I think it depends on where you work for the commute’s sake. If commute is not a worry, there’s lots of cool niche places, some overpriced and nice and some up and coming. Love Seattle – my wife is from Forks out on the peninsula and I’ve visited the Emerald city several times. Any idea where you’re going to work?

baltimore really isn’t that bad! i’ve lived here all my life, and while i wouldn’t say it’s the greatest place, it isn’t somewhere you need to avoid altogether.

if you’re looking for a neighborhood in the city with a good sense of community, good gathering places, and appealing services, move into hampden. if your fiance’s job will have him working near the PA border (hunt valley area i’m guessing?), he’ll be going opposite of rush-hour traffic so the commute will only be about 30 mins. hampden has lightrail stops that can take you further downtown or up to hunt valley, the avenue is adorable, there are more nice hangouts opening every year in that neighborhood, and it’s relatively safe all the way around.

keep in mind that racial tensions are high in baltimore from both sides of the line… that might be shocking if you’re used to a culturally mixed environment. baltimore has strong lines between groups and baltimoreans tend to be cliquey (if you’re not from here originally, you’ll never be from here). you just have to be wary of everyone equally.

also look in roland park for neat apartments in huge historic homes. we lived in the park lynn apartments for three years and love love loved them (we live in parkton now, just north of hunt valley). once you get north of the city, the only good grouping of services is in hunt valley, and there is no real sense of community out there.

a good way to judge a neighborhood is to drive through it slowly around 2pm, then 10pm, and again around 2am on a friday or saturday. if it sounds/looks scary or has lots of loiterers, stay away!

chances are, since you prefer city life and have lived in cities already, baltimore will be easy for you to navigate. people aren’t overly friendly on the street, but you can always find someone to talk to at a hangout if you just give it a try.

good luck and welcome!

I live in Baltimore, have lived in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and grew up in Minneapolis. I have to say it is unfortunate that Bogdana is the one writing most of the comments to your questions, and that you could possibly be swayed by it them. True, Baltimore has crime. Everywhere does. If you watch ‘The Wire’, you got a sense of what Baltimore CAN be like. It doesn’t mean that you would choose to live in those areas depicted, just like you wouldn’t choose to live in or frequent most of the areas with the high crime. Just like you said about MPLS, you have to know where to go and where not to go (East Lake Street + West Baltimore).

I rented a house in Hampden for 7 months when I first moved here and loved it so much I bought a house 4 blocks away. If you want to live in a city, and Baltimore is that city, I am biased towards Hampden. It is a small town in a big city- neighborhood feeling, I know all my neighbors whether they are the old-schoolers or the new residents that are buying up all the houses (like myself).

Coming from MPLS, I found Portland (Seattle might be similar) to be about as white-bread as you can get. Baltimore has a STRONG personality and is very diverse. My problem with it is the minority cultures (black excluded) are buried and hard to root out. All the neighborhoods have different flavors.

There is a great site called http://livebaltimore.com which has been very successful in courting DC professionals to live in B-more and commute. They also have plenty of resources for the newbie. Another good place to look is http://essentials.baltimoresun.com/micro_sun/homicides/ so you can see where the bad stuff really is going on (look at 21211 for Hampden). I also know a GREAT local real estate agent if you are looking at buying.

I commute to DC and I live 5 minutes from the commuter train station. I would not live in DC, I would find it too stuffy and boring. There may be a lot of great restaurants (that I couldn’t afford to frequent), but B-more has just as many up-and-coming along with the hole-in-the-walls and local flavors that DC lacks. B-more has a lot of local music and arts as well.

The only other thing I would mention is that I commute with two people who live in B-more and work in museums. They both worked at the biggest game in B-more (The Walters) and took jobs in DC because of the pay increase and the status as well. The Walters is VERY nice museum, but (working for them) it is a big fish in a small pond as museums go from what I have heard.

I hope my perspective helps. I don’t want to give you the idea that I love everything about Baltimore because there are things I don’t like. I do feel that those don’t outweigh the benefits or the affordability of living here though. Good luck in your research and feel free to post more specific questions/comparisons you may have for me.

Just to put my $.02 in – I’m middle of the road. I’ve lived in major cities for the last 8 years (Chicago for 5 and now Baltimore for 3) and grew up downtown in a smaller city (Frederick, MD). I’ve been living in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood (about 15-20 blocks north of the Inner Harbor) since moving back here in ‘05, and here’s my best guesses of what you can expect based on my observations:

1. Jaywalking is a city pastime. I can’t tell you how many people (especially the homeless or poor folks) I’ve seen crossing the street in front of my car, just to dare me to hit them. I think it’s some kind of a mindgame that makes them feel powerful or at least noticed or whatever the case may be, but it’s really annoying and occasionally terrifying all the same.

2. The city itself is nice, at least downtown and most of the neighborhoods there (Canton, Fells Point, Federal Hill) but the housing costs match that niceness. Also, if you plan on living in any of those places and owning a car, plan on purchasing a parking garage spot – the streets in all three are exceptionally narrow and that’s made worse by cars fighting for parking on both sides. Not surprisingly, they’re all 1-way, too.

3. If you live anywhere near downtown, be prepared to plan your life around the O’s and Ravens schedules. When it’s football season or when the Yankees/Red Sox/whoever’s-hot-this-year-in-baseball comes to town, the gridlock is mindnumbingly unbearable.

4. If you live near Johns Hopkins, be prepared for a really bad neighborhood. It’s one of the only hospitals in the city with that problem (and there are many, many other hospitals – more than I recall seeing in Chicago, that’s for sure, and it’s a much smaller city population and size-wise). The others all have pretty good neighborhoods, from those that I’ve seen. I live very close to Mercy Hospital and the surrounding area is pretty nice.

I’ve never been to Seattle, but I hear it’s lovely. The weather in Baltimore is pretty much all over the map – we’ve been into the upper-90s already this year, but today had a low of 45F! It shifts much more in the spring, of course, due to the multitude of storms passing through and bringing their respective fronts with them, but it’s never really constant except in the dead of summer or winter.

Overall, my best advice if you want that city feel but without the hassle would be to live on the outskirts, like up NE in the Towson/Lutherville/Parkville area. It’s a short ride down 83S from there to get into the city (obviously not during rush hour, when a “short ride” doesn’t exist ;-) and the neighborhoods are pretty good overall. Cost of living is much more reasonable and having a few campuses nearby helps keep property values up.

Good luck with the move!