City or countryside, new construction or renovation – the agony of choice!?

Country. If you want peace and quiet, you have it at home and don’t have to travel away. If you want hustle and bustle, the few kilometers to the city are no problem. When it comes to partying in the city: take the motorhome, party, sleep it off, and go back home.

I lived in Berlin with my family for almost 1 year and we then moved to the countryside because of work. At first, my wife cried, now she doesn’t want to leave here anymore. You have your peace in the countryside. And if you want to go to Berlin, you can be at Alex by train in 45 minutes. So definitely countryside. And during the times of Corona, country living definitely won.

It crucially depends on how one wants to spend their free time.

Cycling, jogging, walking, foraging for mushrooms/wild plants, gardening, enjoying peace in the forest, tinkering, etc.: LAND

Eating out, bar, cinema, theater, opera, museums, overall greater consumer orientation vs. smaller activity orientation: CITY

If you are more Type 1, the city is extremely annoying. Type 2 will eventually go crazy with every commute if they live in the countryside

It critically depends on how you want to spend your free time.

Cycling, jogging, walks, searching for mushrooms/wild plants, gardening, enjoying peace in the forest, tinkering, etc.: RURAL

Eating out, bar, cinema, theater, opera, museums, overall greater consumption orientation vs. smaller activity orientation: CITY

If you are more Type 1, the city is enormously annoying. Type 2 will eventually go crazy for every commute if they live in the countryside

That’s not quite true. When we lived in Berlin for almost a year, we hardly went out during the week because you only got off work late. And going out with a 2-year-old child at around 7 p.m. is "complicated." Of course, it was different on weekends. However, we lived in Berlin-Buckow and had a longer journey to the center by public transport than we do now from our village. This: "City life is great because I can go out during the week" applies to relatively few people and partly ignores reality.

Definitely city.

But I would always base it on the commute and the specific house, property, and other factors. Better to move to the countryside than such a house:

100sqm terraced house with a small plot directly on a main road

We both grew up in the countryside and then lived in the city for 6 and 13 years respectively, mainly because of education and work. Now we are happy to be back in the countryside. The times in the city were definitely nice too, when we were in our early to mid-twenties. But now we have been living for 4 years in the newly built house in the "[Land/Kleinstadt]" and have everything we need here. It was always clear to us that we wanted to return to the countryside. Less noise and less hustle and bustle also means more quality of life for us, and in my opinion, it is much nicer for children to grow up in the countryside. The fact that the plots are significantly cheaper is a nice side effect.