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Comment by angra_mainyu | Hacker News Reader

I'd wait a bit, at least until end of Q1 2024 to see which place makes the most sense socioeconomically.

That said, I strongly recommend the Balkans (e.g: Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.) if you have a remote source of income: very safe, great people, fantastic culture, in the big cities English is widely spoken, low cost-of-living, active tech communities, and you're usually surrounded by tons of beautiful nature and again, some of the best people ever.

Not to mention, setting up your own company usually allows you to operate in a low tax/tax-optimized fashion.

For what it's worth, I've lived all over Europe (including Germany) and the Balkans really must be the best place in Europe - as long as you're earning remotely, local wages are unfortunately ridiculously low.

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> you're usually surrounded by tons of beautiful nature and again

Also very high pollutions levels:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jan-Horalek/publication...

That map specifically talks of urban air quality. Foreign visitors hanging out among “beautiful nature” are, well, out in nature, not dense urban environments. Especially in the summer when the lowlands are baking, it is popular for foreign remote workers to head up to mountain resort towns that don’t have a lot of air pollution because they don’t have a lot of cars in the area.

According to this one which shows (PM2.5 instead of PM10 though) county level data it's still pretty bad even in remote areas

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2023/...

Especially compared to some more remote areas in Western Europe like the Alps or the Massif Central in France. Which would suggest that emissions from cars are not the main reasons why the Balkans (and Eastern Europe is general) are doing so bad.

Air pollution in rural areas in the Western Balkans is, besides vehicles, largely a function of burning wood for heating. For example, look at Korçë in Albania, which is a black spot on your linked map (very high pollution): this surely reflects in part the burning of wood in November–April by nearly the entire town, because it is cold at 800 m, but they do not have access to gas heating, and electric heating is expensive. Again, because the trend is mainly to go up to the mountains in the summer months, when the locals are not running their wood stoves, foreign remote workers avoid the worst of that.

This is a real issue throughout europe, particularity in east europe, where germany has been dumping highly polluting cars for decades sometimes even by threatening countries that tried blocking it, as is always the case with german eu politics, using the might of eu fines and sanctions.

PM10 is a misleading and unhelpful metric.

PM10 is basically woodburning stoves. PM2.5 is much more hazardous to your health, and produced by industrial processes to a greater degree. Using PM10 is just artificially tipping the scale to make less-industrialized locations look worse.

PN 2.5 data is also pretty bad https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2023/...

Regarding the Balkans …

Low cost of living in some regards … housing for example compared to most western countries.

But higher cost of living in others … price of gas for example… it’s close to 1.75$ per litere.

Food in the big cities is slightly cheaper, but not that much cheaper than the west. Around 40-50$ per person at the restaurant.

Food is much cheaper in the smaller towns, but most people from the west are unlikely to want to live there. Gas the same, housing is basically free, but there’s a reason for it.

I am baffled by your claim that restaurant prices are $40-50 per person. Except in Romania where dining out has surged in price, or in coastal ripoff Montenegro or Croatia, I would be hard pressed to spend more than about $20-25 per person in Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, or Albania for dinner. (I have no recent Bulgarian experience.) Do you eat at those few places for the local upper class, or order expensive wine or spirits with meals?

Food is significantly cheaper as is rent.

Westerners are unlikely to want to live there because they've never even visited it so that's not an argument against. The Balkans is sunny, taxes are low. I'd take that any day over subzero Northern Germany.

40-50$ per person in a restaurant is a flat out lie so I'm not gonna even bother with that.

According to you it's much better to live in a 2m^2 apartment in Paris than in Balkans. I'd take the Balkans any day.

> Food is significantly cheaper

Only when eating out (if you're comparing to Northern Germany).

That's interesting, I didn't know that.

How much is the rent for a studio in Northern Germany?

Impossible to tell without further qualification. Hamburg (Germany's second largest city after Berlin) is expensive though still cheaper than Munich, other cities with universities such as Bremen, Kiel, etc. aren't cheap but bearable, countryside places are relatively cheap, seaside places OTOH can be expensive or outright unaffordable (Sylt and other North Sea islands/places), remote places in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern can be really cheap but not around Schwerin and at places near Hamburg. Also, energy costs need to be considered.

And Munich is not a shithole but a fantastic place to stay at in the summer - less so in winter unless you can go skiing in nearby Alps IME and especially not during Oktoberfest.

The 40-50$ is not a lie.

A good quality meal with some wine and dessert will cost you +40$ for sure

> The Balkans is sunny, taxes are low. I'd take that any day over subzero Northern Germany.

Isn't the weather still not great during the winter months? I don't care if it's 0 C or +8 C, both make me not want to go out.

If you like sun it is, we get tons of sun.

The Croatian coast doesn't get too cold (usually).

> 40-50$ per person in a restaurant is a flat out lie so I'm not gonna even bother with that.

Unfortunately things here in Bucharest are pretty much getting there, maybe not in the range of 40-50$ per person but most definitely in the 35-40$ range, and I'm talking a regular restaurant. Before the pandemic I'd say that that price was in the 20-25$ range.

Though I can see how prices in cities like Belgrade, Sofia or Skopje might still be lower, as even Athens is now cheaper than Bucharest when it comes to eating out (I've experienced that myself recently), in which case enjoy it while it still lasts.

That's more expensive than Paris. Well it depends the type of restaurant of course. Would you have some examples in Bucharest?

A mom-and-pop German restaurant near me [1] where for Bavarian Weisswurst, a cabbage salad, some "peasant potatoes" (I don't know the official name) and a non-filtered beer I paid about 30 euros when I went there about a month ago. Had I also ordered a soup, or a second bear, I could have easily gone into the 35-40 euros range.

[1] I highly recommend it, it's the real deal when it comes to eating honest German food in Bucharest https://www.google.com/maps/place/Die+Deutsche+Kneipe/@44.45...

> Had I also ordered [...] a second bear

Hopefully they have doggy bags?

I'll leave it like that :)

I had them in mind when I made the comment because I had just learned earlier that day that Japan had bears, that was a surprise to me. Plus, bears are cool, beer, too (if drunk responsibly).

Cartofi taranesti would be in English, I suppose, simply ”roasted potatoes”. At least an image search for each term shows basically the same dish.

Basically this.

The price of a shitty room in a coloc (not even in paris) gets you an actual 2/3 bedroom apartment.

Taxes are, as you say, very low in comparison. The usual min wage + dividends can get you an effective tax rate of about 9% (depending on the country).

Thanks. I've been to Europe a bunch of times, including once east of the Iron Curtain when it was still up. If I were to go back now, the Balkans, Poland, and Lithuania would be the destinations (the last two are for ancestry reasons).

They're just more interesting.

Serbia is preparing to invade Kosovo:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/30/europe/kosovo-tensions-mi...

I follow the news closely as I'm in the area, nothing's going to happen aside from the usual posturing, Serbia's in no rush to be once again on the sharp end of NATO's pointy stick.

Even Vucic made it clear: https://www.koha.net/en/arboretum/393870/Serbia-will-not-bri...

There are problems in balkans. In Romania, hospitals are just sh**, same thing with infrastructure/public transport&hoghways and education system. For the rest, yeah, with western salary it's cheap here and food is ok, you can live with little stress from 2k eur/m

I'm not talking about vaslui and it's not the early 2000s anymore.

My reference point is growing up in western europe, and then spending a decade moving around various western european countries, coming to eastern europe and the balkans some years ago. To be quite frank, I found the balkans a massive upgrade in every way possible including the aspects you mentioned - except local wages.

Western europe used to be better, but the past 5 years or so it's nosedived while the balkans has seen improvements.

I don't talk about vaslui either. Even in big cities hospitals are bad, even private. Same story with education system, also should mention that you'll waste hours of your life in traffic bringing the child to the school, bc pub transport sucks too. Food imo is subpar compared to Italy/France/Spain, both quality and taste, with few exceptions ofc. Romania's trains are bad too. Want to go from Cluj to say Iasi? best bet is either 6h car drive or 6h flight with layover in bucharest(with imo expensive price) or 9h train drive in subhuman conditions(bc usually max speed is abt 50km/h and most trains are from communist era). And this compared to France/Italy/Spain that have a lot of 200km/h+ trains, so that same distance could be covered in two hour train drive. Similar experience is going from cluj to the romania's black sea. Also you have very few highways, so can't drive fast big chunks of the road. And I didn't even cover the quality, just recently a chunk of newly build highway broke down bc of corruption, and prior to that a newly bridge collapsed just before a bus full of kids was about to pass. You get a cheaper life in eastern europe, maybe in some parts like Poland it's better than Romania, but make no mistake, it's a tradeoff, you get a cheaper life but with worse public infra on all levels. For some it's a good tradeoff, for others - not so much

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