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The Netherlands is small and densely populated and it is hard to find any village on the mainland that is more than a 20 minutes drive to a larger town where all amenities like shopping, medical treatment, etc are available. Some small villages still have a grocery store, a bakery, a hairdresser, a cafe but usually those are being shut down if the owners retire.
But a cinema, a shoemaker, a watchmaker, etc, those are only available in larger cities since probably 50 years ago.
Yeah a lot of younger people are moving to the big cities for work and many don't come back.
You can always find bakeries, cafes everywhere though. Food is the one thing people will buy locally no matter what.
Other things like garments can wait and people might buy buy locally or drive to the closest large city where they will find cheaper prices.
Now in the U.S. you have a hard time finding these type of villages. Maybe in the NE. The South? Forget it. All the shopping takes place at WalMart, Target or big chain supermarkets like Kroger, Food Lion, Lowes or Publix
I live in a very small village and in our area it's really a mix of those two. We go to a supermarket in a nearby town for the big groceries which is a 10 min. drive. But we also have a traditional bakery, a hunting store, shoemaker a hardware store etc.
We also have a very traditional butcher were you still can buy half a cow or a 1/4, like in the old days. He cuts the right pieces so you can freeze it. I like it. The quality of stuff in those little stores is always a lot better as the owners are still like craftsmen that have heart for the product they sell.
I live in a very small village and in our area it's really a mix of those two. We go to a supermarket in a nearby town for the big groceries which is a 10 min. drive. But we also have a traditional bakery, a hunting store, shoemaker a hardware store etc.
We also have a very traditional butcher were you still can buy half a cow or a 1/4, like in the old days. He cuts the right pieces so you can freeze it. I like it. The quality of stuff in those little stores is always a lot better as the owners are still like craftsmen that have heart for the product they sell.
No. A village may have a bakery, a local bar and a butcher, but otherwise no. You go to Carrefour or ALDI and buy your groceries in your car, and buy clothes online or when you hit the nearest city.
Europe isn't stuck in the 19th century or immune to globalisation.
Before, as long as I can remember, any little town had a "pension", a bar, bakery or two, butcher, cinema, social casino, a place out in the open to dance, a church with a priest, doctor.....sometimes a little prostibule hidden somewhere, the parish that hosted the priest and his woman, not official as we are a catholic country, school, at least primary school in which teacher had the principle that "knowdelge enters with blood".
A living place.
Now... a luxury hostel using any former palace for sunday drivers, perhaps one restaurant, and nothing else, the rest, by car to the nearest city or large town, sometimes 20 or 30 miles away.
Yeah me too! And we have a small "do it yourself / hardware store" and the people that work there are all like ex- carpenters and mechanics who know what they're talking about and give you some good helpful advice. Unlike the 15 yo schoolboy weekend helps you get in the mega stores in the city of whom their eyes start glazing soon as you ask them a technical question
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blob456
I live in a mid sized city with 17,000 population with farms surrounding it (I'm not sure if Europeans would consider that a village or not). Anyways, whenever I need something, I go to Wal Mart to buy it. This supermarket includes everything from furniture, shoes, clothes, foods, and etc. of course, all of their items are made by factories/machines. But honestly, I prefer things in a simpler way.
Once upon a time, every little European village included a shoemakers(replaced by factories), clockmakers(replaced by factories), matchmakers (replaced by Internet), and a tailor (we just buy new clothes instead of repairing them). do they still exist today?
It was easy to ask your local shoemaker to make a special, custom shoe that was especially for you. Now most people wear expensive and cookie cutter nike. These jobs were very decent, artistic and simplistic. Also, even though it is more convenient to one supermarket to buy groceries, I prefer bakeries, candy shops and ect. I know they do exist today but are they common? I just love simplicity
No, 17,000 is a town - a village is classified as less than 10,000 here.
Villages are not simplistic where I live, they might not have everything but they will have supermarkets and post offices so enough to do.
We don't have shoemakers or tailors, it's not the 12th century.
Here at my place, on the Italian Alps, villages can be extremely small. For example my village has 950 inhabitants, and the neighbor ones are even smaller (500-600 inhabitants). They are often really fragmented too, so the same municipality can have a center in a place and other small centers (called "frazioni") at some miles of distance.
Anyway, here the distinction among villages, towns and cities doesn't have any specific rule (at least not in everyday language, not sure about legal/official language). Actually, we neither have two different words for town and city, we call them both "città ". If you want to underline that it is a small "città " you can use a diminutive, "cittadina", but that's all. Instead villages are called "paesi", which is also the same word that we use for "countries". Italian language on this aspect is a really mess :P
For example the larger municipalities in my valley have a population of 5000-10 000 inhabitants, but we are used to call them "città " as well. I have the impression that, in most cases, we call "villages" the municipalities that in the past where mainly run on field cultivation, while the "towns" were the ones in which there where more stores and artisans.
Nowadays our villages have really few services, like a bakery, a little general store and a bar. We usually have a postal office and an elementary school too. For other services, like larger shops, a cinema, the hospital, the middle and high schools and so on we have to take a car and to move to the nearer town. Luckily our municipalities tend to be really near one to each other, usually no more than 10-15Km, and so this is not such a big problem.
So for us is completely normal to move from one village-town to a neighbor one, even several times a day.
For example when I went to the high school my typical day was like: "I wake up in the village A, then I go to school in the town B (while my sister goes to the town C). Then in the afternoon I can go to visit some of my school mates at their home in the village D, go to the dentist in the town E and so on.
So that our villages and towns are so connected and depends so much one on each others, we often have also some form of common administration for the villages of the same valley called "cominità montane" (mountain communities). This communities have been reformed a lot of times, anyway now our "comunità montana" comprehend 43 municipalities, for a total population of 116 306 inhabitants spread on the territories of the "Val Susa", "Val Cenischia" and "Val Sangone".
Spoiler
a map of the community and its municipalities
09-16-2015, 07:46 PM
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Depending on the area or a country in Europe, there is tons of villages resembling a complex and very deep not overly simplistic vibe, and atmosphere.
What is the original poster's evaluation standard of a village? Less than 15,000 people?
Eforie Nord Romania is one of my favorite European villages in the recent summers. A 5 Floor Multilevel Cafe Bar in Eforie Nord, a main street resembling a summer carnival, a restaurant resembling a Romanian Turkish Castle room, tons of Romania theme music concerts with the native traditional music, extremely crowded yet pleasant vibrant urban bustle, and ultra exotic cultural atmosphere is far beyond outside of simple, and wonderfully complex with a dreamy vibe.
Sinaia Romania(A mountain resort town with Peles Castle), Buzescu Romania(A village with Gypsy house mansions everywhere looking like Tibetan Asian Monasteries yet Eastern European, St. Moritz Switzerland(World Class Alps village), and Cortina d' Ampezzo Italy(Even better than Trento or Bolzano) are all top of the World villages anything outside of simple with a deep national identity.
What are other posters favorite European villages below 15,000 anywhere on the Continent?
The basic conclusion is European villages are getting increased Globalization, and Modernity, while having a Special Past and maintaining traditional authentic realms of the national culture.
No, 17,000 is a town - a village is classified as less than 10,000 here.
Villages are not simplistic where I live, they might not have everything but they will have supermarkets and post offices so enough to do.
We don't have shoemakers or tailors, it's not the 12th century.
Just because a place has shoemakers and tailors, it doesn't mean the place is stuck in the 12th century. The website says that places like UK, Italy and Germany still have shoemakers. In fact, in St Augustine, Germany, there are almost 100 shoemaker workshops.
Quote:
While hand shoemakers still exist in England, Italy, Germany, and other places, their numbers are limited and clients few.
In Germany, the central association for shoemakers in St. Augustin, near Cologne, lists 100 workshops in the country where custom-made shoes are produced. The knowledge and expertise of the skilled craft of shoemaking have been handed down from generation to generation.
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