Arguing that one is better than the other is like arguing over which colour the best. Which is why I get so utterly sick of Perl being compared with Python - they are all going to have their strengths and weaknesses so at the end of the day, the "better" language / syntax boils down to personal preference.
I personally haven't wasted anywhere near as much time with Python indentation compared to missing braces. I hated the whitespace thing at first, and it was only after going back to doing some Perl I noticed that the problem wasn't present in Python.
Though the fact that most other languages use braces is a pain, as it makes swapping between Python and Java / Perl / JavaScript / etc tricky, as I tend to get into the habit of using or not using semicolons at the end of a line.
Perls OOP does feel like a bit of a hack. But it does make it transparent how everything works. I learned Java at University, and everything OOP was a black box and I had no real understanding of how it worked. After learning the Perl way, its really obvious what is going on because it is so transparent. Your current object doesn't have a method? Just look along the @ISA array until you find an object that does have it.
Pythons whitespace is a pain at first, but having used it for a few years, one problem I do not miss is loosing a brace, when reorganizing blocks of code. You cut a few lines of code and paste it somewhere above or below, and your IDE shows you you are missing a brace somewhere. The indentation looks fine, so you can't see where it is.
The whitespace thing is worth it to get rid of that problem alone.