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I mean if you're staying in shit places with weird people and have a bad attitude it is going to suck, you can have a bad time anywhere in the world by chance or by design. If you don't have the money to eat out a few times you can hardly fault London for that. It is a world city. To experience it you need at least a bit of a budget. I've been to Prague as well. I enjoyed it.
No, I specifically excluded the hostel from my judgement
What I meant by being dirty was lots of places being grimy, somewhat dirty, a little trash lying around etc. I don't give a rat's ass about whether pricey restaurants are any good or whether the very rich can find nice places somewhere. That's a given everywhere.
If streets, publicly used infrastructure looks mostly meh to bad it says a lot. Means the state is breaking down. You wouldn't see that in e.g. Austria or Germany outside of places with lots of migrants.
I've been to many German Cities. Some are grimy, Stuttgart and Erfurt come to mind as places that had noticeable bad parts. I didn't see any of that while in London really. While in london I saw a grand total of one old school hard luck guy silently begging outside of a classic pub down by the river, it added to atmosphere if anything, much cleaner and less bum filled than any day I've spent in Boston or NYC. We didn't do any big 5 star meals, or stay at any place above a Marriott, just pub food and one or 2 nice dinners.
Subway was on time and clean, sure the older subway tunnels and cars were a bit small and a tad warm, but that is because they are some of the first in the world and they only could build the tunnels a certain diameter back in 1863 as opposed to the Prague subway, built over 100 years later in the 1970s. We bought the "london pass" for a few days, it gives you discounted access to all the big attractions. I had no problem getting anywhere in the city for only 8.20 pounds a day! I had low expectations (in line with what you seem to have experienced, and from reading about dystopian policies online for 2 decades) for London, and was very impressed and surprised to have a great time! I would go back any time!
Maybe you just don't enjoy visiting a large metro.
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