As I mentioned before, I am planning to move to Ticino in few months. I would like to get some information about it first, though...Does anyone of you live there? What do you thik about the Canton? Is it totally cut-off the rest of the country, due to a kind of linguistic isolation or, on the contrary, is it a crucial zone for the country, as being a connection point to Italy? I really hope to start a constructive and rich discussion with all of you out there...Thanks for your attention, bye!
Hello there!
it's a traffic bottleneck starting at the Gottardo and finishing at Chiasso. Also Lugano has a wonderful one-way system....you'll know when you're trapped in there.
It's not seen as a crucial zone to be honest but the TI government have been offering tax breaks to businesses setting up there.
There are a few members down there; you'll have an advantage over them in that you parla italiano....
Oh and it's traditional for the locals to hate those from Svizzera-Tedesca
I guess the "traditional hate" towards Swiss Germans by Swiss Italians is due to the widespread use of CH-German that cannot be learned at school. I often visit Canton Zurich and I am trying somehow to learn standard German...but visiting Canton Zurich makes no use for me...it is completely impossible to understand Swiss German. I was very surprised to notice that many TV programmes in SF are in Swiss German too (even the Weather Forecasts).
Italian seems to be very much an afterthought here in Switzerland. For example, this is the big message that you get when trying to buy something off Dell.ch...
Bitte beachten Sie: Bitte beachten Sie: Deutsch ist als Sprache vorausgewählt. Wenn Sie die Sprache in Französisch auswählen erhalten Sie eine Fehlermeldung. Diese Erinnerung wird Sie darauf hinweisen, dass Sie ebenfalls die Sprache für die Software, Sicherheitssoftware & System Dokumentations-Modulen anpassen müssen.Bitte rufen Sie uns unter 0848 33 55 88 an, sofern sie Ihr Betriebssystem oder andere Software auf Englisch, Italienisch oder in einer anderen Sprache bestellen wollen.
ie the default language for their new computers is German, you'll get an error message if you want French, and anything "special" such as English or Italian you will need to ring up for especially...
I love the Ticino as a holiday place but not sure I'd want to live there. My Ex had a home down there and it was lovely to have the Italian feeling whilst getting the Swiss plumbing not to mention the Italian coffee at Swiss prices
It's quite a sleepy Canton, with many German and Swiss-German pensioners. This causes land prices to be unrealistically high for many younger locals. Also means the shops, culture etc tends to cater for the wrinklies, which can make it feel provincial.
Great for sailing, hiking, in fact most sports.
Personally, unless you have business in mind, I'd stay in Italy! Oh, and it might be good to pick up some Russian: the place is crawling with high-maintenance women and overweight men with bad haircuts - but enough of the Germans, there are many Russians there too.
I wonder why...
Ticino is closely aligned to the Swiss-German part of the country, politically, particularly when it comes to EU matters. It's a strange little place, due to my Italian origins on the side of my mother (who hails from Valtellina), I do understand their dialect pretty well and the mountain people mentality of the upper part of the country is very similar to other alpine areas in Italy, no-nonsense people which is what you get when you live surrounded by huge block of rocks that have been there for million of years
We've been in Ticino since the beginning of January, and my evaluation is that the canton is just sort of waiting for this whole "nations" thing to fall out of favor again so it can go back to being a city-state.
The city is fairly welcoming, and we've found that making the effort to learn and speak Italian goes a long way. Our experience has been quite good. That said, my partner is Italian-looking, and I'm sort of unidentifiable-European; we have a friend who is an attractive Russian woman (though she's an American citizen) and she has had a somewhat harder time of it, particularly with certain types of people who seem to treat her like a "working girl".
It is quite isolated from the rest of the country; in many ways it "faces south" culturally, and there are a _lot_ of people who work here and live in Varese, Como, Ponte Tresa, etc. I bet half of the license plates on the cars are Italian. It's also a little different in other ways - I think it was one of the only large cantons where the cassamalati unica (federalized health insurance) vote was pretty much evenly divided.
We have other friends who aren't as happy with Lugano, finding it sort of provincial and dull - maybe we're just dull people but we like it just fine. It's nice that we can live in what feels like a big city but can walk 5 minutes and find people keeping goats and chickens.
The one big downside is transit connectivity - it takes 5+ hours to get to Geneva or 3+ to get to Zurich by train, though Milano is only a little over an hour.
The other thing to watch out for is that there's a bit of an isolationist movement here - every day on the way to and from work I pass a huge sign encouraging people to vote for "Jobs for Ticinesi first!" (not sure how that would be different than the current law), and I've talked to people who have had a really hard time with the immigration authorities. It sort of makes me think of the craziness in the US with the Minutemen, but hopefully Swiss level-headedness will prevail and we won't see gangs of armed racists patrolling the borders like we had in California.
So yes, I think the "outskirts of the country" is a good way to describe it, though the outskirts of which country I'm not quite sure. But we have enjoyed our stay here so far, other than the whole permit mess.
hey I love Ticino....lived there for 5 years, currently in bern but have plans to return as soon as my training is over.....
This is not particular to Ticino, Bern is dreadful. Any single Eastern European is automatically judged as "being on the game" & spoken to accordingly.
hello alessione
Ticino is not going to be like Zürich or Geneva. The biggest City is Lugano and Lugano is small...i should say it's quaint. a litte less expensive in comparison to Zürich etc...
outskirt...I wouldn't say so...
Hi,
I've lived in Lugano for 1 year during my studies (YES! they have a University) Personally, I think it's very separated from all other parts of Switzerland by its culture, mentality, etc. It's a perfect place for retirement but if you're young and have energy to waste in bars and clubs, go to Milano.
Winters are terrible, you feel dead or in prison. Locals are difficult to get along with, but when you do, you start enjoying the place.
hey, dude!! thanks for the advice...but I like small cities and yes, I will attend THAT university!!...then half of my heart (if you know what I mean) lives in Switzerland and it's the nearest university to her that I could attend...so I hope that I'll have something to do in cold winters...
HC Lugano should do the trick chap
cool dude! have fun then
P.S. romantic tip: there's a cool restaurant on top of monte Bre, beautiful scenario, take her there.