…Poznań, Poland.

Surprised? I was. Here’s why:

As you’ll recall, before setting out on my spring/summer 2018 jaunt through Europe and the world, I identified 14 criteria to use in evaluating each city I visited. And I went on to dutifully record all 14 scores for each of my 18 target cities. (In case you’re a stat nerd like me, I’ve compiled all of my ratings for every destination in one clunky table for your viewing pleasure.)

As I traveled, I realized that some criteria didn’t matter. Fast wi-fi seems to be pretty much ubiquitous, so my “Internet” rating had no descriptive power. I felt safe walking the streets of every city I visited, so my crime rating never came into play. Pollution ratings for my destinations varied widely, but I didn’t notice any difference, so I seem not to be sensitive to air pollution unless it’s at a truly Dickensian level (I’m talking about you, Beijing).

Other rating criteria proved to be of only minor importance.

• Health care: If I end up living overseas long-term, this will rise in importance. For now, I’m healthy and not too old. It’s only my teeth that are falling apart. The root canal and crown I got in Kraków back in July are still holding, so assuming Poznań has the same level of dentistry, I should do OK on that front.
• Friendliness: This rating proved to be highly impressionistic (although my impression of Poznań was a solid seven out of 10 here; I like the Poles). A week isn’t long enough to judge how welcoming a place is. And I’ve managed to live quite happily in irritating cities like Washington, D.C. and Boston.
• Walkability / Bikeability / Transit: These three ratings all boil down to the same thing: How easy is it to live without a car? Anyone who’s read more than a handful of my blog entries will know how important this is to me. But pretty much every European city I visited scored very well here, Poznań (7) included.
• Ambience: This one matters too. It makes a big difference in quality of life for me. Taiwan and Sri Lanka can’t compete with European levels of ambience (5+ out of 10). But within Europe, there are diminishing returns for this rating. My quality of life might be somewhat better in Prague (10) than in Poznań (6), but it’s not 67% better.
• Dating: There are beautiful women in cities everywhere. Dating opportunties abound. For what it’s worth, I will state for the record that Poznań excels in this category: I gave it nine out of 10 points. And the sex ratio in all Polish cities works in my favor. Check out the featured map in this article: magenta-colored areas are places where there are 102 to 107 women for every 100 men. (Poznań is the magenta dot in west-central Poland on that map.)

So what makes Poznań stand out?

Well, first and foremost it’s cost of living. Poland is unique among my European destination countries in that it has several large cities of over 1 million people where the average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in the city center (my gauge of cost of living) is $500 or less a month. As of today (24 November 2018), Poznań sits at $400.13 and has a metro area population of 1.4 million. Romania is cheaper still, but aside from Bucharest (which, at $410.53 and 2.4 million, I really need to take a look at), it doesn’t have any large cities. And I like cities. The bigger, the better.

Second, Polish food.

Third, nature. While Poland is quite flat and doesn’t feature the dramatic scenery of Taipei, Porto, or Brașov, Poznań is situated near some lovely, expansive nature walks.

But also, there were a couple, possibly related, criteria that I didn’t identify at the outset of my trip, but that proved to be decisive.

I like cities that are a little run-down. Places that are past their prime. (Provided that they’re still safe. I’m not planning to move to downtown Detroit just yet.) Porto fits the bill, as does Poznań. I’m not sure why I find decrepitude charming, but I suspect it’s because I haven’t lived in such places before. I grew up in Maine, which has always been a backwater. Among other places I’ve lived at least a couple of years, Portland, Oregon, Boston, and Hong Kong are at their peaks, and downtown Washington, D.C. has gentrified (yes, I am/was part of the problem) to the point that it feels like it’s gleaming new too.

I also like cities that are untouristy. This is where Poznań has a definitive edge over Kraków, which I also enjoyed visiting. I like to feel like I’m traveling off the well-beaten path. Like when I spent a semester my junior year of college studying Chinese not in Beijing, but in the very (at the time, in 1999) provincial city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. There weren’t many Americans there, that’s for sure! There were some tourists in Poznań in July when I visited, but it’s certainly not the first (or 100th) destination that pops to mind when Americans think about visiting Europe.

One criterion I deliberately left out of my ratings: climate. I can do sweltering, sticky summers (Taipei, Hong Kong, Washington, D.C.) and frigid, frozen winters (Maine). Or I think I can. It’s one thing to visit Poland in July; quite another to visit in December. It’s possible that after a Polish winter, the stock of my Iberian and Adriatic destinations will rise dramatically.

I’ll just have to find out. My return trip to Poland is imminent. Stay tuned.