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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

Freiburg is a super nice place as long as you've got disposable income to spend to live in one of the preferred quarters, like Wiehre, Herdern, etc. If you don't, then like in many south-German cities (located in mountain valleys where space is scarce), you're living in a place without any green in sight (ok Freiburg's Stühlinger is quite green, and still affordable, though I'm guessing it's been getting more expensive in recent years). The problem with living in Vauban-style high-tech houses with photovoltaics, ground energy, etc. is the cost of maintenance, or finding people for maintenance in the first place. We really only can tell something about sustainability towards the end of life of polystyrole or mineral wool walls (30 years?).

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I live in Austria and it's the same. Houses in the urban forests are really picturesque and a marker for high quality of life but unless you're a 10%er millionaire they're out of reach. Everyone else is cramped in concrete blocks but of course, that's rarely shown in photos or articles.

10 m or 100k ?

Just clicking around on real estate sites, large houses with gardens in nature seem to be rather cheap there. Maybe you are in another region but with mortgage % low, the prices like [0][1][2] are far from needing to be a millionaire.

[0] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t67035189/ [1] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t67126374/ [2] https://en.arkadia.com/eden-t66305759/

Of course prices of old houses in need of maintenance, far away from the nearest city, in regions with little to no jobs, next to the border with Eastern European countries, will be cheap.

Nobody wants to live there.

Try looking at homes in the suburbs of desirable cities with jobs and see 10x prices.

If we're just looking for random homes on the internet you can find better deals in villages in southern Europe but there's always at least one catch why cheap homes are cheap.

> Nobody wants to live there.

Nobody besides everyone I know... I (nor my friends or family) would never want to live in or close to a city. Let alone in a suburb; if in a city then the center.

But you are right; still, to pay a 2m mortgage, you do not need to be a millionaire. And for 2m I see nice stuff in Vienna.

> catch why cheap homes are cheap.

I live in such a home in southern eu and for me there is no catch. Huge garden, swimming pool, large villa for 130k. Always sunny, nature, no polution. Just not close (40min drive; probably faster than a lot of suburb-center commutes though) to a city, that’s a benefit, not a catch.

Yeah, you don't need to be a millionaire for a 2m mortgage but you need at least a six figure salary which is nearly unattainable here, especially as an expat.

Yeah, you have swimming pools, but if you live in the cheap areas in Austria that you pointed out you compromise with underfunded infrastructure and public services(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids without good teachers, almost no doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.).

Do you know why? Because all good doctors and teachers move to or next to cities with opportunities, not in the middle of nowhere. That's why nobody wants to live there.

True, not for a lot of people on HN but yeah, then you are at the 10% or less indeed.

> on infrastructure and public arrives(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids, no good doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.)

Those things are more relevant for some than others but also true; if any of that matters enough to someone to live in a small concrete box and still work 40 hours a week then sure, go for it. I value other things like quiet, space, no stress, nature over any of the above.

Plus, how will you fund your mortgage if you chose to live in a rural area with no tech jobs? Employers here don't accept remote work outside of government mandated quarantine.

That is the same in NL and DE, however, I have never worked in an office and I have been professionally coding for 30 years, mostly for Dutch companies. The ‘secret’ (it is not a secret and it works in Austria too) is to start a limited (or specifically not a 'freelance') company; 30 years ago I borrowed 20k guilders to open it (which used to cost 18k alone) and have cards, leaflets and style for letterheads etc made. Companies hire companies, especially if it looks professional. The company always had 1 employee for 30 years and I never had issues allowing to work wherever; even for large corps like ING, Kluwer and so on.

Also, a guy I hire on upwork sometimes made well over a million in the past years via that site, sitting in his house in ukraine. Without a company or anything like that; in modern times it is not so hard as it was.

You have a cool story and thanks for sharing it but how much of that is survivorship bias? Also, out of professional curiosity, how many clients did you get in Austria.

> how much of that is survivorship bias?

No idea; it's only anecdotal obviously. But not unheard of; it used to be quite normal in Germany to have small (1-2 person) GMBH's to get rather large contracts for big corps and if you have a 'real company' suddenly no-one expects you to rock up monday morning at 9. In the Netherlands it still works well, as it does in Portugal and Spain; other markets I do not know.

> how many clients did you get in Austria

1 around 17 years ago. But, at least from friends and limited experience, so excuse my personal ignorance, I understand that Austrian business is not very different from eastern germany business and I have (also had) quite a lot of clients there. I have more in the western part, but the eastern part is different in etiquette and I had the same, I guess conservative' feel 17 years ago with the Austrian company (trying to find what they are/were called).

But how did you get your customers to just let you be remote from the get go?

Here it would be impossible as, due to the culture, trust is made only through in person meetings. Nobody will just pay company for services without face-to-face meetings and on-prem presence.

There are many consultancy bureaus that don't visit. You need to have a face to face (end 80s/beginning 90s there were telephone calls, but indeed you would not get it cross the line like that) meeting(s). I still do that now. But after you discussed basically the ideas, you can go home to build the software. They don't accept that from freelancers sometimes in NL or DE either, but from 'serious companies' they do. I have not had any case where I had to sit in the office; sure, visit once per few months, but that's it. And driving/train-ing/plane-ing that is a small price to pay (company pays ofcourse).

I am writing this from my room in Wiehre right now, for which I pay 300 euro per month. Ok, it's a room in a flat I share with 3 flatmates, not everybody wants to live like this, but still, even Wiehre and Herdern are hardly quarters only for the super rich.

Additionally Freiburg is so small that you can be pretty much anywhere within 15 minutes by bike, it really does not matter so much which quarter you live in.

> If you don't, then like in many south-German cities (located in mountain valleys where space is scarce), you're living in a place without any green in sight

While this is generally true, the newer districts like Vauban also feature city-owned housing that is specifically targeted to be rented by lower-income families. If you're a student there are again lots of options all throughout the city.

It was a lot of fun (and quite a special experience) visiting the city. Don't have to live there.

It was wonderful to visit, but I am still a little salty about the Schlossberg. It has an incline elevator, not a funicular! And the Schlossberg tower was closed to the public. And, of course, my daughter stepped in the Bächle repeatedly. They were like a magnet for her.

I'm joking about being salty. Well, mostly. I want to go back and do more hiking. Hopefully, the tower will be open to the public, next time.

According to Wikipedia:

> It is local superstition that if you accidentally step in the Bächle, you will marry a Freiburger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_B%C3%A4chle

Damn. I found the pictures lovely i was thinking in finding a job in IT. But i guess i wont be able to afford a living there.

I think your parent paints a rather extreme picture. The two examples they picked, Wiehre and Herdern, are the upscale neighborhoods with plenty of mansions, and there's rather only one area with large concrete housing blocks (Weingarten). As usual, you pay a premium for the top locations but in terms of quality of living and "greenness" there are many other good spots.

Freiburg has many commuters working in Swiss pharma industry around Basel for the much lower cost of living so you should be ok as a single working in IT. If you even find housing, that is.

I really want to visit some day but doesn't sound like it's what I picture in my mind as a old German town.

Actually Freiburg has quarters with plenty of old town charm. And if that's not old town enough, you can always go to one of the smaller towns around, which should have plenty. It's an article that picks out and exaggerates one aspect of the city.

What is your idea of an old German town? Heidelberg-like romanticist buildings, medieval wooden housings, Karlsruhe-like baroque or classicist cities? Freiburg has a rather large historic center with a cathedral/monastery church and gates, plus old quarters with lots of red sandstone.

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