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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

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Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#321

Post by pelagicAustral »

hinkley wrote: post #291
einpoklum wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring your henchmen to eat a lot of Kebab all the time is not at all a scalable money laundering scheme. It's also self-defeating since they will become fat and sickly from too much Kebab :-(

The more common thing that comes up in hypothetical conversations of the sort “you acquire $5M through less than legal means. How can you spend it?” is owning a bar. Buying the liquor gets a bit fuzzy as to where the money comes from. But the bigger thing is you can have imaginary customers and either drink “their” alcohol, pour it down the drain, or use it for gifts and bribes, all while booking receipts for people…

While on holiday in South America, I visited a friend and we went out for drinks quite a few times, we visited different neighborhoods and at times I was really puzzled as to why this very "new" looking, gigantic, fully staffed bars were often completely empty, he clarified that those were likely laundering drug money.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#322

Post by klausa »

ido wrote: post #288
vanderZwan wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a nice selection of European cities to compare! Having lived in Berlin and Stockholm (and a few other cities), I'd say Stockholm has by far the worst kebab options of all places I've lived, while Berlin was the best one. I'm curious whether this is reflected in local reviews, or whether the locals just lower or heighten their standards based on the what the average food quality is like.

As someone whose been living in Berlin for the last 11 years I'm always horrified to read people say they wish the had high quality kebabs "like in Berlin" - the average kebab here is atrocious (obviously optimized for price and not for quality) - the best ones are OK but definitely not amazing. I don't want to find out how bad the kebabs are in Sweden and other places you hear the from like some US cities if you thi…

As someone who moved out of Berlin a year and a half ago — you truly do not want to find out how other people live.

I know getting something on the same level as Rüyam would be impossible; but I would pay a not-insignificant money for something resembling a random Bude near my old place.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#323

Post by ElFitz »

sebastiennight wrote: post #295
Symbiote wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to further filter for the largest railway stations, perhaps by number of platforms ≥ 6 or 8, otherwise you will include many urban and suburban stations that serve essentially the same purpose as metro stations.

There are not a lot of stations that a Parisian dweller would consider to be a "railway station" AND "inside Paris". I'd say mostly Montparnasse, Gare de Lyon, Gare de l'Est, Gare du Nord, and Austerlitz. RER, Transilien, Metro and Tramway stations would not count as "train stations" in the eyes of a Parisian/French person, and places outside of the Périphérique (the ring road that follows the old defensive "Thier wa…

And Saint-Lazare, the third busiest train station in France based on the number of daily travellers, and the oldest in Paris.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#324

Post by account42 »

numpad0 wrote: post #292
maeln wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would second this. In Paris, but I find it to be true in most European city, the area surrounding train station is usually not very nice. It is usually surrounded by cheap hotel for 1-night traveler, overpriced fast food (hence the initial theory) and social housing / cheap building (a lot of people don't want to live next to a train station due to the nuisance, so poor people often get stuck there). On the other h…

As a non-Parisian: the hard distinction between "metro" and "train" can be non-obvious, even perplexing, depending on which train systems one is accustomed with. Some systems just don't have it, in manners that if said in Paris terms it might be train to Lyon arriving next to Line 6 Westbound.

It doesn't need to be a hard distinction. I'm sure everyone can see the difference of a building with multiple platforms and usually shops and other things targetting non-locally-resident travellers and your average metro stop with has two platforms (one for each direction) and not much more than an entrance and exit. Where exactly you draw the line doesn't really matter.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#325

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

yard2010 wrote: post #269
maeln wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would second this. In Paris, but I find it to be true in most European city, the area surrounding train station is usually not very nice. It is usually surrounded by cheap hotel for 1-night traveler, overpriced fast food (hence the initial theory) and social housing / cheap building (a lot of people don't want to live next to a train station due to the nuisance, so poor people often get stuck there). On the other h…

This is such a dystopian phenomenon, I'm far from an expert but I guess it's a matter of city planning?

It is difficult to avoid, as metro passengers are mainly residents or workers in nearby premises. Station halls are also much bigger and attract the marginalised who want to shelter from the elements.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#326

Post by philjw »

Finally - this was long term observation I conducted in many cities so far (Check Utrecht, The Hague, Valencia, Frankfurt- often the case you have I also rated some of them with 1 star because fast food seemed to have degenerated to "being stuck in waiting line with gigworkers collecting food for other people"-food. Not the best experience when you're on a mission to catch the next train in 15 minutes and they let you wait. @BigFastFoodChain if you read this - Have an extra menu with a category "Super Fast Food" or "Ready & Available in under a minute" that enables people in frequented locations to use their time better. Also goes for supermarkets - add self check-outs!

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#327

Post by lupusreal »

bdangubic wrote: post #132
gambiting wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a cheese steak? Just a steak but with melted cheese on top? Doesn't that ruin the steak?

it would if it was actually a steak. for the type of meat you get on cheeesteaks - trust me - you want the cheese :)

Technically they're not allowed to call it cheese. ;)

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#328

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

skrebbel wrote: post #257
jillesvangurp wrote: post #246

Here in Berlin there are an enormous amount of kebab places (thousands). Basically, most places are embedded in neighborhoods and have a crowd of locals that go there. The quality varies wildly as a lot of these places are obviously aimed at the money laundering business (cash only) rather than serving food. Poor hygiene, indifferent service, etc. Many of these places are completely pointless from a business point of…

Pardon my ignorance, but I always wonder how these money laundering kebab places work. We have some in my city too and they always leave me puzzled. If nobody eats there, how do they launder money? I'm probably daft/naieve but can't figure out the mechanics of money laundering when the business doesn't actually move any product.

Although no one eats there, he declares 50 kebab sales, the purchase of a frozen kebab skewer and bread rolls, etc. The raw materials will either be thrown away or sold on to another real restaurant. But to pass the checks, the purchases of raw materials must be consistent with the sales. The 50 sales are made with cash from drug trafficking. The simpler the activity, the fewer raw materials and the bigger the margins, the better. Amsterdam has its Nutella waffle stands, Berlin its kebabs, Paris its nail bars and massage parlours.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#329

Post by Rastonbury »

INTPenis wrote: post #43
mxfh wrote: post #40

Duh, commuters are just less picky with their food choices, reliably fast service trumps food quality here for obvious reasons. Tourists as mentioned in the article are not that many. Anecdotally the worst McDonalds Burger I had was with a cold slice of cheese at the Berlin Main Station, while the Döner there was always above par.

Not just commuters but tourists, people you can scam once and who will never be back. When your falafelshop is in the neighborhood you can't be scamming people because you'll quickly become abandoned.

I have a hypothesis that "popular" restaurants in tourist heavy cities like Paris, London, Tokyo have google reviews are heavily skewed by these tourists. Basically any place that has over 1-2k reviews and 4.5+ becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. Sometimes you go into a supposedly local place and everyone seated around you is American. I tend avoid places with thousands of reviews therefore or when there are barely any reviews in the local language

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#330

Post by shoo »

lqet wrote: post #245

> I could've absolutely just routed to every single entrance for every single restaurant to get the nearest... But that would've taken several decades. Hm, this seems like a standard many-to-many routing problem on a relatively small road network (only Paris). Why would this take several decades? Even if you just implemented a straightforward Dijkstra without any speed-up technique, it should take not more than a min…

> you can trivially compute routes from N to M places using N Dijkstra runs

to do even better, you can compute the shortest path & distance to M kebab shops from the nearest of N train stations using a single run of a standard shortest path algorithm like Dijkstra, by changing the initial condition of the search to start from a set of multiple source nodes, not a single source node.

another way to think about this is to take the graph and augment it with an additional virtual root node and add length 0 edges from that virtual root node to each of the N train stations, then use that virtual root node as the source for a single-source Dijkstra.

alternatively, modify the original graph by merging all the train station nodes together into one node (if this introduces self-loop edges, delete them, if this introduces multi-edges between same pair of nodes, delete all but a minimal length one)

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