least beautiful country

so i just heard Nihal platitudinizing with a Ukrainian refugee on the radio, "Ukraine's a beautiful country" he says, and ok sure but i pause for a minute and wonder - is there any country in the world that can't fairly be described as beautiful, for some value of beautiful, if you pick and choose which bits you think are beautiful?

and i'm pretty sure the answer is "no, that was a stupid empty thing to say" but i thought it might be interesting to see if anybody wanted to make a case for any nation state in the world being an irredeemable shithole

just to save us a few dozen jokes i'm going to make a ruling now that the UK is only psychically and culturally an irredeemable shithole

eye of the beholder and all, but nobody i've known who's been to malta has had much good to say of its aesthetics

Saudi - I couldn’t leave the house unaccompanied, can’t be various minority groups/lgbt+ safely there, it’s like 95% desert, too hot, no drink, and the royal family have destroyed a huge percentage of ancient historical and religious sites, including many of those important to Islam. Could not pay me to spend time there.

eye of the beholder and all, but nobody i've known who's been to malta has had much good to say of its aesthetics

that said for any country that isn't a minuscule haven for tax-avoiding property development there will always be a best face

or a desert hellzone lmao xp

everyone i know who's been to malta has just said 'it is so full of buildings'

maybe they're nice buildings idk

We're talking purely in terms of natural and architectural beauty here, right? If so no I don't think there is one.

otoh i HAVE been to luxembourg

that said, being tiny should lose you points in the unbeautiful stakes - the real offenders, hypothetically, are those who spread their unbeauty about

Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country on the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It has a land area of about 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in Western Asia.

ofc, i was arguing with my own given examples, Saudi is probably a good contender if you dislike desertscapes (I think they have some nice coastal bits too?)

Ukraine is beautiful btw - went to Kyiv, Odessa and Lviv at various points prewar. It would be one of the countries we’d always look to go back to. Crossed the country and the steppes on a bus from Kyiv to Odessa, really hope to revisit some day when the war is over. People I spoke to about going there - and this was almost always fellow Western Europeans - were so snobby about it. It’s such a limiting perspective.

I've never been to Saudi Arabia, but I'd assume Mecca would qualify it at the very least

I've been to Malta, nothing wrong with it.

I've never been to Saudi Arabia, but I'd assume Mecca would qualify it at the very least

I can't think of whole countries but plenty of cities. I love Toronto, I lived there for a very happy decade, but it's mostly ugly as shit in a traditional old-buildings-and-greenery sense.

there’s got to be an equivalent to nebraska or iowa or something—landlocked, flat, primarily agricultural, no big cities or bodies of water

there’s got to be an equivalent to nebraska or iowa or something—landlocked, flat, primarily agricultural, no big cities or bodies of water

― in places all over the world, real stuff be happening (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 17 May 2022 14:04 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

am imagining paraguay and the czech republic like this. PROVE ME WRONG

Travelling through Bohemia on a train was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had travelling somewhere, so no. Especially in autumn. I didn’t want to stop looking at it.

The discussion on Saudi reminded me of this piece by a (now ex-) Motorsport journalist, where they are finding the bits of Riyadh they like while covering a mixed-gender Motorsport series.

https://hsouthwellfe.medium.com/what-its-actually-like-to-visit-riyadh-alone-for-formula-e-ce88cfc0f4cd

thought somewhere like the malvinas-falklands might be promising but a) not really a country b) some pictures look kind of dramatic nice c) a lot of sea is almost always at least interesting

Australia seems like a dystopic hellscape to me. Floods, temperatures exceeding 50C, deadly insects, aboriginal genocide, worst wildfires in modern history, offshore concentration camps and vile expats like Lynton Crosby and Nick Cave. lol I'm probably doing this wrong.

For me I think it's probably Dubai. You can get the desert in Saudi or other places around the middle East but Dubai comes with fairly hideous looking buildings.

Though actually it might not be a country?

We'll throw in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah for free!

My brother lives in Dubai with his Dutch wife. He offered to pay for my mum to have a holiday there and she said are you really that keen to kill me off now!

Lol

i think i could argue that deserts - of sand or grass or ice or whatever - have a kind of beauty, at least to enough people. but it's a reasonably solid case for Saudi being the worst so far

so tbh i'm sure the answer is "everywhere has some beauty" but the title says "least" so it's fair to run with it

we haven't had a staunch defence of Paraguay yet, in your FACE Paraguay

Lol I have actually been to Asuncion. From my recollection it's fine.

The discussion on Saudi reminded me of this piece by a (now ex-) Motorsport journalist, where they are finding the bits of Riyadh they like while covering a mixed-gender Motorsport series.

https://hsouthwellfe.medium.com/what-its-actually-like-to-visit-riyadh-alone-for-formula-e-ce88cfc0f4cd🕸

The discussion on Saudi reminded me of this piece by a (now ex-) Motorsport journalist, where they are finding the bits of Riyadh they like while covering a mixed-gender Motorsport series.

https://hsouthwellfe.medium.com/what-its-actually-like-to-visit-riyadh-alone-for-formula-e-ce88cfc0f4cd🕸

UAE is not great, and I would never go there again, but I liked going to the Louvre there and also they had the best Indian food I’ve ever had in my life. (The husband says this too, and he is much better travelled).

I've never been to Saudi Arabia, but I'd assume Mecca would qualify it at the very least

Please see what I said about the royal family destroying historical sites! They have been destroying sites around Mecca too!

― gyac, Tuesday, May 17, 2022 9:59 AM (one hour ago)

yikes, I missed the link in your original post -- that photo of Mecca is shocking

The North of France looks boring as hell from the windows of Eurostar.

it does have very pretty towns though, much like Belgium

I've been to 48 countries, all had beautiful parts, only exception I can think of is Monaco, just a load of luxury yachts and nothing to see, the f1 circuit was fun to see but not beautiful.

Gibraltar?

Started thinking that Nauru might be in contention but getting into the phosphate cantilevers now.

the way monaco is set against the coastline and the surrounding hills is pretty picturesque, though it doesn't have the beauty of many european coastal towns and cities, true.

it was overcast and drizzling when I went there. probably didn't help.

Qatar, UAE, Australia, Saudi, Russia, Angola are places I've visited that definitely didn't impress, in terms of natural surroundings.

Miami for sure.

Gary indiana

does the great barrier reef count for australia? australia also has perth and sydney harbor

also kangaroo island, and pretty coastline along victoria and south australia

yeah, parts of Australia are pretty stunning (northern rain forests, the desert, etc.)

Never having visited....Turkmenistan? Seems to be lacking the stunning mountain vistas of the other 'Stans, more flat scrubby brush land

Turkmenistan

https://i.imgur.com/QJ9SNOl.png

Also have to say I saw some astounding bits of Russia, though mostly it was a week of watching identical clumps of silver birch trees go past the train window.

looking at a map and botswana looks like it's landlocked, mostly plain/desert, and lack of major freshwater formations

lol

Turkmenistan is home to the famous Mouth of Hell crater.

https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1385303/derweze-crater-turkmenistan.jpg

Turkmenistan:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7309/9108833722_9017b0a2b8_o.jpg

Of course every nation will have highlights... we have to take those into account

NV said "irredeemable" - so we are looking for the place with the least highlights, surely.

Biggest area to highlights ratio imo

The best thing about this thread is going to be the refutations though. Someone sell us Paraguay! And Bangladesh

I think the natural world is generally pretty lovely, so man-made scars, pollution and rusting abandoned machinery will definitely work in the candidate's favor

The Micronesian country of Nauru might be a contender.. the entire island was brutally mined for phosphate:

https://images.theconversation.com/files/130519/original/image-20160714-12383-1iqzv3j.jpg

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/06/nauru-island-country-destroyed-by.html

is there any country in the world that can't fairly be described as beautiful

i think the answer to this is pretty obviously "no" tbh. in my aesthetic opinion the beauty exists to the extent that the land isn't overwhelmed by some kind of nationalist project, and i don't think any country-size piece of land exists that doesn't have land like this. by this definition somewhere very small and artificial like the vatican might be ugliest which idk. like, i find those photographs of big industrial projects, dams, that sort of thing, to be extremely ugly. i don't think any land exists that doesn't have its own character that somehow escapes what all of that does with and does to it.

xp definitely areas that have been scarred by mass extraction. atolls that have been nuclear testing sites. that sort of thing.

capitalism is awesome at turning some of the most beautiful places in the world into the ugliest.

Everyone needs a thneed.

Everybody needs an atoll for to pilfer

clown me all you want but you know deep down in your soul i'm right ;)

Gibraltar isn’t the prettiest of Mediterranean towns but does has the Levante which is pretty spectacular.

Some classic Levante cloud action over the Rock of #Gibraltar this morning.
When moist easterly winds (Levante) hit the Rock, the air is forced to rise and cool rapidly, forming this area of cloud. pic.twitter.com/WOcTSWKyn7

— Met Office Gibraltar (@MetOGibraltar) April 29, 2022