Budget Travel magazine has published a really cool map showing the smoking tolerance of nations throughout Europe, with the red ones being quite strict and the green ones marked as “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”
Europe in general used to be the place that habitual smokers were pleased to light up as they pleased, regardless of what anyone around them thought. (And usually anyone around them was also lighting up, so it didn’t much matter.) It was all a bit like a Hollywood movie from the 1950s, with rings of smoke swirling around every conversation.
That’s still the case in Turkey, where 8-year-old shoeshine boys are puffing away and having a fork in one hand and a cigarette in the other gives new meaning to the word “two-fisted.” Your other choices for unrestricted puffing are now down to Belarus and, oddly, Switzerland.
Most countries fall in the middle of the scale somewhere, but if you have allergies or just want to live a bit longer, visit the UK, Norway, Lithuania, or Albania.
