CasualEurope

The short answer is that I don’t know.

I think there are enough apartments, just not enough apartments that are nice and in the city. Being in the outskirts could add a good half an hour to your commute (that is pretty big on EU standards) and are mostly hundred-year-old social housing, not really glamorous. If I remember correctly, Berlin’s population has also been increasing dramatically since the fall of the wall.

What I noticed is that some 20-30 years ago there was a lot of artsy undergrowth in the city, because you could live off of a 2-day a week odd job and dedicate the rest of your life to anything else you wanted. Nowadays that’s not viable anymore and a lot of cheap artsy places don’t exist anymore (I had skateboarding lessons in a squatted building, I went to a small club set up in the basement of a half-demolished house whose owner was still undetermined, I went to small “pop up” art galleries set up pretty much anywhere, I went to art flea markets set up in abandoned buildings, none of this is possible anymore)