[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.