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Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

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Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#211

Post by oblio »

Paraesthetic wrote: post #200
lonesword wrote: post #196

Bangalore, India. Not a very good place to "live" - the traffic is _insane_, and you have to deal with us Indians. But on the plus side, a dollar goes a long long way in India. Bangalore is on the expensive side for Indians. To put things into perspective, a decent dev job in India gets you 1300$ per month after taxes and comfortably puts you in the upper middle class. Monthly rent for a 3BHK apartment at a good loca…

Just keep in mind they put their dollars sign on the wrong side of the values. That might be a deal breaker

Heh. One might say they're right, aren't they? After all, it's "100 dollars", not "dollar 100" :)

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#212

Post by lonesword »

Paraesthetic wrote: post #200
lonesword wrote: post #196

Bangalore, India. Not a very good place to "live" - the traffic is _insane_, and you have to deal with us Indians. But on the plus side, a dollar goes a long long way in India. Bangalore is on the expensive side for Indians. To put things into perspective, a decent dev job in India gets you 1300$ per month after taxes and comfortably puts you in the upper middle class. Monthly rent for a 3BHK apartment at a good loca…

Just keep in mind they put their dollars sign on the wrong side of the values. That might be a deal breaker

Ha ha ha yeah. It's just me though.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#213

Post by thenaturalist »

Kovah wrote: post #168

There are some smaller German cities like Göttingen which have - in my opinion - a high intellectual atmosphere because they are so called university-cities: lot's of students and academics in a rather small city. And, in comparison with big cities like Berlin or Munich, the rents are much cheaper: from what I know you pay 2/3 to half of the price for the same amount of space. Example: a flat with 55-60 qm is about 6…

Berlin is to be taken with a grain of salt regarding intellectual stimulus though. It really depends on OP's area of interest. Effective Altruism is big, as are some research institutions (Charité, Max-Delbrück Centre & similar) and the topics surrounding this research, but if you're coming from outside the academic system, they are not that accessible.

If intellectual stimulus is what you're after, it's like searching for gold nuggets in Berlin. Not comparable to places like London. Can't compare to smaller German university cities.

Source: Living in Berlin for a couple of years.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#214

Post by anonlilcoward »

Bangalore,India:

Rent price : 200$/month for a 1000sqft apartment. Bangalore is often called the silicon valley of India, filled with software professionals.

Majority of the city's inhabitants are migrants from other parts of the country and almost everyone communicates in English.

The living expenses for a couple is not more than 600-700$/month including rent for a decent lifestyle.

The city has a good pub culture and mostly urban population. The weather almost throughout the year is pleasant 25-30 degree C and light rains for around 4-5 months.

Ample available Shared co-working spaces filled with emerging software startups.

Although I would also like to point out some cons:

As an American, you might find the chaos of an Indian city overwhelming for some time. There are people literally everywhere and all common use services(taxi service, public transportation, laundry services, cafes, restaurants) are usually exhausted to the brim.

Traffic: Imagine NewYork in peak hours.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#215

Post by systemtest »

bnferguson wrote: post #37
bobthepanda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not local, but I try and keep up from time to time, and I have seen a lot of hand-wringing on the Internet about how low Berlin tech wages are.

Depends where you're comparing them to in the US but in general most European tech wages are lower than the US. If comparing to SF perhaps even shockingly lower. It can be hard to swallow at first, but when you account for lower rent, much cheaper health insurance, and far more vacation days (~20-24 by law - and no one actually expects you to be available) along with safer cities with generally higher quality of life…

You should compare US wages to EU contractors income. The rights between the two are similar and the income is too (~ €150.000 per year). But everything is cheaper here so you quality of life will be much higher.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#216

Post by sneak »

Kovah wrote: post #168

There are some smaller German cities like Göttingen which have - in my opinion - a high intellectual atmosphere because they are so called university-cities: lot's of students and academics in a rather small city. And, in comparison with big cities like Berlin or Munich, the rents are much cheaper: from what I know you pay 2/3 to half of the price for the same amount of space. Example: a flat with 55-60 qm is about 6…

Berlin is nothing like Silicon Valley. It’s a great city but job offers there are 60-80% lower salaries compared to the US, which makes Berlin being marginally cheaper (but with higher taxes) not really worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#217

Post by hnzix »

maxkwallace wrote: post #134

I am doing this in Taipei right now. The living costs are low and there is a thriving intellectual community, but there is definitely a language barrier. Most Taiwanese can speak enough English to be friendly and helpful (which they are), but not enough to have intellectual conversations. If you are willing to tolerate the language barrier and put in the time to find the people who can converse intellectually in Engl…

How concerned are the locals about the potential of getting "harmonized" by mainland China? I wouldn't want to be there if that goes down.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#218

Post by the_clarence »

msadowski wrote: post #22

If you feel adventurous you can consider moving to Poland. I would recommend Krakow. Most young people will speak English, there are couple of top Universities there (PK and AGH for technical schools, UJ for humanities, medicine and some tech too and UE for economics). The tech scene seems to be constantly growing, with lots of international companies having their offices there. As a senior dev in Poland you can earn…

+1 for Poland. Haven’t been to Krakow but Varsaw is awesome. I think I would prefer moving there compared to Prague. I’ve heard good things about Budapest as well.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#220

Post by the_clarence »

tixocloud wrote: post #71

Edinburgh could be a good option. If you look hard enough, it is still relatively affordable (especially compared to the Bay Area) and I’ve found very intellectual people to work with. There seems to be a big focus in the U.K. on collaboration between academic and industry and if you’re into data, Edinburgh is home to a The Data Lab, an innovation centre around data. I moved here from North America and have previous…

It reminded me a lot of Dublin, so +1
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