Pictures from Europe (area, buildings, sidewalks, sidewalk)
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Depends. The residential streets in the core were pretty quiet, but you could still hear the distant rumble of traffic from nearby boulevards in most cases. The pedestrian streets were often further from the boulevards, so you couldn't really hear any traffic. In the more outer neighbourhood in the hills of Buda, it was quite quiet, although when there was a car it was often going too fast. In the suburb I also stayed at, it would have been quiet aside from the light rumble of the highway.
Ever been to Paris? European cities are very dense so space isn't wasted, but where its given over to green space its usually done very well. You really have one or the other in a city, there's no "in between" because then it wouldn't really be functional as an urban space. Also, "channelizing" the river is usually necessary to stabilize the banks for structures that are built near the water.
This is a pretty cityscape in central Berlin, taken from an S-Bahn station. The S-Bahn is more or less like an interurban... it serves as rapid transit for the core and commuter rail for the suburbs/outer city. In the core, it's elevated and outside the core it runs at grade. The U-Bahn acts as more local rapid transit for the core and parts of the outer city and is pretty much entirely under ground.
Gendarmenmarket square framed by two large churches opposite each other, theatre and some midrises. This is the French church and theatre.
The German church.
And the midrises... a lot of the buildings in German are new (old ones were bombed) but they fit in quite well with the rest of the built fabric.
Berlin has some pretty interesting modern architecture of course. We first visited a department store/shopping mall complex.
This one had an inverted glass cone and an upright one on top in it's atrium.
The building across the street, connected by an underground passage.
We then went to Potsdamer Platz. Unter den Linden, Berlin, Germany - Google Maps
It was the shopping/entertainment hub of Berlin but then got bombed to rubble and was rebuilt as a large mixed use complex in the last couple decades.
Sony Centre.
The other half of Potsdamer Platz, most of the traffic goes around the place so you get nice quiet streets with patios.
Yeah, we took the plane from Toronto to Budapest where I have family, then took the train to Berlin. The train stopped at Bratislava, Brno, Prague, Dresden and Berlin as well as a several smaller cities in between. It was a medium speed train with a top speed of 90mph between Budapest and Dresden, but I think faster between Dresden and Berlin. The whole trip from Budapest to Berlin was 12 hours. That last picture of the train station is where the trains went to/from in Berlin. The lower basement had regional trains including ours. On our way back to Budapest we stopped in Prague for a few days.
Then from Budapest we also took the train to Vienna and Venice.
We took the subway to our hotel, and this was the view from our room in the "Lesser Town".
The main sight in the Lesser Town is the castle (of which there's more pics on the other camera).
This is Golden Lane, which was home to goldsmiths who moved to the castle to avoid having to pay into the goldsmith guild. It was really cute, the houses were built into the castle walls, and they looked like doll houses. I wouldn't have wanted to live there though, the doorways were lower than my shoulders and the houses were only about 100-200 sf.
View from the castle, looking across the river to the Old Town and Jewish Quarter.
View from the royal vinyards next to the castle, looking at the Lesser Town.
Really stunning urban eye candy that gives me goosebumps. Keep them coming! Paris has nothing on the fine cities of Eastern Europe. The architecture of Budapest in a word, would be heavenly. Look at that bridge, and that fountain, the statues, those grand plazas, and that church...my god. I'm not very religious, but I am speechless. And those scenic views of the countryside? Just as impressive. I think that's the beauty and one of the great little side benefits, and blessings, of great urban planning - preservation of greenery, farmland and rural landscapes. What more could you want? That to me seems to be the best of both worlds.
I would say that Budapest is pretty similar to Paris, but small and some of the buildings are not in as good shape. I mostly showed pictures of buildings that were in good condition, but some are not as great, either from war or lack of maintenance, like this one brown from soot.
Still, Budapest's core is very nice. Prague was even greater, I thought it was nicer than Paris, which I visited about 9 years ago.
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