Bennington , Vermont

Bennington is all about location, location, location. To the immediate west is the New York state line, to the south is Massachusetts, to the north is Burlington and then Quebec. It rests at an intersection of the northeastern corridor, an access point through which you can reach the rest of New England, New York, and even Canada, making it ideal for those who do business on the road. It is also home to Bennington College, one of the most storied and prestigious liberal arts institutes in the country, with varied alumni including author Bret Easton Ellis and actor Peter Dinklage, as well as the Bennington Battle Monument, commemorating a turning point in Green Mountain campaign of the Revolutionary War. Its historic district is excellent albeit it has suffered along with other New England towns during the collapse of the textile industry, its live theater and arts scenes are excellent, and the beautiful landscape brings in tourists en masse during the fall and winter. For those with a vested interest in nature, American history, or the arts, Bennington is an ideal home.

A local notes: I totally recommend the general area, it's absolutely beautiful, plenty of quaintness and nature spots.

In many ways, Bennington demonstrates the negative features of the northeastern corridor of the United States in the twenty-first century. Once a town with a thriving factory, many blue collar workers have found themselves out of work in the past twenty-years, as well as the town itself contending with tainted drinking water in the factory’s immediate vicinity. Drug use is also a noted problem amongst residents, particularly heroin. As such, the dissonance between those who move to Bennington and those who are lifelong residents is somewhat high, with transplants favoring the town and lifers occasionally disparaging it. This is not a universal dichotomy, though it is worth noting.

Here's a transplanter/expat about living in Bennington: *Lived in downtown bennington for a year before buying a home in a nearby town. The town is lovely to visit but has a a colorful crowd of locals to say the least. I moved from a city of about a million and Bennington had them beat in riff-raff street people. *