If Rust were an unpleasant experience, it wouldn't have users. I'm sorry that you disagree with the syntax decisions. We can't please everybody.
I'm not an extremist, the language clearly has certain advantages. At the same time I do believe it could have a lot more users if it were a more pleasant experience.
If it becomes a mainstream language (like Java, C++, etc), I'd be happy to concede I was wrong. It could be that memory safety will trump ergonomics and it wouldn't be the first time that somewhat painful to use tools become very popular - see Linux, git, etc.
Lifetime annotations are an other ugly unreadable quirk. I'm happy to know I'm not the only one.
Those aren't syntax though. Without lifetimes you don't have memory safety without GC. There are plenty of languages that don't have memory safety, and plenty of languages with GC, but they don't broadly share Rust's goals.
At the end of the day though, these tiny thing like fn, or the lifetime annotations and the many others add up to an unpleasant experience and less readable code.