As the title suggests, it is time to address our biggest misfortune a.k.a. moving to Switzerland. This was 100% the least pleasant move in terms of EVERYTHING but we got there in the end. And we ended up ending up in Zug, a place I would not wish on an enemy.

Where we started

Our last hope of moving back to Singapore died some time in late November or early December and our move to Switzerland became imminent. We packed a few of our bags, leaving the majority of our stuff in Vilnius and flew to Zürich in January where we picked up the keys for our temporary apartment in Kreutzplatz, a centre-adjacent area on the eastern shore of Zürichsee.

As EU citizens with Matas’s employment contract we had guaranteed visas for our Swiss residence but the bureaucracy only started here. In order to register for our permit we needed to rent a temporary apartment that would allow us to put it as a place of residence. What does it mean in practice? We needed a place that would put our names on the mailbox and by the doorbell.

If you end up learning anything during these first few months in Switzerland is that you DO NOT FUCK WITH THE NAME PLATES. It is the bread, butter and the entirety of Swiss existence, surpassed only by their love for Knorr Aromat. I think. And for those who do remember our lives in Paris, we ended up getting our names plates after 2.5 years of living at the same address… two weeks before we moved out. Go figure.

How it was going

We promptly gathered the necessary documents into a neat package (A DOCUMENT PACKAGE is indeed an endless refrain in Switzerland) and went to register as new arrivals in Kanton Zürich. The registration was actually a very smooth process but it still took over an hour while the clerk made sense of a pile of our documents. This clerk was also our first glimpse into how Swiss customer service works – very friendly but rarely competent. More on that later.

Oh, and I am sure everyone will appreciate this poetic interlude into the Swiss nature but our welcoming package contained a bunch of useless booklets in German AND a complimentary TRASH BAG. Yes, boys and girls, Zürich welcomes you with a reminder to pick up your damn trash (they need to hand these out more freely, maybe then it would fix their actual trash problem).

Kanton Zürich registration done and dusted (“here’s a paper that says you are legally in Switzerland, here’s a date for your biometric data registration, now please leave”), we tackled the banking sector next. Again, we received very lovely customer service with even more weird attempts at Swiss banter (I think this is how your distinguish between Germans and Swiss – the latter attempt at jokes). Again, it took a while but we seemed to be all set for our debit and credit cards. More on that later.

So we registered with the canton, we got our bank account open, it was time to deal with the health insurance – the bane of EVERYONE’S existence in Switzerland. Basic health insurance is compulsory to every single resident, the price set at 365 Swiss francs per person per month. We, of course, needed to navigate all sorts of ad-ons and take-offs and opt-ins and opt-outs, trickle-ins and fuck-offs which seriously took forever but we got there in the end. And let me tell you, ours does not cost 365 Swiss francs per person per months. Ours is A TAD more expensive than that and it is still absolutely utterly useless. More on that later.

The fourth bureaucratic hurdle was biometric data registration at the immigration office. This took a whopping 4-5 weeks after our cantonal registration due to big queues of refugees and other arrivals. Which was fine. We were not in a hurry. In the meantime I have received a few officials letters addressed to “Andrukaitytè” or “Andrukaityté” (does not matter now) and we realised we might have a problem later on. A few of the systems that require a name log in did not take my new added “è/é” and refused to let me log in.

So we end up at the biometric data registration/immigration counter and I was straining to see how they butchered my name and I was trying to convince this lady to change it to “e” like I am used to. The lady asks “But don’t you want it to be correct?” and I am like “Whatever it is, it is not correct and I want it changed to whatever everyone else has always done and have an e”. She apologetically explains that “we have to keep it like it is on the passport” and I am like “you can certainly try”.

First of all, I had to explain the concept of an e with a dot (“ė”), then she had to call her superior and explain this concept to them. I already knew there was no point in looking for an “ė” in their system but I though let them try. They did not manage to find an “ė”, so then she asked if I wanted to keep “è” and after what felt like my 50th plea, she changed it to an “e” after all. Thank. Fucking. God.

More on that later

So remember that easy peasy “Here’s your paper, welcome to Switzerland” registration? A week or so later we receive a letter to our registered address that they require an address confirmation because, I guess, our rental contract that we submitted in the first place got lost on its way from one bureau to the other? Strike one.

So remember that chatty Kathy bank account opening sequence? Well, not only did the lady put my name wrong (“oh, we will fix it later” – never fixed anything), so my debit card still reads “Andrukaitytè”, our passport copies got lost on their way from debit card office to credit card office and we did not receive our credit cards until a month later. After we had to call and chase after them. Strike two.

So remember that more-expensive-than-thou health insurance? I still needed to wait for two hours in a live queue to get a 3-minute appointment for a simple rescription. Strike three.

This is not the end. Yet.

This entry has gotten way too long, so I will cut it short here and leave the joys of apartment hunting, apartment securing, apartment handover and bureaucracy in Zug for another day. If this is something you want to see more in the future, give me a shout. It really means a lot when my five readers read this and engage with me afterwards 🙂