greetings everyone.

Welcome and Introductions
1
Grüzi or hello everyone.

I am new to the Forum and i am Hoping to find some input from people who are already living in Switzerland so I can get an idea what life is like in CH.

About us:

We are a German/English speaking family of four (our son is 4 and our daughter 7 months) and we live in Melbourne / Australia.

My husband is a paediatric specialist and has the opportunity to go to Switzerland.

I am a journalist/ PR expert (native tongue is German AND English) and I am looking into working again when living in CH. Currently I am at home, but I am also an author, so I have been busy with publishing. However, I would love to work in an office environment again.

Now - life in Australia is magnificent. It's very expensive (even for a doctor family!) , but we don't have an Aussie passport, so the are drawbacks to our life here. No Medicare, full daycare payment etc. And on top of all that, we have most of our aging family still in Europe. So traveling to Europe once or twice a year with two kids is NOT a joyride, let me tell you!

So we thought we take one of the job offers my husband has in Switzerland, at least for a few years, teach the kids what a real roman pizza tastes like, show them that "gothic" is an architectural style and not dark punk and travel a bit around the continent while sending them to school there.

Now my question is - WHERE is the best city in Switzerland for a big city girl like me (who obviously doesn't do clubbing anymore but in my heart, I still love the vibe )?

Now everyone will scream "Zurich"! But is it really the best city for a family? Or would we struggle to find a spacious home (we have a house with a garden now)? And kindergarten or schools?

How are cities like Bern or Basel? (Basel I somehow don't feel is right as if in Switzerland I want to be able to do a spur of the moment skiing trip on a weekend).

I am really struggling to find answers to where it would be best. I know we will probably earn a good salary, but from what I understand, housing is a killer.

How much do you have to earn to be really comfortable?

Ah soooooooo many questions! I can't wait to start my conversations with you.

Greetings from sunny Melbourne.

2
Welcome all!

3

Exciting times for your family! You are right that having relatives still on the Old Continent makes the travelling back and forth tedious, to say the least. Switzerland is a gorgeous country, but not without its flaws. You are correct in stating that affordable housing is an issue, browse immoscout24.ch or homegate.ch and you'll have an idea. The problem with housing is:

- The Swiss have the highest rental tenancy in Europe, so being a home owner is not the norm.

- The Swiss don't move that much, certainly if you have a nice big detached house in mind with a large garden, AND the proximity to a biggish town... it's not impossible but difficult to find.

- I like Bern (don't know Basel), but as a capital city, it is relatively quiet and very small compared to other European capitals... not a bad thing when you have kids. Geneva where I live is quite lively (by Swiss standards!), but that's due to its ambition to be like a capital city, its international status and 45% of its population being non-Swiss. It is French speaking but a lot of Anglo-Saxon families get by with little French, English being the unofficial second language here.

- You may need to compromise a large house with big garden and lots of space for something a bit smaller near a city if you want to make new friends more easily, keep the English going and be near "the vibe". Do bear in mind that the closest you are to a German border, the more likely you are to be exposed to "anti-German" remarks or attitudes (I am not saying that all the Swiss are like that, but on the ground, and as relayed in the media, this seems to be stronger near border territories)

- You need to do some research on health insurance here, allow about 1200-1500CHF/month for a family of 4.

- Finally, I think Switzerland feels like a very safe place and great to bring up children with the outdoor life a massive bonus.

Good luck with your decision(s)!

4

There are enough places for journalists here, in particular for bilingual English-German Speakers. For skiing, Basel is bad, Zürich a bit better, Bern clearly better and Luzern superb. In cases of all the cities, you may have to rent an Apartment in an outer Suburb to Keep costs under control. An outer Suburb here of course means a place less than 20 kms away from downtown

5
i wouldn't exclude basel only because it's a 2 hours car trip to go skiing, remember switzerland is small. weather is better, "international atmosphere" but also artistic and urbanite people, and the skyscraper craze has begun if you miss those. I think it should be cheaper too, and you can always go shopping in germany, but you can't expect to find cheap suburban houses like in australia or us that's for sure. If I were you i would visit all the cities.

I think pediatricians make very good money (more than GPs no?) and doctors have some perks for insurance and stuff, wouldn't worry too much about that.