Well I guess people will just have to ask their recently arrived, Scandanavian neighbour rather than the odd arrival from China, Philippines or India that they may encounter.
And don't worry about murders in Toronto, Chicago has way more! So everything is totally OK! Right?
Because the U.S. is the ONLY place we should ever compare ourselves to. There are no other countries.
Less than the U.S. we win! The rest of the world? Who gives a fuck with their way lower numbers. We beat the U.S.!
That's all that matters.
You have officially reached the status of Troll.
An endless litany of Toronto-bashing posts, in a Toronto forum; most of which are incredibly ill informed if not outright wrong.
I won't bother dismantling each and every statement; some of which are personal preferences you're entitled to; even if they are based on misinformation and an exceedingly limited world view.
On safety, The Economist ranked Cities from around the world on Safety earlier this year:
If you want to find the safest cities on Earth, you'll have to leave the U.S.
mentalfloss.com
Toronto came in at #4; when you look at the subset of 'personal security' which is violent crime, #5. Again, that would be
Toronto is the 5th safest city, in terms of personal security in the world.
As to some of the rest; I happen to love Paris, and I'm partial to Vienna (the food notwithstanding).............
But ya know, if I stopped and thought about it......why do I love those two places? Why do I enjoy spending time there?
Its actually never occurred to me even once that I want to go to Paris, because they've had a few revolutions there.
Do I really want to think about literal heads rolling down the streets from the Guillotine? I'll take a pass thanks. I can't say that imagining any particular march/parade down the Champs Elysees sounds any more captivating.
To me Paris, is great restaurants; its sitting on a patio in the Bastille district; taking in an Opera, strolling along the Seine; its being immersed in a culture familiar enough not to shock, yet tangibly different than in my home city, Toronto.
Vienna, is quirky stairs, lanes and mews; a car-free City centre, the ring road of elegant trees/greenspace; that now seemingly kitchsy Ferris Wheel that provides you a great view of the City.
Both cities owe much to their architecture. Both have a few singular grand buildings that Toronto has no real compartor for because of its young age, and never having been home to a royal family or such.
On the other hand......Paris' Grand Boulevards, about which many great things can be said; are all of 1880s vintage; and all both a near complete monolith of six-storey, nice, buildings with characteristic Juliet balconies. Its really nice, for the first 2,4,6 blocks, until you realize you no longer remember what block your on, because they all look the same.
Just because its a different same than you might be used to in Toronto doesn't mean it doesn't get boring to the locals.
Le Defense is really the only area in Paris outside of its Le Corbusier designed suburbs to depart into mid or late 20thC architecture writ large.
Both, are arguably failures, with much better versions of the same ideas right here in Toronto.
That's not Paris-bashing. I love the place.
But ya know what I miss when I'm away from Toronto?
Among the world's very best Global cuisine. London certainly has some, and New York might be a competitive rival; but Toronto stands out for its exceptional variety of authentic Thai, Italian, Ethiopian, Pakistani, Greek, Chinese, Italian and French food, amongst others.
Done better in every case by their home countries, but very rarely by anywhere else on a large scale. I dare you to find Italian food in Vienna as good as you can get here? Don't even bother trying to find great Thai food in Paris.
I also miss the amount of nature, something you clearly place no premium on.
Rouge Park is the 13th largest urban park on the planet. In truth, when you consider that list includes cities like Scottsdale, El Paso, Anchorage etc. It would be 8th if you edited out the relatively smaller urban centres.
There is really nothing comparable in Western Europe. Lee Valley in greater London is 10,000acres but really isn't all that comparable to the Rouge.
I won't go ad naseum extolling Toronto's virtues, of which there are many; because I neither feel the need to defend this City against a troll who would clearly rather live elsewhere (and really should); nor do I wish to indefinitely pause my criticisms of how it could be so much better.
But one must periodically pause to set the record straight.
Oh, PS, my friend was from Munich.
