In reply to Kahti:
Well there are ups and downs to it.
climbing community - in Cham etc you will find a ready and waiting climbing community. It's easy to find partners. The eastern alps and Dolomites, it will take time to find people if you are on your own. Skiing not so much it's much easier than climbing. But you could for example join the CAI who organise regular meets. There are various forum users - Erstwhile, Kean, myself, James Rushforth for example who are either based out there or spend a lot of time in the mountains. Or go into the guides office where you are and ask them how to find partners - there are always propective guides coming up through the ranks who are looking for fit keen partners.
Altitude - as the altitude is lower, it's dead easy to rock u and pull on. None of the acclimatisation nonsense you get over in the west unless of course you are heading to for example the Ortler, Oztal, or other higher regions over there.
Variety - so Cham is all perfect granite. I hear you say that's not a bad thing and it isn't, but cham tends to be this microcosm which you can't escape. I have a number of friends who live there and they say this. Out east you have to work a little harder but the reward is that you can get to Granite, Porphry, Dolomite and Limestone pretty easily. For example if you were based somewhere around Trento, you can hit the Lagorai for Granite, Main dolomites for limestone and Dolomite, Brenta Dolomites, the Adamello (Presenella), Ortler and Stelvio, or Tirol within an hour and halfs drive.
Life costs - Italy is not much cheaper than the UK really - about the same.
Damn good food - eating out is cheap - a pizza will cost maybe 9 euro max and start at 6.50. Same for pasta.
Flights to Italy are cheap - so if you need to pop back it's no biggy.
Ski passes are MUCH cheaper than France.
There are less people winter climbing there so you won't need to queue apart from maybe the Serrai di Sottoguda on a weekend.
Drive south to the motorway and you can get to Cham easily. Or Mello, or Julian Alps, or Croatia for sun rock, or go north through Austria to get to things like the Dachstein, or Switzerland pretty easily. Seriously - there's so much out there. Yes its an advantage that Cham has easy access cable cars and loads to go at, but then that means there's loads of people who have though of the same thing...
As for driving, easiest cheap way is drive from calais into Belgium, down to Namur, across the Pfalz to Karlsruhe, across to Ulm, down to Kempten, then through Austria. Avoid the motorways in austria and go over the brenner. The Brenner motorway is woth the 9 bucks as it saves loads of time. Then on the other side the toll will cost you 4 bucks...