Just one of the sheep.

[SwissJon]

Lausanne, the "city" where I work is not very big, perhaps 125,000... I live outside of Lausanne in a mountainous area of Valais.. I count myself as a very lucky person to have a decent job, and my daily commute is long, but not unpleasant.

This week I have been in Paris trying to sort out the rusty remains of a project that has been ignored by the local team for too long. Doing this means that I have had to arrive at the financial district, La Defence, during rush hour, and being packed far too close for comfort on a crowded metro, followed by being herded, sheep like, out of the Metro station by the nearest exit because there was no option and no chance to change direction. The human mass that is todays society is mindnumbing and depressing. I'm not surprised you city dwellers moan about life so much. You need to get out and see some of the world. I realise how lucky I am living where I do. Yes, it akes me 90 minutes to get to work every morning, but that's ok, give me that every time over this horrible 30 minute commute. I'm a country boy.. Always will be.

Oh, well it's not all doom and gloom.. I got the chance to take some photos last night.. Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be able to find a corner to hide in and take further photos of the human throng. This one isn't bad for being taken on a compact!

[BigFuzzy]

Baaaah...

actually, I live in a city of 500,000 and am lucky to say that my commute (by car) takes 20 min, and my commute by tram takes 15 and by bike the same.

It's one of the best "big" cities I've ever lived in.. feels really small, lots of green, decent roads and great public transport.

As I've mentioned, I loved Lausanne.. I wish I could live in that area. Major jealousy. I'd live in the surrounding mountains on the weekends. I did a solo climb of Mt. Blanc in Feb 2006.. gah.. jealousy rage!

[SwissJon]

Yeah, but BF.. You have a 40 min commute everyday instead of 3 hours and you get to go to Mexico on photoshoots.. Back at ya with the jealousy thing my friend!

[OsmosisStudios]

Lausanne is a WONDERFUL place. I miss it.

I know the feeling though. I went from Ottawa (~1M pop) to Mississauga (~900k pop)... but Mississauga is in the Greater Toronto Area.. roughly 5-6M pop. It's a radical change, and it's taking some adjusting, that's for sure. Everything is just that much more full and busy.

[NgaiHill]

Its all a matter of scale. There's only about 1M people in the whole of the South Island, of a total population of 4.5M. I just moved from a town of about 800 to the 'city' of Dunedin, population about 125,000 & the second largest city in the South Island. I now live in Port Chalmers which is considered almost a small town but is probably really a suburb. There's about 1000 people here and its about 15 mins drive from the city centre, that's my drive to work.

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by NgaiHill

Its all a matter of scale. There's only about 1M people in the whole of the South Island, of a total population of 4.5M. I just moved from a town of about 800 to the 'city' of Dunedin, population about 125,000 & the second largest city in the South Island. I now live in Port Chalmers which is considered almost a small town but is probably really a suburb. There's about 1000 people here and its about 15 mins drive from the city centre, that's my drive to work.

LoL.. I'm moving to where you are Lisa.. Fancy a new neighbour? Switzerlands population is about twice that of Paris, about 5 million.. I find it VERY claustraphobic, I really am a country person. My closest town of Sion has a population of about 30,000 it's the capital of the area, but I live in a village a few kms away where there's only a couple of thousand.. But I'd love a 15min trip to work..

Interestingly, and I checked this evening, in this area of hugely magnificent glass skyscrapers, I'm one of the only ones looking UP.

[Jonbar18]

I know what you mean. Im in a "small" town of the GTA, literally one block over from actual Toronto. I can not stand the gigantic population, and it doesn't help that it's also growing at an insane rate. Condos of insane height (my dad was recently looking at a room in a ~50 story building) have been popping up everywhere, and cities just keep on growing and growing. The first thing I'm doing when I'm done school is moving to a smaller town.
I've never heard of Lausanne, but Switzerland is on my (exponentially growing) travel list, so O'll be sure to make a note of it.

[BigFuzzy]

Funny about all this is that despite being a bit of a hermit and loving my space and privacy.. the two places I want to live most right now are Tokyo and NYC.
I absolutely love both places.. I never quite felt too oppressed there like I do in other places (Mexico City and any other myriad of mega cities I've visited..)...
we'll see, I have a contract until the end of 2013 so I'm just now starting to look at my options. Nice to have a bit of breathing room for once (been living on 1year contracts for nearly a decade!)

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by BigFuzzy

Funny about all this is that despite being a bit of a hermit and loving my space and privacy.. the two places I want to live most right now are Tokyo and NYC.
I absolutely love both places.. I never quite felt too oppressed there like I do in other places (Mexico City and any other myriad of mega cities I've visited..)...
we'll see, I have a contract until the end of 2013 so I'm just now starting to look at my options. Nice to have a bit of breathing room for once (been living on 1year contracts for nearly a decade!)

Funny, Japan is on my bucket list.. I would hate Tokyo.. My wife made that comment when I mentioned I'd like to see Japan, but I'd love to go into the country and see how the non-city people live.

I hate short term contracts. Gave up on them a while back.. Working for yourself is nice, but always leaves the question "What's next"

[milosh]

I'm also a country type person, big time! I grew up in a small town (~30 000 inhabitants) but spent most of my childhood (and still do today) in a nearby village where my grandparents lived. I currently spend most of my time in Banja Luka (220 000), it's a nice city, not too big, but I miss having my backyard all the time. What's funny is that I find myself more world-oriented (to put it that way) and open-minded than a lot of those who grew up in Banja Luka. But I would like to spend two or three years in NYC, I'm very attracted by it, for some reason. Oh yeah, the biggest city I visited was the jungle of Shanghai!