I'm British, but I live in Zürich; it's awesome to see random packs of kids roaming around doing stuff on their own. I think there's two main things which make

I'm British, but I live in Zürich; it's awesome to see random packs of kids roaming around doing stuff on their own. I think there's two main things which make this possible: firstly, the amazing public transport system, which means that it's basically impossible to get stuck everywhere; also the culture that adults are not scary, which means that they feel comfortable talking to adults (and vice versa). Admittedly, they mostly talk in thickly accented Schweizerdeutsch, which I don't understand a word of, but they're still talking. In the UK it's dangerous for an adult even to make eye contact with a child. Another interesting observation is that packs of children here that I've observed are, IMO, well behaved and polite. I have yet to see anything like the adult/child antagonism that you see in the UK. They're obviously doing something right here, while we're obviously not.