CITIES OF DREADFUL NOISE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 189, 12 May 1928, Page 24

CITIES OF DREADFUL NOISE

Brussels has just been denounced as the noisiest city in Europe. ISoisy, it certainly is, but the hoot of the Belgian motor-horn (find this is the chief contribution to the din of modern town life) is not so piercing or persistent as the Parisian variety. Paris would, 1 should say, win on. points, though the habit of staying up all night and making a noise about it is confined to Montmartre and the busy little streets gathered round the vast new Cafe i antasm (says a London “Evening Standard writer). The Rue de la Paix, the Rue de Rivoli, and the district of the big hotels are as .dead as London soon after midnight. Spanish towns are difficult for the visitor who prefers the night to sleep in; Italians, too, have a strange reluctance to go to bed, at any rate in the summer, until 3 or 4 a.m. But of all European capitals I have found Athens the most nerve-destroying. Cars, with silencers removed, tear about in a cloud of dust every hour of the 24, trains never seem to cease, and the cafes, with political discussions in full swing, and newspaper sellers, adding their shouts, remain open until the da