[madaxe_again]

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development.

A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy with the 4X4 truck is your only ticket in or out.

I’ve lived in rural wales, three miles up a paved but steep and narrow lane - if you meet someone, you’re looking at ten minutes of reversing on a bad day - no passing places. I’ve been stuck in the middle of two opposing convoys and one person refusing to back up, and it’s just... well, it makes you not want to go out. Sometimes, someone gets a motorhome stuck on the bridge, and the village is cut off for a day or more. The nearest store is 30 minutes drive away, if the road is clear and the bridge is open.

I’ve lived in rural Bosnia, in a village that you can only reach by a track that looks and drives worse than most river beds. It’s only 15km or so from Sarajevo, but it takes nearly 90 minutes to get there, and there’s little inbetween.

Here in Portugal, a 15km line of sight is a 60km drive - it’s a mountainous region, and again, most of the roads are dirt, single track. The nearest village with a shop to me is 4km away by drone - 28km by road - two rivers in deep valleys between here and there, and only so many medieval bridges are passable by car. The nearest modern bridge is so far off it may as well be in Spain - oh wait, it is!

For someone like me (young, strong, hands on) getting around is a pain in the ass. I never know which journey is going to turn into grappling with straps and jacks in mud. For someone elderly, going out is a daunting prospect. What if I don’t get home? What if I get stuck? What if I break down and nobody passes for two days?

The importance of these services can’t be underestimated - I don’t think these places could continue to exist without them - their population is too low to support permanent stores.

[awiesenhofer]

The sad part is, Bosnia once had an incredibly dense narrow gauge railway network throughout the country and region but it deminished and closed down starting in the 1960ies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow-gauge_railways_in_Bosni...

[Joe-Z]

The places you choose to live in sound pretty interesting. And diverse!

May I ask: Is this work-related that you live country-side in so many different places, or are you a restless soul? :)

[madaxe_again]

Sample bias - I’ve lived in my fair share of big cities around the planet - but over the last few years, after burning out from chronic stress after a decade of building my business, I’ve made a focus of examining slower ways of living, closer to nature - I still do tech consulting, and off grid living suits my skillset handily.

[kaybe]

How do you choose where you live? How often do you move? Tell us more, that sounds interesting!

[madaxe_again]

These days, trying to stay put - been here about eight months and have no particular plans to move on.

As to how we choose - we do a lot of overland travel, and see a lot of places as a result. We’ll get to know a local in some forsaken spot who’ll be like “that cottage is for sale for cheap, it needs a lot of work”, or “the goatherd’s daughter has gone to university and he’s going to struggle this winter” or “there’s an old mill down by the river that only an idiot would buy”, and we just kinda do it. That’s all been in the three and a bit years since I stopped giving a damn and just decided to do whatever - I’m lucky in having a spouse who was willing to trust me when I suggested we both quit our jobs, stop being director of this and manager of that and just go be humans of earth. Before work got silly, we, and before that I, used to go wandering periodically - usually somewhere where people would stop and stare at the outsider - had a great time in the ‘stans, both times, and Siberia - and did a tour of all the bits of Latin America nobody visits - love the interior of Uruguay. Nearly settled down there, but only stayed two months, as I can see economic and environmental doom just around the corner for them.

Anyway. I digress. I’ve always had itchy feet, and I probably should have been an anthropologist or something.

[niij]

What about Uruguay made you feel that way? It's the first place in South America I plan to visit, so would be interested to hear any stories!

[madaxe_again]

The liking it, or the impending doom? I liked it as it’s down to earth and relaxed, the people are kind, and it has a lot going on in and around arts and culture, all over the place.

The impending doom - environmentally, they’ve problems. Tainted aquifers, severe topsoil erosion bordering on desertification from overgrazing, vast eucalyptus monocultures. Economically - they have a final salary pension scheme that everybody scams (e.g. we’ll pay you 30% of your normal wage for your last three years before retirement and then 400% for your final year), and a huge black market with Brazil - people smuggle everything from toilet paper to cars, and it’s universal and normal. They are resorting to foreign agribusiness investments to bridge their deficit, and that only worsens the environmental degradation. Mercosur could go a long way to solving Uruguay’s woes, but it suits the bigger players better to keep Uruguay on a tight leash.

I really recommend the interior - Salto, Carmelo, Fray Bentos, Tacuarembo (Patria Gaucha festival was kinda fascinating - all the gauchos and their families ride in from all over for a week of rodeo and country activities - it’s very much for them, not tourists, so you’d better like steak, beer, and watching people get kicked in the face by horses), Paysandu - charming little cities with lots to explore around them. We loved San Gregorio do Polanco - sleepy little town smack in the middle of Uruguay on a huge reservoir, covered with art, all slightly offbeat, beaches and swimming when there’s water, galloping bareback across the dried up lakebed, startling flamingos, when there’s not.

Coast-side, Punta del Diablo is a cute little beach town, but as you near Montevideo it just slowly gets more built up and crappy, until you reach Punta del Este, which is a sort of micro-Miami.

Montevideo itself is great, interesting, cosmopolitan city, and generally really safe - but it’s a mistake to treat it as representative of Uruguay as a whole.

[kolla]

Quite different from rural Norway which has the same landscape issues but perfect infrastructure.

[dogma1138]

Money, that said it wouldn’t surprise me if Norway has villages that aren’t that accessible.

Iceland has quite a few villages (like 3-4 buildings in size) that are connected by compounded earth roads rather than paved ones.

[throwaway0a5e]

Poor people in similarly remote (similar travel distances but less circuitous routes) parts of the US and Canada with manage to get to Walamrt and back about once a week in run of the mill 20yo SUVs.

Either there's some economic situation preventing similar transportation solutions working in Europe or the people who say that Europe has great transit options have a lot of explaining to do (frankly I think it's a little of both).

[wheels]

There are a few major differences:

For the most part, American towns are built next to the roads. If there's not a road, there's not a town. (Alaska is a notable exception.) In Europe, said roads and towns often long predate SUVs and wouldn't be passably in such.

Also a number of the countries being mentioned are relatively poor. The GDP per capita of the US is more than 10 times the GDP per capita of Bosnia (and close to 3x that of Portugal). That obviously has an influence on the affordability of vehicles and the quality of infrastructure.

[jimktrains2]

It probably saves a ton of time not having to make that run yourself. Also, often just because something isn't common doesn't mean it isn't possible or doesn't happy; it just means that cultural norms swing one way or another. I'd bet the fish truck is ower-operated (even if the owner is a co-op), for instance, which probably has roots in how things were done for a long time.

[7952]

Do you think motorbikes are a viable alternative in these kind of areas? It would just seem easier to ride a dirt bike down difficult roads.

[madaxe_again]

With a tank of propane and a week’s shopping? Yes, bikes get you around just great, but a load of cargo, not so much. Here in Portugal, the Toyota Hilux is the standard vehicle - usually 80’s or early 90’s.