I think both of you have missed the point: you don't get culture from sitting on a freeway for 2 hours every day, all by yourself. You get it from sitting on a

I think both of you have missed the point: you don't get culture from sitting on a freeway for 2 hours every day, all by yourself. You get it from sitting on a bus, going somewhere local, with a bunch of locals. The fact of the distance between things just makes the culture there so .. dire. Seriously. So much time spent traveling, so little actual human interaction beyond the parking lot.