Ask HN: Where in mainland Europe would you choose to bootstrap a startup?

Berlin has an amazing startup scene with fairly open people. I got easily in contact with CEOs of Soundcloud and Blinkist. Try also to connect with hub:raum , which is the Telekom incubator in Berlin. Great stuff.

Other than that, I would probably go for Paris or Zurich, dependent on your startup idea.

In general: Try to find a place, where like-minded startups are situated. This swarming of common interests is indeed very valuable for skill, experience, and knowledge transfer.

Why not eastern Europe. Budapest comes to mind. They do have a well educated tech work force. The politics may be inconvenient but its the EU after all.

Cost is low and it is a real adventure :-)

If anybody has a convincing idea, I'll come along (fluent german and english). Hungarian will work after a while.

I know it's not Europe, but how about Morocco: http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-are-the-coolest-startup-c...

Sibiu, Romania.

Awesome mountain range. Great food. Low costs. Very friendly people. And two major hubs nearby with a growing startup culture (Cluj and Bucharest).

I have no experience with this but the Netherlands is supposed to make this a lot easier with the DAFT if you're from the US.

Berlin is great.

Barcelona seems to be starting to get into the startup scene.

I hear good things about Berlin.