In Hamburg’s Alster harbor area Photo: Butterfly1172 / Wikimedia
While Berlin and Munich are the tourist meccas most often thought of in Germany, a poll of Germans asking what city they’d most like to move to or recommend to a friend, Hamburg came out on top, just edging Munich.
The poll asked 5000 people questions about what they thought of the city’s reputation, quality of life, uniqueness and how likely they would be to live there. In the poll, all age groups chose Hamburg as the place to go, citing friendliness among other virtues. Hamburg scored 7.9 points on the overall scale, while Munich, with 7.3 still won for highest quality of life.
There were some surprises; of the 49 largest German cities in the poll, some of the smaller ones, in the under-250,000 class fared well, with Freiburg im Briesgau leading as “family-friendly.” And the real surprise: Berlin, despite its world reputation, fell to 6th overall, and was more popular among the older than the younger age groups who have made that reputation. On the other hand, Berlin is still creeping up on Paris as a tourist destination, and only last week was named as “vegetarian capital of the world” by the food magazine Saveur.
