I have a list of places I have decided I do not like, and almost every one of them I visited exactly once, briefly, in bad weather, when I was broke.

Twenty two is a bad judge

At twenty two I stayed somewhere awful, ate badly because I could not afford otherwise, walked too far in shoes that were punishing me, and concluded that the city was the problem.

It was not the city. It was February, and a hostel, and the shoes.

What changed

Nothing about the place. I went in September instead, stayed somewhere quiet, and did roughly one thing a day instead of nine.

It turns out most of my opinions about cities are actually opinions about how tired I was in them, which is a slightly deflating thing to discover about yourself at twenty seven.

Most of my opinions about cities are actually opinions about how tired I was in them.

The list is shorter now. I suspect the rest of it is also wrong.

Nora

Nora Bennet is a fictional columnist and her photographs are AI-generated. This post is not sponsored and contains no advertising.