Tag Archives: Swiss

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

Braunwald 2013

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On our second weekend in the new flat, we headed back to Braunwald again to try out my birthday present – climbing gear – and went to do some via ferrata climbing.

Below is the start of the short hike from the Braunwald station up to the start of the via ferrata.

I was having some trouble at the start… my newish climbing sticks were having trouble staying open and my point and shoot wasn’t taking pictures on my SD card, so I ended up using the iphone, which was a bit of a pain while climbing.

And while we started without a cloud in the sky, I joked to Kay that when we got to the top we’d be covered in fog/clouds. Well lookie here!

*Shakes fist at mountain* Why?? Every time! Sigh.

At least these clouds were coming and going, but you could see as the day warmed up that air was pressing up from the valley and wrapping around the mountains.

It actually made for nice climbing though. When the sun was out it got a bit too hot, but when a cloud would encompass you, you would be covered in a nice cool mist. It was very refreshing!

Mind you, I was only taking pictures with the iPhone during the non-scary, stable-footing areas. So if you think any of these are scary, imagine what I was doing when I was too nervous to take the phone out for fear of dropping it!

It was actually right before this shot below when we started the red-line (intermediate) trail that there was a part Kay said was a bit “tricky”. Well, apparently tricky to Swiss = freaky to non-Swiss. It was just a little overhang wraparound that had some “tricky” footing and nothing really below it besides a huge drop, so I had some panic moments as I struggled to overcome my fear and find the footing around it.

Of course with via ferrata, you are hooked in the whole time with your two clips, but still… I didn’t necessarily want to fall 10m and hang by some rope and wire with no real footing to recover. That would have freaked me the eff out.

Actually we took a look at the start of the black trail (expert) and I decided that it would be too difficult for me that day, but on the descent we started hearing screams from the black trail. It sounded like a woman screaming for her life, but Kay thought it was a little boy who was climbing with an older man we saw.

Still, it is very disconcerting to hear shrieking echoing around the mountains! It really sounded like whoever it was, they were having a hysterical breakdown.

“Are you OK?” asked my sweet husband intermittently. Usually he asked during times when I was in fact pretty scared and trying to keep going.

Or maybe I was just taking a picture break. 🙂

Those white patches in the back are actually snow. Normally I think the snow is all gone at this level, but we had a really terrible spring and late start to summer, so there was still a fair amount of snow around the top, but not on the trails.

By the way, can you tell that I totally picked out the same helmet as Kay? Matchy matchy. He hates it. 🙂

Panorama view at the top of the red trail, where we decided to have lunch in a nice grassy area.

The way down was fairly steep and there was not so much to grab on to… we actually had to hold onto the wire a fair amount which made Kay nervous. At the very end there was something like a a 30m/100ft ladder to climb down, also suspended over basically nothing, where at the end you would climb to the left and further down. Descending that was also pretty freaky, although less so than the other area because at least on a ladder I know where to put my feet!

Then we hiked back to the cable lift and rode down with these beautiful views.

I love the mountains! Why don’t we visit them more often?

There was also a magical waterfall on the way down. I could almost get used to living up here if it wasn’t so far away from reality.

For now I think we’ve agreed that we should try out some more red lines before I attempt a black line. I’m sure Kay would be fine, but the look of the start of the trail made me nervous. Another day!

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Neubau Progress: VIII

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After Kay’s visit with the tile guy at the beginning of February, we waited a long time until we went to the flat again.

We never received updated bathroom plans and many of the details were wrong or outdated, so by March I was starting to worry about where I would reach for my toilet paper while sat on my throne. Like, lay awake at night and worry how hard it will be to reach the loo paper kind of worrying.

Luckily Kay called and was able to set up an appointment at the end of April to come be super anal and decide exactly where my toilet paper holder goes among other things. I was very excited to see the flat for the first time since installing the floors, tiles, kitchen cabinets… practically everything!

Guest bathroom.

No doors in the shower yet, but it was exciting to see our bathroom cabinet there. Yes, I opened it to test it out. 🙂

Guest bedroom:

Not much changed in here. The floors were all covered up with paper to protect them.

The fuse box in the hallway.

The reduit (pantry) where you can see the uncovered, albeit, dirty wood floors. Looks like we’ll have cleaning to do when we move in!

From the living room out onto the balcony where we saw they are now installing our tiles.

Kay surveys the living room… checking out that kitchen hole again!

Sockets were in, but not mounted.

Some things like the temperature control were already installed though. This is in the kitchen, right where I sort of wanted to put a bar table. I guess it won’t really work if there’s a light switch in the way. :/

And our beloved kitchen hole. Still there. (Not impressed.)

At this point, Kay alerted the local fire brigade about the problem so they could come in and check it out. The contractor promised it will still be fixed, but I was happy knowing that a third party was checking it out. They had better fix it!

But how exciting, our kitchen!

The floor was not in yet, nor the tiles on the walls… but I was very happy to see the new granite and white cabinets. 🙂

And of course, our new fancy sink! Looking good! I’m almost excited to wash large pans in here.

Trash system not installed below the sink yet:

Our kitchen drawers. Squee!

And a view to the balcony with our tiles coming along. We didn’t get to choose the outside tiles, but I think they’ll be just fine.

Another of the living/dining room from the other side.

Temperature controls in the living room:

Our bedroom:

We also found that they had installed the hallway closets, but there was this weird gap in the wall where our outlet is. We need access to the outlet from the closet because Kay plans on sticking all our routers and internet stuff in there, so if they don’t sort out this problem, we’ve spend hundreds on a worthless outlet!

(To the left you see the outlet hole and to the right is the side of the built-in-wardrobe…)

And inside the wardrobes I was surprised to see shelves and rods!

Yay, storage! I’m going to enjoy it, because we sure as heck aren’t going to have wardrobes in our bedroom when we move in. I’ll have to wait for those… 🙁

Whelp, at this point I got distracted by talking with the worker about where exactly to install our bathroom components, so I didn’t actually take any pictures of that. But rest assured, we put everything in sensible places. I decided not to have the toilet paper roll mounted on the wall behind the toilet because that drives me nuts, so we’ll either glue it to the side of the bathroom cabinet or use a freestanding toilet paper holder.

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Neubau Progress: VI

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When we got back from the States after Christmas and New Year, we tried to visit the flat that first weekend only to find out they had finally locked our building with semi-permanent doors. Oh noes! How would we see progress after this point??

Well… are sneaky. We headed back the second weekend in January with the plan of climbing the scaffolding to our balcony. From there we could still enter our flat via the balcony doors, but it was likely that it would be one of the last times we could freely enter the flat on the weekend during construction.

We noticed several holes this time… like this disturbing cutout near the entrance to the kitchen. What are they doing in there??

And this even scarier hole in the ceiling and floor of the kitchen. It looked like they had completely forgotten to build in a utilities shaft in the kitchen in 3 different apartment layouts through all five floors! They only found out their huge mistake when they started installing the kitchen cabinets and appliances in other flats and realized something was missing. Ridiculous!!!

Thankfully we are one of the last flats to be finished so they had delivered our kitchen cabinets and appliances but they hadn’t started installing them yet. To cut through the concrete they need to do it with water, and if you already have your appliances with their electric parts installed, this can only spell big trouble later on. The whole ordeal was really disconcerting.

But hey… look who finally remembered our extra sockets in the kitchen??

As you can see, the delivery of the cabinets and appliances is why all the flats are locked now, which I can’t say bothers me. I don’t want anyone stealing my oven!

Not much changed in the bathrooms since we last visited.

Not much changed in the bedrooms either…

Our bathtub did seem to have more crap dumped in it though. It looked like they were preparing to install the toilets.

Here in the master bath you can see the hot and cold water taps in our double sink as well as the piping for the sink drain. The where the mirror will be mounted will also have a little ledge behind the sink area.

From the bathroom looking to the french balcony…

The only thing really scary was that giant hole they drilled through all the apartment floors. What kind of company forgets to put a utilities shaft in? That’s a pretty big mistake. Below you can see the texture from drilling with the water jets.

Hello down there! (That’ll be office/business space below.) Let’s hope they close that up properly!

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