[imtringued]

It must be a language thing but the oxymoron of "smaller town" strikes me as a very odd thing to say. I'm sure you use it to mean "smaller city" because according wikipedia a town has a population of around 5000 people. So when people think of a smaller town they may think of a place with a few hundred people.

Now lets cut to the chase. With the exception of the top 40 cities in Germany every other city has a population of less than 200k people. Unless you go to those 40 places which represent roughly 25% of the population the rest of Germany is nothing but "small cities".

[blub]

Technically small town's not an oxymoron, since the two don't contradict each-other. :-) Now adding small was probably too much, but on the other hand a city of around 200k people already has quite high rents/prices.

I have some friends living in what according to wikipedia one could call a half-town and looked at an apartment there out of curiosity. A 3 room apartment (newly built) was about 280.000 EUR and that's in a town where they have 1 hotel, 1 restaurant (or maybe 2) and 0 supermarkets. In my experience if one wants a 3 room apartment in a normal city, one would add another 100.000 EUR to that price.