in France. So they deal with that by basically just ignoring it, and people just pop to and fro all the time.

      • untorquer@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        There are often crossings where the infrastructure is a road-side sign. Interstate crossings at state borders are often more significant.