University here is free. You might have to pay a fee per semester which covers different things like a bus/subway ticket for the city you live in, general material costs, and so on. I have to pay 180€ a semester, so 360€ a year, which is roughly $400. That's it. So the rest is really just rent and living expenses. And if you had the qualifications to study but weren't able to pay the university fee you might be eligible to get help from the state. Some university fees are higher, some lower, overall it's around this number.

Universities here are actually quite good, although I feel like they lack a certain culture that elsewhere seems to exist. But I like how accessible everything is. And you have very little nonsense studies. In physics we had one course in the first semester which was more like a meditation class, more or less free points, I guess the point was to get our minds off the math for an hour a month. It was kind of neat. Later I had to take at least one seminar (which is a course that goes for a couple of weeks and not the whole semester) in a field outside physics from a subset of fields. You could choose writing, philosophy, business, theology. Sort of 101 material. It's actually quite good in theory and worked well in practice as well. I chose philosophy because there's a very interesting exchange with physics there. Writing went a lot into papers and clarity of speech as some said, and business was mainly a course for people who wanted to find investors for their ideas. Theology is also interesting if your entrance to the cosmos and the fiber of everything is very much based on math and empirical evidence only. I went to that course as well even though it wasn't mandatory, I learned a lot about scripture, linguistic concepts and different religious ideas throughout the globe.

Of course subjects and universities differ. In general you get options though.

I like university here mostly. But there are problems in the high school system here. It's very unfair and messy. It's gotten fairer over the years but the whole thing is a conglomerate of very old and new concepts that cancel each other out and often lead to bad results.

Now not all is good here. My physics classes are so male dominated and the ways they try to get girls excited for the topic is with those condescending "science can be so much fun!"-campaigns. Also there's not much of a startup culture here. They're trying to introduce contests and do events and workshops but all of it feels so German, pushed into a straight box. They don't really value individuality here all that much.