If you expect everything everywhere to be a grid, sure, your mental model is not reality-compatible.

Thing is, that's also true of most "grid" cities, too - San Francisco offers you two grids, and then ignores both of them in hilly regions. Most cities I can think of in other places also are inconsistent.

There's a great story of some Parisian aristocrats that attempted to flee Paris, but became hopelessly lost! Turns out a map of the city hadn't yet been created.

Gee, I wonder how we europeans managed to live in cities for hundreds of years without GPS devices.

By living in the same city for your entire lifetime and learning the quirks of the local layout by heart. Accessibility to newcomers was not optimized for.

I don't know, I visited almost every major european city back when portable GPS devices were not a thing, and I never had a problem navigating. Even now, I almost never use the GPS.

In fact the only time I ever got lost in a foreign city was a few months back in New York because instead of going with my gut I trusted the GPS.

I got lost plenty of times in Europe pre-GPS. I typically had a physical map, but this wasn't always sufficient. You'd simply have to fall back in things like payphone calls and asking strangers for help.

Is asking people for directions in an unknown environment really that terrible?

> Is asking people for directions in an unknown environment really that terrible?

If there's a language barrier that becomes more challenging.

Also in places like Venice and Barcelona that are overrun by tourists, asking for directions disrupts the lives of locals. Imagine being asked for directions a dozen or more times a day. Thank goodness for Google Maps and data plans.

Lol. I guess you should stay in your comfortable country

Older parts of European cities can be a bit harder to navigate. I’m thinking the El Gotic neighborhood in Barcelona and Alfama in Lisbon. But one does get used to it after a day or so.

Oh. It must be so hard to be tourist in Europe right? Well... No.

Those old cities make up for it in other ways ^_^

You can have a walkable European city on a grid, e.g. Barcelona, Turin.

Everything looking the same is not that great. Though I do appreciate the clarity of possible moves.

It’s efficient which is great. The opposite is whimsy, which is bad.

Efficient and whimsical are not the only adjectives that apply.

Efficiency is good, but whimsy is splendiforous.

Is this a joke to point out how "hard" it is to find one's way if streets are not perfect grids? I like it.