[ido]

I have actually been living in Germany for the past 3 years, and spent 8 years in Austria before that :)

I find the non-materialistic (or at least less materialistic) mentality here preferable. But to be honest I think the only reason is that life in the German speaking countries is much easier - you can earn minimum wage or close to it and still live a decent life.

In Israel I had to earn twice as much for half the quality of life (slight exaggeration but only slight).

[k__]

I like this mentality too.

But Bafög (the german student aid) can accumulate to more than 10k€ of dept (you have to pay back half of it) and some of my friends even took credits for their (non-consecutive) master degrees or because they didn't finish their bachelors in regular time. Now they are stuck with 10k - 40k of dept and no way to pay this back in with the money they make.