Sorry if this has been answered many times before.
The situation is as follows: my wife has got a job in Geneva and I have recently been offered a job in Zurich.
My question is whether there are any place between zurich and geneva where we could live together and travel daily in opposite directions? Is this practical?
Some location that is 1.5 hrs either way on train track will be ideal. We will not like to drive (everyday) so fast train is our preferred option.
Do many people have similar situation like us and therefore commute between Geneva and Zurich?
it is possible but it will be really an effort. don't look at the practicality of commuting since you have the General Abonnement which can cover this (about 3000 CHF per year or 285 CHF per month). It would be even more difficult when you have kids (Elternabend, Family Emergencies, etc). Possibility is there but better look for job offers around the area.
Well there are def express trains from Bern to Zurich and to Geneva in the mornings and evenings. The only problem is you'll be commuting from a quiet city to the more exciting places in CH. And since you are both in different cities, it's not like you can enjoy each together after work before heading home.
I just did a check on SBB and it seems Neuchatel is more accurately half-way, also with express trains.
There is no way to live in Geneva or Zurich. The commute will kill. Its about 3 hours - ONE way - thats 6 hours of your life spent on a train daily. Live somewhere in between, like Bern, Lucern or Fribourg with direct train access. I know people who commute from Zürich to Bern or Basel daily for their jobs, about 3 hours in maximum but 6 hours is madness.
www.sbb.ch will tell you how much time it takes from one location to another, with accurate train timings.
The idea of living in between is more or less pointless and you won't be able to do it for long.
The alternative is to have the main address in Zuerich/Schwyz/Zug/Luzern/ (consider the tax implications here) and to have a second apartment for your wife to go to during the week so she can go to work without having to commute too far. For you living in the above mentioned cantons (other than Zuerich) you're going to have a 30min - 50 mins commute which is probably better than living in Bern or Nauchatel.
You can then either meet up in Zuerich or Geneva at the weekend and have two bases to explore Switzerland from.
That amount of travelling will not add to your quality of life even with the great transport system here.
Add to that the fact that you may be relocating to a country you don't know well (if that is the case...), perhaps planning to work/live in two cantons where maybe you don't speak the local language...
It is adding stress onto stress-apart from the strain of being so far apart from your spouse. If you are desperate-perhaps it's worth it, but if not...
Lucern isn't in between Zurich and Geneva if my sense of direction serves by the way!
...but it will mean extra rent and you can only see each other on weekends. How long can you keep that up for?
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but if the wife has an extra apartment in say, Geneva, and registers with the Gemeinde there, wouldnt she be taxed according to Geneva rates?
At least if you live together in between these two places, you get to see each other at the end of every work day and save money on the extra rent. I know which option I'll go for.
I might be wrong then, but going in the direction of the south-west, isnt it the kanton next to Zürich? then Bern? then Fribourg?
Ok, I commuted from Zurich to Bern for years... express train is an hour, door-to-door was in my case 1.40... on a good day. One way. Sounds possible, but can be a real pain over time. Plus: I lived in the interesting city and worked in the boring one. I would hate it the other way around. And you will be both doing the same stuff, so nobody will possibly be able to go to a supermarket during the week or similar banalities.
In short: I guess you should either move to zurich or Geneva and get a room in a shared apartment or similar in the other one - so only one of you has the trip, a place to sleep for example for three nights a week and comes home twice plus the weekend.
And which intercity train stops there? None. And you really do not want to commute this distance on an IR train. I once got on the wrong one by mistake...
I do a similar (slightly shorter) commute almost every day; Zurich to Lausanne. I work in Lausanne but live in Zurich. My situation is very similar to yours; my wife got a job in Zurich and I in Lausanne. Since we are both in finance/banking and jobs are not literally abundant ever since Lehman's collapse we opted to go ahead and accepted the jobs.
We did consider residing somewhere between Zurich and Lausanne. But since we have a small daughter and at least one of the parents has to be close to the kid in case of an emergency, we decided otherwise.
Zurich to Lausanne takes about 2h8m to 2h15min with 0 to 1 stepovers. Geneva would probably add another 35-45minutes to it. Particularly during winter, however, delays occur making catching the connecting train even more exciting (there is a usually 3-7minute interval between connections on this route (Bern/Biel being the changeover place))
If you decide to follow a similar decision to mine, be prepared to wake up very early to catch possibly the first train from your home to central station and for a late dinner back. And General Abonnement is definitely worth the price. I had to buy the 1year card since being new in the country I was not allowed to pay in arrears. And 1st class is definitely worth considering for such a long distance since evening trains can be quite packed particularly in Western Switzerland
Living in Neuchatel and commuting to Zurich would be like waking up every day in the '70s and commuting to the present, and of course visa versa in the evening.
However - i do work with someone who does Basle - Neuchatel everyday and he swears its ok.
I'm not expert on relationships (contrary to what my nickname suggests), but I dare say that it's possible to keep it up longer than commuting to geneva everyday, as that's a total of potentially 7 hours on the train, 8.5 at work + 8 hours of sleep if that! with the added tiredness and nagging factor that relationship will not last that long! you will peck each others heads and might as well live in seperate cities as suggested
That is correct if she registeres in Geneva, however it is possible for her to register in a different canton, work in Geneva, and also have an apartment in Geneva. You don't have to be registered in the same Kanton to have an appartment as far as I know, an even if you did you probably could choose which is your main home based on how long you stay there etc. Again I'm not an expert but I am aware that somepeople just have a "holding address" for tax purposes and live in a more exciting kanton and it's perfectly legal provided that you meet the requirements (which I'm not sure what they are).
This is true, however as pointed out above, I doubt you will have much time to see each other... and The extra rent isn't going to be that much more if you can find a place between CHF1000 and CHF2000 would probably work out better. and given a tax saving of around say CHF7000 each by living in a given kanton they will probably be able to achieve the same net salary if they were both living in Geneva or somewhere in between.