Probably one of the crisis countries: Portugal, Greece, etc... Local salaries and prices are especially low, so if you have an external source of income you should be at least upper middle class while living by some of the most gorgeous beaches in the world.
I'm from there, but part of the reason why I keep coming back is cause its affordable to rent, even in the hip districts (600-700 EUR for 1br) + a great city to live + good bunch of startups + cheap for flying in/out. Prague is similar.
Also heard great things about Sofia, but haven't lived there (yet). And Berlin is of course a good option as well.
+1 to this based on anecdotal data from friends. That's if considering former "Western Europe" block of countries and excluding Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and others.
Budapest is quite nice too, strong expat community, strong programmers and generally nice people. Bitch of a language though, very contrived.
I would strongly recommend against Sofia right now. There is no rule of law in my country as a whole, we are busy overthrowing the government and right now there is increasing xenophobic wave (arabo/islamophobic) due to the influx of Syrian, African and Afghanistan immigrants. Our nationalists are rattling weapons and I think the government will use the foreigners as a lightning rod for the populace anger to keep itself in power.
I suppose that during the winter pogroms over them are not out of the question. Actually we had just today a national beaten almost to dead because he is of the Turkish minority and the skinheads mistook him for immigrant.
But, in general, you don't live cheaply there especially compared to other cities of the area like Bratislava or Budapest. Prices in Restaurants, Coffee shops, etc are the same as in most other capitals of western Europe. Source: I grew up in Vienna and lived there until 3 month ago.
I am now living in Chania, Greece and it's quite cheap to live, has a beautiful old town, nice beaches and fantastic mountains around. The only drawbacks are that there is only a small Linux user group, but the next hacker space is about 3 hours by bus in Iraklio and that it's only cheap as long as you don't have too pay to much taxes.
You can move to some low-tax or no-tax country. I can recommend Andorra, 0% income tax and reasonable prices for pretty much anything , rent, food, alcohol etc :) I also heard Belarus has almost no tax and its very cheap to live there, but there will be lots of bureaucracy :)
"lots of bureaucracy" being code for authoritarian dictatorship...
I suppose if you want to learn about how you don't actually live in a police state in the West you could move there.
I live in the UK and we use Pounds Sterling. When I travel to any country using the Euro prices are always relatively higher so I would recommend against a country using the Euro. I found this list showing Euro/Non-euro countries: http://www.aph.com/news/knowbeforeyougo/euro_countries.shtml
Thanks that's important to point out. My experiences were only in Ireland, France, Belgium and Austria. As someone living in the north of Ireland using Sterling I experience the price difference often every time I travel south and the jumps aren't insignificant.
Dude, 17 out 27 EU member states use the € with Latvia joining 1 Jan 2014 and Lithuania 1 Jan 2015. Population of Eurozone: 330 million. Good luck coming to Europe and avoiding the Eurozone: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
Some of these places are really really cheap to live in and work in, and life on the ground varies drastically _within_ countries as well, especially bigger countries like Germany - witness Munich versus Berlin. Yours is the most bizarre advice I've heard in a long long while.
For the interested check out the variation in GDP per capita by region:
>> "Good luck coming to Europe and avoiding the Eurozone"
>> "Dude, 17 out 27 EU member states use the €"
10 countries don't use it. That still leaves you with quite a lot of choice. And as I said I was just speaking from personal experience that goods Euro using countries tend to be more expensive. This probably doesn't apply to every one of those countries but it has in every one I've visited.
As of January 1st 2015 that'll be down to 8 as I said so you'd be recommending avoiding those as well.
Look. There is no sense in recommending that people avoid the _entire_ Eurozone just because the places that _you_ visited in the Eurozone tend to be more expensive than where you are from (N.I., which to be fair ain't even that inexpensive.) Makes no sense I tells ya.
As of January 1st 2015 that'll be down to 8 as I said so you'd be recommending avoiding those as well.
Look. There is no sense in recommending that people avoid the _entire_ Eurozone just because the places that _you_ visited in the Eurozone tend to be more expensive than where you are from (N.I., which to be fair ain't even that inexpensive.) Makes no sense I tells ya.
Depends on what you are looking for really. Are you a freelancer? Do you want to join a startup? Want to create one? Do you have clients already or are you on the hunt for some? Do you like big cities or prefer the countryside? Do you want a warm climate or want to stay in during cold nights?
When I go into a store and ask the salesman for help, his first question is invariably, What price range are you looking for?
Yes, I could answer his question (and the OP could answer your questions), but I prefer not to. I want to hear about all the options.
The OP might prefer a warm climate, but he might be willing to tolerate colder weather if he's told it's super cheap or has city-wide free wifi. He might be a freelancer but might change his objective if he heard that a particular country was granting easy visas for startup founders.
I know you're trying to be helpful by asking the OP to give a precise spec on what he wants, but this entire discussion would have been far less interesting if he had done so!
I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria right now, doing contract work for international clients.
Rent is generally very cheap, 250EU/mo for a central apartment (12mo lease). I am staying here only a month however, so am paying a lot more.
Eating out, beer etc is very cheap. Numbeo gets it about right.
Amusingly, most Bulgarians I speak to ask why I would want to come to Bulgaria of all places. I guess it's like many places: great fun to visit or live for a few months but painful for long-term residents.
Upsides apart from cheap living: it's a fun, walkable city with a lot of excellent parks and very little traffic.
Downsides of living here: shockingly corrupt bureaucracy.
That said, I'll head to Romania when my month here is up. I lived in Istanbul previously, so let me know if you want to hear about that too.
What did you think of Istanbul? I just spent the last half year living and working in Europe, and I was thinking about returning next year, with Istanbul high on the list for a month or two.
Seconded. It seems like a fantastic city, but I'm not sure what to make of the recent troubles or whether I could swing it as an Israeli (but I guess that problem is outside the scope of this thread, still I mentioned it on the off chance somebody has some wisdom to offer besides getting a second passport).
By recent troubles if you mean the protests, rest assured that it's nothing to be worried about. At least from personal security perspective.
By swinging, do you mean the requirements like visa, work-permit, residency-permit, etc.?
While seconding on the previous friendliness of Turks one thing I would add which is also something that struck me from time to time is Turks in Istanbul sometimes in a way are more European than they are "Turkish" (I don't intend to imply that they are mutually exclusive, or anything special for that matter. Just a figurative compare/contrast. I'll err on political correctness for getting the message across.)
PS, I spent about 2 years in Istanbul and loved every bit of it.
I just meant whether or not I can make friendly arrangements to hang around for a month or two, I think I can read between the lines enough here to conclude that the answer is yes. Thanks. :)
nope, nobody will judge you or give you a hard time just because you are an israeli or jew. you can come down here, live as long as you can, make the best friends and living out of it. yes, despite those conflicts and problems between turkey and israel.
There are no real conflicts or problems, just political grandstanding. Glad to know normal people don't buy into it so easily, I'm sure I'll have a lovely time when I visit.
I'm not the OP but Istanbul's been my second city for over a decade.
It's a really amazing place. As the parent says, Turks are incredibly friendly. Having said that, corruption is fairly rife and people will constantly try to rip you off in business transactions. It's not unusual in some jobs to forget being paid your last month's salary (or indeed several months of salary leading up to it) and taxi drivers are mostly the scum of the earth (although it is improving).
There's been a big influx of poorer, less educated and more islamic-oriented people from the east of Turkey for several years and while they may be nice people they're culturally very different to the "white turks" of Istanbul. Taksim's fine, but Cihangir, Galata, Besiktas, Ortakoy and Etiler are (in no order) where I would look to live if I wanted to stay somewhere permanent.
Oh and it goes without saying that the Istanbul police force are not your friends.
Not the original poster, but I lived in Istanbul for a month a few years ago. I found the people to be the most friendly I've ever encountered in my travels, probably against the expectations of most Americans. Try to live on the European side, north of the Golden Horn, in the Taksim area.
Seconding this. I lived on the asian side for a bit before moving to the euro side. On euro side I was about 3-400 metres from Taksim Sq for 6 months. (Near where the big recent protests - I got gassed going supermarket shopping a couple of times).
Istanbul is a massive city split by the Bosphorus straight (?) into a European and Asian side. The euro side is where most of the tourist, nightlife and business stuff is. The asian side is a bit more like suburbia.
In my experience rent was more expensive in Istanbul than Sofia. Around 400+ Euro per month on the euro side. You'd expect cheaper on asian side.
Food costs were quite low when eating out, but very low when market shopping. At best, around 1USD per kilo of the best peaches on the planet. Like drinking sweetened peach juice. Cherries and grapes the same.
I used to live on the european side and commute to asia to do my market shopping. :D (Better produce).
Sorry for rambling.
Upsides of Istanbul: farmers street-market lifestyle - get incredible produce super cheap. Very happening city full of new experiences. Crossing the bosphorus on a ferry as part of your daily commute.
Downsides: crazy traffic, quite dirty (think HCMC), byzantine bureaucracy, not much english around if you're living like a Turk.
If you go to Istanbul, use my app to navigate the public transport:
You should have just gone to the Biologik Pazar near the old Bomonte brewery... it was pretty close to where you were and was the best I found in Istanbul. (It was a bit more expensive, of course, but still cheap by Western standards.)
And you're totally right about the peaches. And the apricots.
Now for purposes of the discussion:
Istanbul had a nasty flareup a few months back, but otherwise has been very stable. You will need to learn a little bit of Turkish, and it's not the easiest language, but two classes will make the city twice as cheap. It really is a city that gets cheaper the longer you're there, because you get to know particular grociers and as you develop a community, they will direct you toward better deals.
But even at the tourist prices, it's reasonable compared to the rest of Europe. And learning the tricks can take a significant part of your time for the first month or two, which may not be the best for a startup.
Immigration is exceedingly easy. Just have 300 bucks per month that you want in your account. You will need someone to guide you through the process and translate for you, but that's relatively cheap.
I'd say, though, it's not a beginner's city on your own. If you can give it two or three months to get settled, then it's a great option. If you need to hit the ground running, it might not be for you.
I was just in Budapest. It was really beautiful, but I encountered some of the rudest people I have ever met. I've read on other travel sites that people in Budapest are extremely rude to tourists compared to the rest of Hungary. Maybe it's implied by the nature of this thread that you should learn the language before you move there, but you definitely should for Budapest (assuming you don't want to encounter rudeness).
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.
As a matter of fact, I do speak the language. A lot of things feel weird to me when I come to visit the city. I have this uneasy feeling about things like the Hungarian Guard [1][2] - a paramilitary group having a rally on the most most important square in Budapest. Or having a fascist party, as the 3rd biggest, in the Parliament [3].
Yet, there is an incredible amount of gifted people, who are the exact opposite of these jerks. I guess a lot of people here admire undertakings like Prezi, LogMeIn, ArchiCAD/Graphisoft, or Ustream, all coming from Budapest.
Porto, Portugal: It has a river, sea and beaches, lots of history, nice weather, great food, nice people and it's inexpensive. It also has Ryan Air, which means that you can visit other parts of Europe cheaply (<100 euros for a roundtrip in most cases). I am at least living here now and I enjoy it.
If you like a little bigger city then Lisbon, Portugal is also an option.
One of my employees rents a 1BR in near the main square (Aliados) for ~360euro/month (~480USD), but you can find something much cheaper a bit more far away.
If you're looking to go be a bit away from the city (~1hr by metro), there's two cities called Povoa de Varzim (where I am) / Vila do Conde that have just about everything and are even cheaper.
Another important point is that the telecom infrastructure is pretty good. These days getting a 100down/10up Mb/s fiber link will cost you 20-40€ a month, you can get a TV+Internet+Mobile bundle for ~80€ and the urban areas have good coverage of both fiber and 3G/LTE.
Apartments are easy to come by. You can get a nice one for ~400-600€ a month, probably even a small house with a garden in some spots.
Most of the younger generation (30 or less) will speak decent English, older people will be mixed. Porto has been getting touristic lately though so most public places should be used to it. We don't dub movies so we tend to have a bit more exposure to the language than most (plus you can go to the movies).
Parts of the UK outside London are actually pretty cheap to live in.
I live in Edinburgh, slap in the middle of the city, which is also a World Heritage Site. I have a 5 minute walk to work and flat (apartments...) go for £500/800 for a 1/2 bed.
Other parts of the UK are much cheaper again.
Seconded. It's also a great city, nice and green, busy and supportive tech scene (monthly meetups and conferences) and thanks to the festivals in August the best shows and artists from around the world will be on your doorstep for a great night out. Add in what Glasgow has to offer (eg great live music gigs) a mere 50mins by train away for even more plus points.
Marbella, Spain is starting to get some attention from investors lately (http://marbellalabs.com). I really hope we will see more tech people here soon.
Hey Paul, I worked there a couple of years ago -- 2 mins from the Copper Tower -- but came back to UK, reluctantly. I'd come back at the drop of a hat.
I tried to get things going when I was there, particularly at the Málaga tech park.
+1 for that. I live in Malaga and prices are OK. You can find a 1BR apartment from 300€, maybe 250€. Not much tech/startup scene, if you want to engage in this field. There is a technology park where you can find job offers in technology (development, IT), although some of them are from IT consulting firms with low wages and long hours, so you better choose wisely.
The weather is very good, 30°-35°C in the summer, and 10°-15°C in winter. And you have a wide variety of beaches along the coast (you will be in the Costa del Sol)
There are very good connections with the rest of European cities via its airport, and you can get cheap flights with RyanAir.
Basically every place in Poland is cheaper than Warsaw. Comparing any Polish city to Warsaw economically will give the obvious same results on every aspect, but these cities are completely different breeds of horse. Krakow is more visually appealing and is loved for its historical and cultural value, and a kind of bohemian vibe. Business has boomed significantly during the last decade down there and it's getting more attractive. I've heard it faces serious pollution problems, and in some areas crime is more significant than in Warsaw (which in general is a pretty safe place). When it comes to 'big city life', making money and riding on the fast lane in the land of opportunities, Warsaw is considered that place (saying it's the NY of Poland would be a bit of a stretch, but you get my point). As for the general vibe, Warsaw is the kind of big city you love or hate with a passion, there is no middle ground. You need to learn it and it will be for you what you want it to be. So, whether you're more happy here or there depends on what you are really looking for.
For cheaper city alternatives, I've heard a lot of positives about Wroclaw, but I honestly don't know much about it.
Disclaimer: I'm locally patriotic, but that said I sincerely believe Warsaw is the place to be, YMMV.
I've lived in both Warsaw and Krakow. Both are quite cheap, particularly if you cook at home. I contracted for an American company for a while and put about 60% in the bank without trying.
Rent is about 180-400 EU/mo.
Weather is good, not too hot, not too cold. Sun/rain ratio is nice.
Cities is not too big, so during season bicycling is preferable. Also public transport is ok.
Food for 2 person family is about 150 EU/mo.
Streets is safe for foreigners.
That's all good and well unless you want to take a shower during the daylight in the summer. Just make sure that your apartment has water all the time, and you will enjoy Montenegro.
From someone who has a strong culture & tech ecosystem balance bias:
- Berlin: It's the perfect combination of cheap living costs and OKish (growing) tech community
- As mentioned pretty much everything from Paris to Kiev gets really dark & cold in winter, and not in a NY/Chicago cool way.
- More and more people (especially British) move to Spain, mostly Barcelona. Not as good in terms of startup community as Berlin, but at least equally cheap & decent regarding arts.
Personal bottom line if you want to spend the whole year in Europe: Barcelona in Winter, Berlin in summer, and using LCC fares to get to London for interesting meetups etc.
Doesn't Barcelona get pretty chilly in the winter months? I mean, not as bad as Berlin, but still cold. I've heard even Valencia gets to around 10 degrees celcius in winter.
We picked France's Charente Maritime (http://goo.gl/maps/rIFK6) to bootstrap and do remote freelancing: rural, the sea is nearby, great food/wine/cheese, weather is warm (but not overly hot in the summer). You can find houses around 600€/mo, we bought our 150k€ including swimming-pool.
Ljubljana, Slovenia is really nice. It's a mix of east & west, uses Euros/EU, and rent is fairly inexpensive. I met a few ex-pat Americans that were working in tech / IT.
No one will ever expect you to learn Slovenian too, it's such a complicated language that unless you were a native speaker, it's next to impossible to speak correctly.
I live in Munich since 1 year. I am originally from Istanbul. I guess Munich has the highest salaries in Europe. But the city is a bit expensive. I pay 755 euro for a 36 square meters apartment. Berlin is another option. It's a very international city and cheap but the salaries are lower.
After Istanbul, Munich seems like a dead village to me. I still can't get used to that streets are totally empty after 9-10 pm.
Istanbul is an amazing city. And a lots of job opportunities there. Better climate than Germany. You can't earn as much as Germany but you can still catch the same life standards.
Well as long as you are earning more than you spend, that not a problem.On the other hand if you don't then, you may as well go for one of the cheap countries.....
I think the job situation in Istanbul is more complicated if you don't speak Turkish. My Singaporean gf (native English, excellent education) had a lot of trouble finding office work in Istanbul. I believe Turkish is spoken throughout most companies.
Just as you say, after Istanbul every city feels empty and lifeless!
I would recommend you to keep out of Eastern Europe. The people there wants to believe they have left their history behind but they haven't.
When I visited Budapest the police acted as Stasi and on the local metro they only asks foreigners for valid tickets. Very unfriendly. I would never recommend anyone going there.
In the recent years Hungary seems to come up repeatedly in media with a much stronger anti-outsider sentiment than the neighboring countries.
I have no firsthand experiences like that (traveled for a few days through there 2 years ago, no such observations) - but can locals elaborate, is it really so or just media exaggeration?
550 Euros a month down here in the Landes region of France, with high speed internet, 5 minute walk from the beach and world class surf (depending on the season).
Probably going to migrate south to the Algarve in Portugal for the winter -- northern european rain, wind, cold are not my cup of tea...
Canary Islands, Spain, is one of them. Good weather all year round, good internet connection in many places and plenty of flight connections to most important cities in Europe. Affordable prices for housing and food.
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)
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadI'm from there, but part of the reason why I keep coming back is cause its affordable to rent, even in the hip districts (600-700 EUR for 1br) + a great city to live + good bunch of startups + cheap for flying in/out. Prague is similar.
Also heard great things about Sofia, but haven't lived there (yet). And Berlin is of course a good option as well.
Budapest is quite nice too, strong expat community, strong programmers and generally nice people. Bitch of a language though, very contrived.
I suppose that during the winter pogroms over them are not out of the question. Actually we had just today a national beaten almost to dead because he is of the Turkish minority and the skinheads mistook him for immigrant.
The situation is not nice.
I am now living in Chania, Greece and it's quite cheap to live, has a beautiful old town, nice beaches and fantastic mountains around. The only drawbacks are that there is only a small Linux user group, but the next hacker space is about 3 hours by bus in Iraklio and that it's only cheap as long as you don't have too pay to much taxes.
In my head I compare Vienna with London and the US (SF/NYC/etc) which are 2-3x as expensive, plus healthcare is worse.
True about taxes. There are almost no taxes (fixed 9%) for IT companies especially comparing to western countries. But, there are:
1. No shipment from amazon, ebay.
2. Startup culture is in really early stage. People talking about startups, but there are only few of them who have really achieved something
3. Most of European citizens need to have visa (not sure about price) to get there.
4. Coworking/hacker spaces are at the same stage as startup culture.
Hope these things will get sorted out in a few years :) However, if someone decides to go work from Minsk - send me note, I will show you around.
> I would recommend against a country using the Euro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone
Dude, 17 out 27 EU member states use the € with Latvia joining 1 Jan 2014 and Lithuania 1 Jan 2015. Population of Eurozone: 330 million. Good luck coming to Europe and avoiding the Eurozone: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
Some of these places are really really cheap to live in and work in, and life on the ground varies drastically _within_ countries as well, especially bigger countries like Germany - witness Munich versus Berlin. Yours is the most bizarre advice I've heard in a long long while.
For the interested check out the variation in GDP per capita by region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_regions_by_GD...
Goes from ~ €80,000 to ~ €7,000
10 countries don't use it. That still leaves you with quite a lot of choice. And as I said I was just speaking from personal experience that goods Euro using countries tend to be more expensive. This probably doesn't apply to every one of those countries but it has in every one I've visited.
As of January 1st 2015 that'll be down to 8 as I said so you'd be recommending avoiding those as well.
Look. There is no sense in recommending that people avoid the _entire_ Eurozone just because the places that _you_ visited in the Eurozone tend to be more expensive than where you are from (N.I., which to be fair ain't even that inexpensive.) Makes no sense I tells ya.
As of January 1st 2015 that'll be down to 8 as I said so you'd be recommending avoiding those as well.
Look. There is no sense in recommending that people avoid the _entire_ Eurozone just because the places that _you_ visited in the Eurozone tend to be more expensive than where you are from (N.I., which to be fair ain't even that inexpensive.) Makes no sense I tells ya.
Yes, I could answer his question (and the OP could answer your questions), but I prefer not to. I want to hear about all the options.
The OP might prefer a warm climate, but he might be willing to tolerate colder weather if he's told it's super cheap or has city-wide free wifi. He might be a freelancer but might change his objective if he heard that a particular country was granting easy visas for startup founders.
I know you're trying to be helpful by asking the OP to give a precise spec on what he wants, but this entire discussion would have been far less interesting if he had done so!
Yes, winters are an issue for much of Europe and especially for the northern part where much of software industry resides.
If that is important for you, then try the cheaper parts near Mediterranean - say, Slovenia is quite nice.
Rent is generally very cheap, 250EU/mo for a central apartment (12mo lease). I am staying here only a month however, so am paying a lot more.
Eating out, beer etc is very cheap. Numbeo gets it about right.
Amusingly, most Bulgarians I speak to ask why I would want to come to Bulgaria of all places. I guess it's like many places: great fun to visit or live for a few months but painful for long-term residents.
Upsides apart from cheap living: it's a fun, walkable city with a lot of excellent parks and very little traffic.
Downsides of living here: shockingly corrupt bureaucracy.
That said, I'll head to Romania when my month here is up. I lived in Istanbul previously, so let me know if you want to hear about that too.
By swinging, do you mean the requirements like visa, work-permit, residency-permit, etc.?
While seconding on the previous friendliness of Turks one thing I would add which is also something that struck me from time to time is Turks in Istanbul sometimes in a way are more European than they are "Turkish" (I don't intend to imply that they are mutually exclusive, or anything special for that matter. Just a figurative compare/contrast. I'll err on political correctness for getting the message across.)
PS, I spent about 2 years in Istanbul and loved every bit of it.
nope, nobody will judge you or give you a hard time just because you are an israeli or jew. you can come down here, live as long as you can, make the best friends and living out of it. yes, despite those conflicts and problems between turkey and israel.
There are no real conflicts or problems, just political grandstanding. Glad to know normal people don't buy into it so easily, I'm sure I'll have a lovely time when I visit.
It's a really amazing place. As the parent says, Turks are incredibly friendly. Having said that, corruption is fairly rife and people will constantly try to rip you off in business transactions. It's not unusual in some jobs to forget being paid your last month's salary (or indeed several months of salary leading up to it) and taxi drivers are mostly the scum of the earth (although it is improving).
There's been a big influx of poorer, less educated and more islamic-oriented people from the east of Turkey for several years and while they may be nice people they're culturally very different to the "white turks" of Istanbul. Taksim's fine, but Cihangir, Galata, Besiktas, Ortakoy and Etiler are (in no order) where I would look to live if I wanted to stay somewhere permanent.
Oh and it goes without saying that the Istanbul police force are not your friends.
Istanbul is a massive city split by the Bosphorus straight (?) into a European and Asian side. The euro side is where most of the tourist, nightlife and business stuff is. The asian side is a bit more like suburbia.
In my experience rent was more expensive in Istanbul than Sofia. Around 400+ Euro per month on the euro side. You'd expect cheaper on asian side.
Food costs were quite low when eating out, but very low when market shopping. At best, around 1USD per kilo of the best peaches on the planet. Like drinking sweetened peach juice. Cherries and grapes the same.
I used to live on the european side and commute to asia to do my market shopping. :D (Better produce).
Sorry for rambling.
Upsides of Istanbul: farmers street-market lifestyle - get incredible produce super cheap. Very happening city full of new experiences. Crossing the bosphorus on a ferry as part of your daily commute.
Downsides: crazy traffic, quite dirty (think HCMC), byzantine bureaucracy, not much english around if you're living like a Turk.
If you go to Istanbul, use my app to navigate the public transport:
https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/transportist/id644276437?mt=...
PM or email or whatever if you want a contact for a livable apartment block right near the centre in a gypsy slum.
And you're totally right about the peaches. And the apricots.
Now for purposes of the discussion:
Istanbul had a nasty flareup a few months back, but otherwise has been very stable. You will need to learn a little bit of Turkish, and it's not the easiest language, but two classes will make the city twice as cheap. It really is a city that gets cheaper the longer you're there, because you get to know particular grociers and as you develop a community, they will direct you toward better deals.
But even at the tourist prices, it's reasonable compared to the rest of Europe. And learning the tricks can take a significant part of your time for the first month or two, which may not be the best for a startup.
Immigration is exceedingly easy. Just have 300 bucks per month that you want in your account. You will need someone to guide you through the process and translate for you, but that's relatively cheap.
I'd say, though, it's not a beginner's city on your own. If you can give it two or three months to get settled, then it's a great option. If you need to hit the ground running, it might not be for you.
Oh yeah? Since Brazilian's president's father is bulgarian, I know where did she learn now.
That being said, hit me up if you're in Bucharest :)
I'll email you around the 20th, it would be great to have a beer and talk shop.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=budapest&tbm=isch
Nice downtown apartments are $300 USD/mo.
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.
Yet, there is an incredible amount of gifted people, who are the exact opposite of these jerks. I guess a lot of people here admire undertakings like Prezi, LogMeIn, ArchiCAD/Graphisoft, or Ustream, all coming from Budapest.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Guard [2] http://www.maszol.ro/uploads/files/userfiles/images/kulfold/... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6700531
If you like a little bigger city then Lisbon, Portugal is also an option.
Most of the younger generation (30 or less) will speak decent English, older people will be mixed. Porto has been getting touristic lately though so most public places should be used to it. We don't dub movies so we tend to have a bit more exposure to the language than most (plus you can go to the movies).
I tried to get things going when I was there, particularly at the Málaga tech park.
I'd love to know what's going on.
The weather is very good, 30°-35°C in the summer, and 10°-15°C in winter. And you have a wide variety of beaches along the coast (you will be in the Costa del Sol)
There are very good connections with the rest of European cities via its airport, and you can get cheap flights with RyanAir.
[1] http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
For cheaper city alternatives, I've heard a lot of positives about Wroclaw, but I honestly don't know much about it.
Disclaimer: I'm locally patriotic, but that said I sincerely believe Warsaw is the place to be, YMMV.
Rent is about 180-400 EU/mo. Weather is good, not too hot, not too cold. Sun/rain ratio is nice. Cities is not too big, so during season bicycling is preferable. Also public transport is ok. Food for 2 person family is about 150 EU/mo. Streets is safe for foreigners.
And Internet is super fast and super cheap here.
And there is nice and informative video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPO4tbV4UHk
- Berlin: It's the perfect combination of cheap living costs and OKish (growing) tech community
- As mentioned pretty much everything from Paris to Kiev gets really dark & cold in winter, and not in a NY/Chicago cool way.
- More and more people (especially British) move to Spain, mostly Barcelona. Not as good in terms of startup community as Berlin, but at least equally cheap & decent regarding arts.
Personal bottom line if you want to spend the whole year in Europe: Barcelona in Winter, Berlin in summer, and using LCC fares to get to London for interesting meetups etc.
http://cardiffstart.com http://cardiffdigital.com
No one will ever expect you to learn Slovenian too, it's such a complicated language that unless you were a native speaker, it's next to impossible to speak correctly.
After Istanbul, Munich seems like a dead village to me. I still can't get used to that streets are totally empty after 9-10 pm.
Istanbul is an amazing city. And a lots of job opportunities there. Better climate than Germany. You can't earn as much as Germany but you can still catch the same life standards.
You should try Zurich (higher for both: salaries and rent) ;)
Just as you say, after Istanbul every city feels empty and lifeless!
When I visited Budapest the police acted as Stasi and on the local metro they only asks foreigners for valid tickets. Very unfriendly. I would never recommend anyone going there.
I have no firsthand experiences like that (traveled for a few days through there 2 years ago, no such observations) - but can locals elaborate, is it really so or just media exaggeration?
Probably going to migrate south to the Algarve in Portugal for the winter -- northern european rain, wind, cold are not my cup of tea...
Socialism: spending money you don't have...
You just need to avoid the too touristic places.