Wow! We’ve already lived in Switzerland one year!  Just one year ago today, December 1st, 2014, we were sprinting across the sidewalks of Lausanne with our 200+ pounds of luggage in tow, rushing to our tiny studio, where we were late to meet our new landlord.  Now we can look back from our comfortably large, and overly furnished mountain view apartment, at all the anxiety, excitement, happiness, stress, and maybe just a twinge of homesickness we were feeling at the start of our adventure, and it’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year.  Thinking back to a year ago, we never would have guessed all the surprises, obstacles, and fun new experiences the year had in store. Anniversaries are a good time for reflection, so, in no particular order, here are some of my and Melissa’s thoughts from our first year here.

Lots of Friends on the Continent

We moved literally halfway around the world from nearly everyone we know, but we still saw many friends this last year – Many more than I thought we would. Some came to Switzerland, and others gave us a good excuse to travel to other parts of Europe.  Below is a list of everyone we saw.

• Brit in Hannover, Germany in January
• Sebastian in Cologne, Germany in January
• Alex in Mannheim, Germany in February
• The Olson family came to Switzerland in March
• Kirsten came to Switzerland in March
• The Lindholm family in Stockholm in April
• Sam came to Switzerland in May
• Jim, Lee, Sam, and Marianne in Naples, Italy in June
• Garrett, Anna, Patrick, and Caryn  came to Switzerland in July
• Rachel came to Swizterland in October
• Patrick and Caryn in London in November

It was fun to see so many friends, and we hope to see more people this coming year too!  (In case anyone needs a reminder, we have a guest bedroom that is normally open)

It has been much harder to learn French than we thought it would be.

I honestly thought I could just practice really hard and be able to communicate by the time we first came here, but I quickly learned that wasn’t the case.  After a year, I’m about where I thought I would be on day one.   I am able to read most things, and speaking slowly and listening slowly I can communicate very simple things.  Neither of us have given up learning yet, though.  Nous espérons améliorer notre connaissance peu à peu chaque jour.

American culture, and the English language, are present everywhere in Switzerland, as well as, everywhere we’ve been in Europe.

Making it somewhat harder for us Americans to learn French is the shear amount of English and American culture here.  Pop songs, movies, TV shows,  and even signs around town are often in English. In Switzerland and the other European countries we’ve visited it’s pretty easy to get by knowing only English.  English seems to be the go to second language for everyone in Europe, and (much different than Minnesota) a large proportion of people seem to be bilingual or multi-lingual.

Swiss bureaucracy was more difficult to navigate then we expected

Our most annoying run in with bureaucracy was getting our residence permits.  They took three and half months to arrive, and it’s very hard to function in society without one.  When we emailed about the status of the permits it took a week for a response, and the email trail went from the city, to the canton, to the federal office. Other layers of bureaucracies include: paying a fee to register when you arrive, paying a fee when you move, paying a yearly tax to have a TV or radio, buying special garbage bags, getting a multi page book on recycling procedure, and fire, health, renters, and accident insurance requirements. It was a big headache to figure out all the procedures from scratch.

Lots of traveling.

A huge bonus of Melissa taking a job in Switzerland is that we are close to so many interesting travel destinations.  We are both happy with the amount of traveling we’ve done and are looking forward to exploring more in the next year.  Even if it’s just hopping a train to the next town over, we always seem to find something interesting when we travel.

Switzerland is Expensive

Melissa’s salary is about double that of what it would be in the U.S., but I think a good rule of thumb is that everything here costs about double that of the U.S.  Even after a year I still get sticker shock on everything I buy.  A silver lining though is that we rarely go out to restaurants here.  Fruits and vegetables are one of the few things close to U.S. prices, so we’ve been eating healthier, and I’ve gotten the chance to learn many new recipes.

Center of the World?

The whole year here it felt like all the major news stories in the world were happening in our backyard.  It’s easy to forget how isolated the United States is from the rest of the world.  Syria, Russia, Africa, France, Ukraine and countless other places that were in the news really aren’t that far from Switzerland.  It’s given us a new appreciation of the news to think that the things happening aren’t a world away.

Work Hard Play Hard

There is a stereotype in the U.S. that Europeans are lazy workers. Melissa hasn’t seen it, but it should be noted that her job is at an internationally know university.  Melissa, along with everyone else she works with, routinely put in more than 40 hours a week, about the same as would be expected in the U.S.  The difference she has noticed though, is that everyone uses their vacation.  No one here bats an eye if you take one or two weeks off at a time, and people think you’re weird if you don’t use up most of your 20 days of vacation in the year.

Home is just a mouse click away

My Mom jokes that I probably talk to her more now that I live in Switzerland than I did when I lived in Minneapolis.  Being so many miles away from home we have to make a deliberate effort to keep in touch with family, however, this effort means that we both try to talk to our parents at least once a week.  With the internet and video calling it’s much easier to stay in touch than we thought it would be.