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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

Before I click the link: Berlin is cheaper than London.

Edit: And I was right, haha.

While London is one of the most expensive cities in the world, Berlin is cheap for German conditions. At least the parts that haven't been gentrified yet ;)

Berlin is really cool and has lots of alternative people and seems to be the only german city with a bigger start-up scene, but it's poor AF. I'm living in Stuttgart and while I prefer to hang in Berlin, the money is in the south.

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The benefit of "cheap" in that context isn't just that you save money - it allows people much more freedom. There are lots of people working on "interesting project" up to "wild idea of a madman" because they don't have to work 60h/week to pay rent. That creates a pretty good mood, even for people choosing a more traditional career.

Yup. Although I would note that there are also cheaper UK cities! Consider Liverpool or Bristol, for example.

The peculiarity of Berlin is that it has lower cost than many other German cities.

This is unusual, because typically you pay a premium for working in the capital of the nation. In Berlin, that is explained by the history (West Berlin was an enclave within DDR and the capital of BRD was in Bonn; Berlin was subsidized and had lots of relatively cheap housing which is not yet fully priced up 25 years after German unification).

If your customer is a German business, and you would like to visit them, it's very likely their headquarters are in West Germany, which is far away. So you don't have much country offices of multinational companies in Berlin. It's very different from other countries' biggest cities.

I guess it works better for pure internet companies that sell directly to consumers.

This is true, but I expect the situation will slowly change, and more business will concentrate in Berlin, because the federal administration is a big customer now that more of it is relocating in Berlin.

I did actually consider Liverpool. That was on the shortlist.

There are cities near London, with relatively cheap property prices. Like Portsmouth and Northampton.

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