Sorry, but I am not in Switzerland yet, and already am ticked off about how slow things seem to run.
I would like to hear your experience in Switzerland. My experience dealing with the government organisations has been a nightmare. They not only managed to misplace my documents, but several weeks after, complained that my working office addy in immigration document does not match HQ addy on the work contract and made my employer adjust this(even after we tried to explain that I will not be working at HQ). They made the company resend another contract with matching address, then it took several weeks for the person to look at our documents. After the person had a loook at them, they had the guts to come up with another excuse and asked for another document. The lawyer submitted everything requested before but this person sitting in Bern is incompetent in my opinion or acting like a bigshot. I am really ticked off. This could be completed in 30 minutes and not several months.
In my experience Swiss admin is very highly efficient indeed. Only issue I ever had was trying to get a complex tax ruling in July when everyone was on vacation.
Funniest experience was on first registering at the commune (albeit quite a small village) the lady said. "Ah yes Mr Templeman, welcome. Nice you are here, here are the forms already filled out, just sign her. By the way, can you call your neighbour Mr X, his heating runs off your boiler and the thermostat needs adjusting here is his number...."
Daniel
Not surprised you're popular and they're keen that you stay if you're providing the neighbours' heating .
Dont worry he paid for it.. it was a granny flat attached to the house we rented. Problem was he wanted 22c and we wanted 18c. The boiler was something else...1200 liter storage system for a 3 bedroom house.
D
Good to hear (not the boiler size!).
Shocked and awed was I, when first confronted the Swiss bureaucratic machine. But the winner of the bureaucratic-bastard award in my books is a swiss woman working in the Swiss embassy in Australia. Ok, I probably freaked her out by not following "standard" procedure when divorcing my swiss husband, (it was like when you tell a burger-place-worker that you want caramel AND chocolate sauce on your sunday.... It ́s completely possible but the request requires processing). She refused to do what had been requested of her (by the Kreise buro here in CH) just because she was upset that I ́d taken a short-cut in the process. In the end the swiss Kreise buro had to "improvise", ie pretend that certain doc ́s had been verified. I had had mixed emotions about this woman ranging from incredulocity to pissed-offedness, but in the end I felt kinda sorry for you. Knowing how much they love bureaucratic procedure and respect all forms of officialdom, Australia was probably not the best place to be taken seriously. "Respect my authorit-i"
I think you've been unlucky Mike. I've had a dozen dealings with the Swiss machine when arriving, getting permits, moving house etc and they've all gone like clockwork. Not a single problem.
However, I can imagine delays if there is even a single letter out of place on any of your forms. Some of the staff in these places could be described at best as inflexible and at worst as 'jobsworths', but you get these sort of people everywhere. Don't let this put you off Switzerland.
i agree with jonnyt. for me having EU/EFTA status, its much easier in total to get along. i dont had much mor stuff to deal with but some permits, which went very easy for me.
Tell me where there is no bureaucracy on this planet? Even to get a sim card for your mobile phone, you need to fill in forms .
I think people always try to complain when things don't go the way they want it.
Wish you good luck all the same and I hope your nightmare will end soon before you decide to live Switzerland .
Well it can be quite tricky here, but I've found that the people are usually farily flexible. If you haven't got the exact right document then often enough something else 'will do' or you can bring it 'next time'. Of course there are exceptions...
Now France and Germany. They're nightmares!
France, 1999: I need a carte de sejour. I need a student card to get a carte de sejour and I need a carte de sejour to get a student card. Visits were required to the mairie, the hotel de ville and the prefecture, each of which was open for about an hour every third wednesday of the month (that's an exageration). Queing for literally four or five hours in a squalid waiting room (that's not an exageration) just to be turned away because my birth certificate wasn't officially translated (how hrd can it be to understand?), etc, etc, etc.
Germany, 2004/5: Trying to get married in Brandenburg to my German fiancee. Had to go through a court case to confirm that I wasn't already married and that my future wife was not my sister and to decide how much I'd have to pay them for having decided that. They wouldn't accept my original payslip, so we had to go to Germany just to have the photocopy it, fold the corner over and put a stamp on it. Then it was acceptable. The list goes on and on, at one point the woman in charge shouted at my wife and told her that we should get married in another country.
So in relative terms, no it's not a nightmare in Switzerland.
I think at this point I would have given up lol. So how did you prove she was not your sister?
Well that was the hilarious thing. I didn't prove anything. Because we don't have the same kind of records as our continental cousins on these things I just had to swear it (hand on bible and all that) in front of the v. helpful lady at the consulate here in Zuerich. But then they had to have the court hearing in Germany to decide whether they believed me and how much it would cost.
Also they had to sling up the notice of marriage for three weeks so that anyone could object. It was in the consul's office, which none of my other wives were frankly very likely to passing through on the offchance as it were. The woman there was great. She was Swiss and had fantastic deadpan humour. She puts up the sign, on the third floor of this anonymous block in Zuerich, which you need an appointment to go into and so on. And she turns to me and serious as you like she says, "I'll put this up here for three weeks, and we'll see what happens." Classic.
I’ve lived here (Swiss romande) for 18 years and during that time I’ve built a house, dealt with a complex tax situation and pension arrangements etc. I’ve always found that dealing with the formalities has been very efficient and friendly. Yes, they do insist that everything is correct but there’s nothing wrong in that. They get it right and that’s how it should be.
Compared with the UK I find it so much better.
The only bureaucracy I hit was registering at the Gemeinde for the residence permit.
Couldn't get residence permit without health insurance, couldn't get health insurance without residence permit.
Eventualy the gemeinde conceded and gave me the permit, but I had to provide proof of insurance within 3 months.
That doesn't make any sense. I think there might have been a misunderstanding on yours or sombodies part.
As far as the time frame though, Everyone is given 3 months following arrival to submit proof of health insurance, which is mandatory.
I think it depends on the situation, some things are very easy and others are nerve wracking. I think all bureaucracies have their ups and downs.
There have been times since our move here that I have truly wished myself back in Bangkok, however, today my mood has lifted . I got the number plates for our car - all by myself I am dead chuffed. The woman in the office took about 3 minutes to do it all even taking into consideration my indecision about whether we needed long or rectangular ones for the rear. Fabulous woman, she'll be getting a Christmas card from me.
I don't want to sound like Pollyana, but our experience here has so far been very positive - to the extent that the Swiss have been more flexible than similar characters in the US and the Netherlands...
My husband was able to enter Switzerland on his Dutch passport. I had to get a visa from Atlanta, and once our permits had been approved in principle, I sent my passport to Atlanta and had it back in two days.
My husband arrived first in June, and it was about 4 weeks for him to get his settlement permit - there was some confusion in our small Gemeinde because it's not usual to get a C permit right off the bat, but if you are hired as a professor (ordinarius), you and your spouse are given C permits. That made our decision to come in the first place a lot easier - now I realize that it is indeed a very, very nice perk.
We were able to rent an apartment, however, before we had our settlement permits and we had in principle set up a bank account - once we had the forms that said we would be getting our permits, our bank account was opened officially.
I arrived about 6 weeks ago - it took 2 weeks for me to get my C permit once I went to the Gemeinde office.
The biggest hassle is getting a cell phone 0 my husband had to wait till he had his permit and used his US one till then. Big bill, ugh. - since I don't technically have a job in Switzerland, they want to give me a limited one, so my husband is going to get another phone on his account.
When the dog came (She flew in the day after I did), we did not have the right paperwork - although USDA vet had certified it properly it was the wrong form - the swiss site is confusing - but anyway, the guy in Zuerich let the pup in even though she didn't have quite the right paperwork. He was very nice. And I had to wait for my husband to get some cash, and so the guy in the customs office offered me a glass of water. Never had that in the US. Ok, it's a small thing, but people were pleasant.
In the US [/I] my husband had his green card interview the robot/interviewer (who was the same shade of grey as his office) waved his hand around the room and said "well, I can't stamp your passport today because we don't have your fingerprints - they're probably in one of these piles though" In the end we had to have our congressman contact the INS to have them contact the FBI for another set of fingerprints. That took 6 weeks. We could not ask the FBI ourselves. In the Netherlands, he once had to have his passport renewed and the people in the office (and this is in den Haag, not some backwater), refused to do it because he wouldn't produce his green card. He didn't have a green card - he had a work visa (H1b), and they didn't believe it because they'd never heard of any US visa other than a green card. That was a nightmare. Finally, we sent the supervisor a description of an H1b and they did the passport.
But I guess that my point is that Swiss bureaucracy isn't any worse than any other bureaucracy, and my experience has been that the staff workers don't seem to be bored and disengaged civil servants on a power trip (my observation in the US). But of course, I'm sure there are awful civil servants here just as everywhere else.
e.
I've lived in many places and must say that Switzerland has an extensive bureaucracy, but it is an efficient one. I've not found any faults in dealing with them until now. As an example: I recently changed kantons, and thus license plates for my car, I automatically got a restitution from my previous kanton for the taxes I paid "too much" for the rest of the year...I was flabbergasted, *wow*. Be glad you're not moving to Belgium mate, nightmare does not even begin to describe how they work over there, Murphy's law is dominant, everything can, must, and will absolutely go wrong in the worst way no matter what. This is probably the chief reason why I will never ever in a million years move back to that country. So OK the Swiss might like their bureaucracy, but at least it works...in my experience. I think you've just been unlucky.
My very firm answer is YES; YES; YES. The Swiss are Bureaucratic Freaks. They must have some built in genes that separate us them from us, the rest of the aliens on this planet.
I am a from Singapore, which many people consider 3rd world (for those who still think we are somewhere near China, I get those sometimes, still ). Singaporeans are world known to be real big pains. We want the best, we get upset when things are not free, when the food is not hot enough, when its not clean enough...everything. But hey, we don't make life hell for foregners who come to live with us or try to make a living. And at least the foreigners can set up their lives within 2 weeks of arriving with just some phone calls and not having to fill trails of documents and 'formulars', in languages we are expected to know (of course, in Singapore , we will excuse you if you dont write or speak our 4 main languages).
While I consider Switzerland to be more sane place to live than the other EU countries, the bureaucracy drove me to tears countless times over the years. The years here does not make it better. As each day and year pass, you just get more convinced of their pure stupidity, stubborness, rigid and senseless common sense.
Destiny brought me here. I was sent here for work, no choice really as you have to earn a living, then pure madness drove me to marry here, which does not help me now. I cannot leave unless my Czech husband decides to relocate as well. I still have my job, thankfully, my employers are extremely international. BUT IF WE HAD A CHOICE!! we will move.! He too is sick of this Swissness. After going through the hell hole of getting his wife through the Swiss red tapes more than several times!
And so my friend, if you had a choice, find your paradise elsewhere - where the neighbours don't say Grütsi to you one morning and pretend not to know you the next when he sees you on the tram. Believe me, he does not wnat to get know you. He is simply pissed if you drive a better car, wonder where you get the money from, wonder why you seem happier than he is or if your wife looks much better than his.
But then he knows all about you, when you come home and when you don't put a sticker on your garbage bag (he will surely ring the doorbell to tell you to do the right thing, not knowing the bag is not yet ready to be thrown). Then they ring the doorbell again to ask if you work at all, since you are barely in the door at 8 pm and they say they smell something awful that you might be cooking! If you are a lady, the women hates you and give you dirty looks (well, the rumour is the foreign women, and men, all marry for the passport and money...)
And the permits offices - they are all nightmares . They managed to loose my permits 2 times and want to make me pay for new ones when they lost them in the first place. If my Swiss-Germanspeaking-Swiss Passport -holder-husband did not intervene, I am sure I would still waiting for the permits to arrive. And they fined ME! for a mistake my employer made because I should know! My employer verified they were the ones who were at fault. But I still must pay!!! The ridiculous irrational , unbelievable and hedious care-less attitude of these administrators who love the fact that they could do whatever they want with us and we will just have to take it. It is simply to hard to describe the feeling when all these happen to you.
I could go on and on telling you the horrors of my life in Switzerland (as a single arriver and later as a married woman) due to the bureaucracies.
All the years I spent a a tax paying individual are not counted for. Now I hold a position as a wife of a Swiss! This really sucks. Now this is another entirely different animal altogether...enjoy the experience!!! If you still want to come....