I was thinking purchasing parity-adjusted, where Berlin seems a lot more affordable [0]. Switzerland (where I currently live) isn't such a clear-cut picture, as you say [1]. I earn more than what Numbeo suggests, and that is nowhere close to the top of the salary range.

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... [1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Just from my personal experience, having lived in both London and Berlin within the past 2 years, the affordability gap seems to me to be closing fast between Berlin and London.

If anyone is making a London vs Berlin decision in 2019, I would advise take a really detailed look at the cost of living numbers if it's an important factor in your decision.

To be honest there are many other important differences and tradeoffs between the two cities that make a like-for-like lifestyle comparison basically impossible, but just assuming for a second you could do so, the days of simply assuming Berlin will be significantly cheaper without having to think about the details too much I think are over.

I looked into this extensively after getting an offer to move from Berlin to London and renting somewhere like Wapping in London was still 3x the price of renting in Mitte in Berlin. It takes a lot of additional salary to make up a difference of 2000 euros a month post tax.

Yeah, that's fair - the big caveat with London is that you'll basically be renting in zone 2 outwards if optimising cost of living is in any way important to you. That's one of the tradeoffs I always forget when comparing Berlin and London.

Though to be fair, London being what it is, plenty of places in zone 2 still very much feel like bustling city living if that's your thing. Berlin, less so - once you're out of the central neighbourhoods it gets 'suburban' rather more quickly.

fwiw (more anecdata), Switzerland has Google's highest pay scale of any office around the world, including NYC & the Bay Area... and it's not even all that close (something like 10-15% difference).

Berlin is an outlier it used to be this strange cold war limbo place until relatively recently - thought that is now changing

Swiss trains are really expensive though, 20 min ride from Zurich to Zug is like $35 one way. thats a good racket they got going there I would expect train drivers to get a hefty cut of that

Is that not a respected trade there? Or perhaps unskilled labor in comparison to these jobs?

I think he's talking about the tube drivers [0]

[0] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-tube-drivers-earni...

I was thinking of Thames link 60k basic for 4 day week plus OT plus Final Salary Pension.

It seems closer to 18CHF, ~ 17USD, after a cursory search.

This is actually cheaper than buying 3.22 Big Macs would be, compared across both countries [0].

[0] https://www.bigmacindexconverter.com/

So the round trip is 35?

Must have got my tickets mixed up

Seems so, or you found a train faster than 26min.