Yeah, I’m not saying there isn’t more danger of property crime in Europe (although it depends on where in Europe; where I live now in Germany no one locks bikes in the inner courtyard in the small housing complex where I live, accessible freely from the street, for instance, and when I lived in the Netherlands I didn’t lock my bike at all when stopping at small towns and rural areas, although I generally did in cities); I’m saying you don’t have live continuously worrying about this stuff. I don’t worry about locking the front door, or about having valuables easily accessible, or about my surroundings; I just keep house keys on me and pull the door shut when I leave, and I keep valuables where I’d keep them anywhere in the world. I go where I need to go, even in places considered sketchy and even at night, with no particular worry. The level of alertness you need to have in Europe is grossly overstated by some.

I have lived in different European countries and have never done any of that, except locking the door when leaving the house for extended periods (the rest of the time you can just close the door, unless you have a dumb handle that can be opened from outside without a key, and even then I didn’t bother locking it if I was inside) and maybe avoiding leaving valuables unguarded in a cafe (I’ve left stuff unguarded before, but I wouldn’t do it in every cafe in every town). For pickpockets, I don’t keep valuables in back pockets, but it’s not something I would want to do anyway, and I don’t actively worry about pickpockets.

Definitely not; I’m Italian, so if you ask me the east-west extent of Europe is, like, Istanbul to Lisbon, and everything west of Paris is western while everything east of Prague is eastern (with southern Italy being detached from its historically eastern identity by several centuries in which the Balkans were Ottoman and southern Italy was Christian and under Western royal dynasties, and with everything east of Istanbul, Kyiv and St Petersburg being terra incognita). But my Polish friends protested the one time I called Poland Eastern European, and from then on I made it a point to remember it’s Central European…

Poland is in Central Europe, Estonia in Northern Europe, Albania in Southeastern (Balkans) or Southern Europe. (Romania is sometimes considered Southeastern/Balkan or even Central, but it’s a stretch.)

What do you mean by arbitrary business hours? Most shops these days follow standard hours (that are longer than elsewhere in Europe), certainly in big cities like Milan. Closing for lunch and randomly at other times is really only a thing in small family-run places in the villages.

I’m also curious about corruption; I mean, I’m sure there is corruption behind the scenes like in any country, but I’ve never witnessed overt corruption, like cops or civil workers taking bribes form the public.

I agree about the weather, architecture and locals in Milan. Food is great, though! Not so much the traditional Milanese (although there are some good dishes, and the cotoletta isn’t chicken), but everything else; you can find any Italian regional cuisine and lots of international cuisine, and the dining scene is brilliant. And the Po plain is depressing, but Milan is one hour away from lake Como, and while the high mountains are 1.5-2 hours away, they’re the central Alps, with easy access and world-class hiking and skiing, they’re mot some random range.