Category Archives: Switzerland

Switzerland

Facilitated Swiss Naturalisation Part I

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Facilitated naturalization, or erleichterte Einbürgerung, is most commonly sought by spouses of Swiss nationals. Children are also eligible for facilitated naturalization if their Swiss citizenship was not claimed at birth. There are lots of different rules if you are living abroad or if you are married or have a Swiss parent, so I am only going to talk about facilitated naturalization for married people living in Switzerland.

Basic requirements:

  • Lived in Switzerland for a total of five years, including the last twelve months
  • Three years married

You also need to demonstrate basic integration and prove that you don’t pose a risk to others. That means speak the local language and no criminals, please.

I originally came to Switzerland in 2007, but as I was only here for less than three months on a travel visa, I did not need to register with the local authorities, thus that time period does not count towards my five years. I “officially” moved to Switzerland with a permit on November 6, 2008… but my five years in the country was delayed because during the summer of 2009, I needed to remain outside of the country for 2.5 months while I waited for a new visa and permit to process.

Soo… with all that time traveling across the pond, my five years on paper would have been some time in December 2013. By then, Kay and I would have already been married for over three years and of course have spent the last twelve months here.

But I was a little worried because last July we were changing residences and sometimes changing towns can affect your naturalization requirements. With regular naturalization, people need to live in their town or village usually for at least 2-5 of the last years, so I made sure to check when we registered  our new address at our local Gemeindehaus.

Anything to do with bureaucracy (or should I say bureaucrazy) is wrought with confusion here. My local town’s contact person  told me that I would need to wait an entire year in my new town before applying. He told me to call him again in a year to make an appointment about our next steps. I was disheartened. That would delay my application by almost a year. It didn’t sound right either… I knew I would have to apply for facilitated naturalization directly at the federal level, so I was confused why this local man was telling me there were cantonal requirements about how long I had lived somewhere. It contradicted everything I’d read about facilitated naturalization online.

Seriously, when in doubt here, call someone else. I went to the federal level directly and the nice man from the Bundesamt für Migration told me the local guy was off his rocker and that I had it right. Five years in Switzerland, three years married, apply directly to the BfM. Do not pass go, do not collect 200, do not call the local guy again.

I asked the federal guy to send me the application form so I could prepare to send it in as soon as I had reached my accumulation of five years in Switzerland. Hoorah for not listening to bureaucrats!

Up next… I take on the application auf Deutsch.


Switzerland

House Buying Restrictions for Foreigners

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Since starting and committing to the buying process in Switzerland, I’ve noticed some of the restrictions that foreigners must cope with here. Buying a home as an expat is not quite as easy as coming up with the deposit.

Don’t think you can just come to Switzerland and buy a home. Most owners need a residence permit or citizenship to buy a home here, otherwise applicants are limited to select holiday areas for purchasing homes with a limit on the number allowed.

Rules like this help protect the land and property values from skyrocketing for local residents. Luckily the residence permit was not an issue for us since we are local.

I’m still not sure if this is just for non-domiciled foreigners, but I have heard it applies to foreign residents as well. Depending of the canton your home can be between 200 m2 and 250 m2. (2152-2690 sq ft).

This was not really an issue for us because our home is only 105 m2, but it surprised me because I’ve definitely looked at larger fixer-upper homes on the market.

Generally you are only allowed to buy one house, especially if you are buying a holiday home. The only case where you can buy two houses if if you are transitioning to a new home. In these cases, the first home must be sold before you enter the second home in the land registry. Eeek. Talk about stressful! Thankfully selling is not usually a problem in this market.

I believe that we are allowed to buy a second home if we would live in it, but that we cannot buy a second home for rental purposes. (Might be wrong about that!) You are allowed to buy if you need to change residences due to your job, but you are not allowed to change residences for the purpose of acquiring more properties. If one is buying a holiday home, a second home is simply not allowed.

When we received our sales contract for our flat we had it reviewed by professionals who noted the oddity of the “no rental” line at the end of the document. We inquired and learned that this is actually a federal regulation.

As long as I am not Swiss and I own part of the house, we are not allowed to rent the house out in part while I am living in it. So, if Kay would want to go to school abroad for example, I would not be allowed to rent out a room to someone to help pay the mortgage. But if I would leave Switzerland, we could rent it out… and if I become Swiss it will be a non-issue. Complicated!

Ok, this one isn’t limited to foreigners as it also applies to Swiss, but I thought it was worth mentioning because it throws off a lot of expats here.

In the first years that you own your home, there is a 100% capital gains tax which effectively stops people from flipping houses and effectively helping the market skyrocket. Swiss law has to be very strict about the rules of buying and selling so that people do not abuse the small realty market. The longer you live in your house (closer to 20 years) the less capital gains taxes you will have to pay on your profits.

In general, it is not a good idea to buy a house here hoping for a big investment payoff. It won’t happen. If you buy, you will “earn money” by saving on rent and taxes, but if you hold on to your property for 20 years through market fluctuations, you will generally see a smaller return on your investments than if you invested in other ways.

This means it is still worth it to buy homes for personal savings or for rental money here, but the idea of buying a house and selling it a few years later for some cash just doesn’t work. The only way “flipping” a house can work here is if you live in the house yourself and fix it up. When you sell the house to buy a new one, then there are special rules allowing you to keep your capital gains so that you can apply the principal to a new home for yourself.

Factual information in this post has been provided through the Federal Department of Justice and Police, Swissinfo and Buy a Holiday House in Switzerland.

If I’ve gotten something wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments. Everyone has a different answer for these types of questions in Switzerland and it’s sometimes hard to tell what is the truth.

Switzerland

Why is Switzerland so expensive?

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Lauren posed this question on my previous entry and it got me thinking: Why is Switzerland so expensive? Especially compared to all the European countries surrounding it?

After living here for a few years, I do have several suspicions why.

(Photo via socialjusticefirst)

First is that Switzerland IS an island of sorts… we are located in the middle of the EU, but not part of it. This makes a huge difference with import and export and VAT going between the different countries, especially if goods are made in one country, filled and assembled in another and then delivered and sold in another country.

The EU-island position also affects supply and demand on a local level as well. Many places online will ship everywhere in the EU but not to Switzerland. Try buying something on Ebay.de and asking them to ship it to Switzerland. No bueno. It’s why we had to ship our Tempur mattress to a town just over the border in Germany and then pick it up ourselves and pay customs tax going back into Switzerland.

The second reason this place is expensive is that minimum wage is much higher in Switzerland. Labor and services all cost more, so the actual prices of the products need to be able to sustain the salaries of the employees. Grocery store clerks earn around $25/hr for example. I’m pretty sure if all the cashiers at Krogers earned $25 an hour, the milk in Columbus would have to cost a little more. 😉

(Image via Blick.ch and an article about the plight of cashiers only earning 3700CHF – $3963 a month)

Restaurant prices seem exceedingly expensive here when a quick lunch can easily run you 20-30CHF and a proper dinner is minimum 50-100CHF. But if you think about how much it costs to import high quality food (Swiss are a bit picky about where food comes from and they have regulations), how much the rent of the restaurant costs ($$$) and that the waitress and cooks are all earning at least 30-35/CHF an hour, it’s not really a surprise. Still, that doesn’t stop Kay complaining in wonder how they can charge 50CHF for a steak entree.

Naturally with such a small country, even if the population is not very dense in some areas, the real estate is still ridiculous. Think San Fransisco. Rent is expensive and with many regulations on how and where you can build, there won’t be tons of sky scrapers popping up in Switzerland to alleviate the housing issue any time soon. That’s why areas like Zürich only have 0.06% free apartments and landlords can charge 4000CHF a month for a run down old flat.

(Personal photo)

Now in addition to the supply and demand restraints from the EU and the higher salaries people enjoy here, there is something even bigger that affects the cost of goods and services: Low taxes.

Let’s be honest, compared to many EU countries (Germany, Netherlands… I’m looking at you!) we do have pretty low taxes in Switzerland. The fact that they are so low is one of the reasons why taxes are such a big problem for Americans here. We are supposed to pay the difference to Uncle Sam what we’d pay in the States. The problem with that is that Uncle Sam doesn’t know that part of why the taxes are so low here are so that Swiss can use their own money to pay for health care, ridiculous rent, unbelievable grocery bills, more expensive restaurants, crazy priced clothing and everything else.

Basically, you could say that goods in Germany are much cheaper because overall German salaries are much lower and their taxes are much higher. They cannot afford to pay more. In Switzerland with low taxes and higher salaries, we make up the difference by paying out of pocket. In essence, they charge more because they can. But if you travel here, out of context everything looks absurdly expensive!

It’s interesting that IWC is able to price their watches much higher in Switzerland because the demand for them here is much higher than in the USA. They know that the Swiss population has money so they price accordingly.

After five years here, I still seem to have sticker shock when I think how much things cost in the US. I actually believe now that goods in the US have to be subsidized for the Americans or many families wouldn’t be able to afford everything they need. That’s why sometimes we see Swiss-produced fondue selling for less in America after export and Ikea products sometimes 1/2 what you would pay in Switzerland. It drives me nuts, but that’s the way it is.

This is why most German towns over the border are filled with Swiss cars doing their weekly shopping, but for many it is simply too much hassle to go to Germany every time you want to re-stock your pantry. And with the limits on how much meat, eggs, milk and so forth that you are allowed to bring in, it’s not worth it for us to go so we shop locally and I just ignore most of the prices on the receipt. 😉

What do you guys think about the pricing in America? Have you ever wondered why some things are so affordable? We Americans complain a lot about gas prices for instance, but they are so much lower than everywhere in Europe. What’s your take on that?

Switzerland

Sleeping in the Mountains

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With Street Parade coming up and summer coming to a close, Kay and I wanted to get out of Zürich for the weekend and spend a night in the Alps, so last Saturday morning we hopped on the train with our coffee and my bagged refrigerator oats at 6:30am and rode 2 hours towards Dallenwil to start an Alpine trail.

Mmm Mmm, baggie food. It was actually blueberry and goji berry refrigerator oats and it was tasty, despite looking like a bag of barf.

The train was also packed at 6:30am because we weren’t the only ones escaping Street Parade. Streets filled with smoke, thousands of people dancing in sweaty, embarrassing getups, trash, puke, foot and train traffic? No thanks. I’ll take the Alps over that any day.

I was gutted to find out that I forgot my walking sticks though. My magical walking sticks. It made hiking seem very, very slow… for me. Not for Kay, who was always about 500m or more ahead.

We had lots of cows on our trails, which meant watching out for fresh cow pies. But the cows were so cute and friendly!

Swiss cows are used to wanderers walking through their grounds and some of them even come over for pets. Apparently they like being scratched behind the ears… and they like licking salt off you too!

Mmmm, salty hikers!

It became a bit cloudy the more we were hiking, which is great for walking, but when we got to the top of our hills it was quite chilly after all the rain during the week.

And those blasted clouds started following us up on the hill and surrounding us in cloud every time we got to a peak damnit!

Still, it’s hard not to admire the beauty around you as you are walking.

When we got to the end of the pre-alpine trail, the alpine trail started up and it was actually fairly steep and scary. Sometimes on one side there would just be a big, rolling hill, but I kept my eyes on the path and kept going.

We also saw for the first time a sheep dog, which barked at us for 20 minutes while we took a bathroom break and tried to decide if the dog would bite us or not. We weren’t anywhere near the sheep, but we had to walk into the sheep dog’s area to pass.

Kay walked along the fence until it became too steep on the one side and the dog barked at him the whole time. I shushed the dog and told him to be quiet and then I crossed over the fence while the dog was by Kay. I was a little scared that he would come attack me since he was a very big dog, but almost as soon as I crossed the dog came halfway towards me and then lay down in the middle of the path and was quiet while I walked past him.

In order to travel light, Kay wanted me to try sleeping in a bivi bag for the first time so he could avoid carrying the tent and give us the opportunity to sleep in many places tents could not be set up. This is how we were able to settle on the location below for the night.

Bivi (or bivy) bags are basically water and windproof bags that you put your sleeping bag in for the night. It’s kind of like sleeping out in the open without a tent, except that you still have a sleeping mat and protection from the rain and wind. Sort of.

I say “sort of” because my bivi bag was cheaper material than Kay’s, so as soon as I was in it for the evening it was already forming condensation on the inside. Kay told me to sleep with the bivi bag unzipped, which helped a little… but I woke up in the middle of the night with a snail two inches from my face on the inside of my bivi bag. AHHH.

Whew. Aside from the snail and the sporadic claustrophobia feelings inside the bags, I slept OK. It was a pretty windy spot on the mountain and I got pretty cold at times at night, so at some points I did need to close the hood of my sleeping bag to cover all but my nose… and at other times I thought I would suffocate if I didn’t free my arms a little. But it was worth it to wake up in this setting:

In typical mountain settings, the ground warms up in the morning and the dew starts to evaporate into clouds that rise up and over the mountains. The only bad thing about all the condensation and dew is that all our packs had gotten fairly wet overnight. It was the biggest difference than sleeping in the tent where your pack is safely inside the tent, protected from dew.

But sometimes when I woke up at night with my face poking out of my sleeping bag, I got to see a sky full of stars that I’m not used to seeing in the city. It was magical!

We also had not found a water source before camping for the night and unfortunately, we ran out of water during breakfast the next morning. I had a mild panic attack as we started our 4 hour hike on Sunday with little to no water left in Kay’s pack.

I may have been desperate enough to be picking grass and licking the dew off of it. And leaves…. leaves that tasted strongly of chives. I was thirsty!

The hike the next day was not nearly as fun without my sticks and with such rocky, muddy paths going down the hill.

Below is basically what one of our paths looked like… and I was not impressed in my dehydration! A fellow wanderer told us this was the difference between a “walk” in the mountains and a “hike”. And he was right!

We made it to water eventually and then back home, but we didn’t get quite all the hiking done so Kay wants to head back to this region again for a day hike to get to the last peak with a lookout point over lake Luzern.

How do you feel about camping in the wilderness? Would you ever sleep in a bivi bag?

Switzerland

Happy Swiss National Day!

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Ok, this is a bit late because we were so busy yesterday celebrating. August 1st is the equivalent of Independence Day in Switzerland, so we invited Kay’s parents over for a traditional Swiss brunch.

We started Wednesday evening by preparing Zopf (traditional Swiss bread), rösti (Swiss potato pancakes), birchermüesli (fruit and muesli), coconut cake and cheesecake. I started my bread by beginning with a sponge:

Afterward I let the dough rise while I whipped up the cheesecake. While that was in the oven, I rolled out the Zopf and tried to braid it into a Swiss cross because Kay had sent me a cool Zopf picture earlier in the week that I wanted to replicate.

Once the Zopf was rolled out and rising, Kay began shredding his cooked potatoes for the rösti and chopping up fruits for the birchermüesli. I popped the Zopf in the oven and then ran around the house like a mad woman trying to clean it up enough to make it presentable for the in-laws’ first visit to the new place.

The Zopf turned out pretty well! But it’s a little more of an X shape than a cross shape. Oh well.


On the day of, we got out the cheeses and meats and stuck little Swiss flags in some of the food and hung up Swiss flag balloons. We are a very patriotic household. 😉

With the röst, eggs and bacon in addition to all this (and the cakes!) it was WAY too much food for four people. We were all completely stuffed after awhile.

The rösti with spring onions, chives and parsley, topped with an egg and a side of bacon.

And my mom’s cheesecake recipe, topped with red currants.

Mmmmm. After the brunch we were so stuffed that I passed out on the couch in a food coma.