Ask HN: What's the best place in Europe to live and work cheaply?

I moved to budapest years ago, rudeness has been getting worse super-linearly with the increase in tourism.

I understand and speak a bit of hungarian now and I keep getting worse service in bars/clubs/shops/restaurants than I got years ago as a broke exchange student speaking broken english.

EDIT:

mind you, I still think the city has a lot of pros, and could be a great place to live in cheaply while working on your project.

Berlin(relatively cheap, well developed tech scene, big), Prague(amazing city, cheap, well developed tech scene, not so big and not small(1.2M population)), Bratislava(small and quiet)

If you don't care much about a startup and tech scene (there is little) you can spend a nice time in the Canary Islands, Spain.

It's not the cheapest place in Europe, you'll find cheaper locations in Eastern Europe admittedly. Still, you can find a nice 1BR appartment for €400-500/mo in Las Palmas City near the beach or share an appartment for somewhere around €200/mo for a room.

The weather is really really nice throughout the whole year with lots of sun and there's no real winter. Temp. in the city during the winter can be approx. 18º Celsius. The summers are not extremely hot, rather nice temperatures around 25º.

There's some co-working places where you can get a desk for €100/mo (half days) or €150/mo (full days).

There's a lot of activities that you can do almost throughout the entire year: surfing, boadyboarding, scuba diving, swimming, biking, hiking, climbing and any other outdoor activity.

There's plenty of bars and clubs and the nightlife is very lively.

Please leave a comment if you want to know more.

I would recommend my hometown for self employed, small companies and freelancers: Bremen/Germany

Bremen was a harbor and shipyard town 30 years ago. Now most shipyards are bankrupt, and the harbor seldom sees big ships.

Rentals are really cheap, e.g. I'm paying Euro208 warm (including heating, water, waste, etc - excluding electricity 64Euros and internet SDSL+Cable ~ 50Euro) for two small rooms plus a big kitchen. So I can smoke at my computer, sleep in a room where I dont smoke and host guests at the kitchen. Houses are also cheap, sometimes only Euro40k.

Bremen is a medium size (500k inhabitants) green city with parks everywhere, and gardens around the houses. You can ride bicycle everywhere. We have a good public transport. Its long and narrow. So regardless where you live, you are in walking distance to the river, and in walking distance to the rural. It basically feels like a suburb, but with good transport, and bicycle lanes.

Internet is cheap and available, e.g. 30mbit cable for Euro30/month or 100mbit cable for Euro40/month. Ryan air is at our airport, so you can fly within Europe for Euro19, if you pick the right time at night for ordering a ticket.

Bremen is a free Hanse city and friendly to foreigners. One of our mottos are "Am nettesten sind die Zugereisten" (the nicest people here are from outside). Citizen here are traditional left wing, so neo-nazi's have a very hard stand, and are seldom seen in public.

Bremen has a friendly police, and a sane drug policy. You can smoke marijuana at the dike, and the police will greet you while riding bicycle, and its usual that junkies are sitting in a small park behind the police station. Especially Bremen-Nord (north part of Bremen) has a very friendly small tax office, with great newbie support, and public servants who care for your business.

The drawbacks are high unemployment, low wages, and its nearly impossible to get a developers job outside of the military industrial complex. Also others claim that we are cold. Its hard to learn new people in a pub, but thats easier if you are from outside Germany. But we prefer to gather in clubs (e.g. we have 2 hacker spaces). We have several sport clubs, that are affordable, e.g. most working class sailing clubs costs Euro100/year for adults with own yachts. We often joke that Bremen has always good weather: In winter its warm and rainy, and in summer its raining and warm, thanks to gulf stream.

what are the VISA requirements like for someone from a western country (say, the US or Canada)? If I wanted to live in Germany for a full year, is there a way to do so working independently (i.e. without a German corporation sponsoring a work VISA)?

thanks.