HN has a good culture of taking threads off topic, so I'll take that chance to plug my city a bit.
Eindhoven has all the good parts of the south of NL, such as the relaxed culture, the good food, the deep aversion to bullshit, etc. Yet I find that the people here have way less of the shitty parts of Southern Dutch culture, such as the chauvinism, that weird inferiority complex, and the distrust/paranoia towards outsiders.
(My theory is that this is due to there being so many expats here for the big (hardware) tech sector. They came from Drenthe 100 years ago to work at Philips, and now they come from India to work at ASML. It takes only one generation for them to mix with the locals, yet they keep an opener mind than eg the inbreds from Den Bosch)
Also the usual "medium size city" perks: the place is big enough for lots of stuff to do, nice bars and cafes etc, yet small enough to be able to randomly bump into people you know. As someone who grew up on the countryside, I find that a nice balance. That said, there's an exceptionally large amount of stuff to do per capita. Eg neighbouring Tilburg is almost the same size but significantly less vibrant.
Finally, it's super well connected. Notably, the direct train to Utrecht/Amsterdam goes every 10 minutes, almost like a subway.
Haha, you put Eindhoven on the map in my mind. You make it sound like a better Haarlem. I'm living in a quieter side in the Amsterdam area. Also, 75 minutes doesn't seem so bad, knowing you have a train every 10 minutes.
