Moving To Zurich with kids and need advice on...everything

Welcome and Introductions
1
Hi everyone,

Our family will be relocating from Cape Town to Zurich in about month or two. We don't speak German or French and we are very nervous about the move. Our biggest concerns are schools for our children and the cost of living in Switzerland. My husband will be earning a pretty decent rate as IT contractor, but we've heard that life in Switzerland can be very expensive. We've heard though that the Swiss tax system gives you a discounted tax rate if you are married with children, but can someone please tell us how much tax we will be paying as a family of 4. We found this tax chart , which suggests that we'll only paying around 11% in Zurich, but that seems to good to be true?!?

Our daughters are 4 and a half and 12 month old. What is the schools fees like? We might not be able to afford international schools, I think...the few we've looked at seem extremely expensive. I have read somewhere that Kindergardens are free, is that from 4 or 5 years old?

We are also concerned about how our oldest daughter will adapt at a new school without knowing the language. Are there any special programs which can help her to learn how to speak German/French? Does anybody have experience with bringing non German speaking children to Swiss schools?

We also need advice on which area to look for rental accommodation. Which areas are nice to live in and not too expensive, close to schools etc? We will be looking at 2-3 bedroom flat hopefully with a small garden as we'll be bringing our dog, a weimaraner, with us. We're quite happy to live a bit further out as long as there is decent public transport links

Many questions, I know, but we will appreciate any information you can offer.

Thank you for your help!

Maggie and Joey

2
Welcome!

We are a family of 5.

Here are some tips:

Use google maps to estimate travelling time between your husband's workplace and potential zones for an apartment. Around Zurich the areas with denser and newer housing would be oerlikon, glattbrugg, Baden, altstetten, thalwil, zollikerberg, kloten, Horgen, Meilen, kilchberg, kusnacht.

We live in Adliswil and it is very family friendly, with a peak hour train that Takes 16 minutes to the main train station, or every 20 minutes in non peak hours. The schools seem good and it is a more diverse area so you will find plenty of non-Swiss kids, compared to other areas.

For your daughter, she would probably go Into first kindergarten. Are you arriving before august? The school year starts in the second half of august. The kindergartens are usually small and local - walking distance for a 5 year old, and usually with no major roads to cross, or a good travel pathway.

I would budget about 15 percent for tax and deductions. You are taxed as a household. Plus health insurance. Compulsory, which for our family is about 750chf per month which includes slightly more than the basic.

Apartment wise, you are best advised to get familiar with www.homegate.ch and www.immoscout24.ch . it would be great if the employer can help you to find a suitable apartment, as it is difficult without local support. If you can find something under 2500chf per month with all your requirements, you are doing well. We managed to get something a lot less than that, but we were both resourceful and lucky!

Personally, I would not go too far out of the city, because I'm a city girl and love shopping and walking around town....and Zurich is a tiny city compared to what I am used to (Sydney metro).

The kids will do immersion in Swiss German at kindergarten. They pick up the language very quickly - do they also have experience with English and Afrikaans?

We made compromises as far as having a smaller and cheaper apartment, and no car, so that we have more money for travelling and child care costs.

If Adliswil is a good location for your husband in terms of commuting, then I'd be very willing to show you around. One of the advantages here is that we are the first 'Town' outside Zurich city, and has pretty much all the shops covered.

Even if an apartment is advertised as 'no pets' you may be able to ask if you are allowed your specific dog. They want to know that the dog is not too big, doesn't bark and is well trained. The dog rules here are very strict. You are not likely to find a fenced garden, so the dog would need to be 100 percent house trained and socialized to walk quietly on a lead and interact appropriately in public. People bring their dogs to restaurants or cafeĢs. At my workplace (kindergarten) the principal brings her golden retriever to work every day and it lives in her office and on a separate balcony away from the children, and is trained to non-respond when the children or parents go to the office. My husband's colleague brings her old dog to the classroom (primary school) and the kids take turns to take him for a walk every day (he's a small terrier).

Switzerland is a beautiful, safe, organized and calm place to live. Everything is in miniature, except the mountains!

We recently took a trip home to Australia, and my 12 year old noticed how big and open Australia is vs. Switzerland, and suddenly our apartment feels a lot smaller!

3
Welcome! I hope that the wealth of info on the forum will ease some of your fears. I don't have kids but the consensus seems to be that they are better off in the public school system and that there is ample support for kids who don't yet speak the language.

Swisspea is right - Adliswil has lots of English speakers. I hear them on the tram into town (there's a bus from Adliswil that takes you to the Tram #7 that goes right downtown.) We live in the outermost neighborhood before the city limits, Wollishofen. There are lots of families with kids here and a good community center with all kinds of activities for kids. Our neighbors have a two-year old who goes to Kita (daycare) near here and is very happy there. It is an English-speaking Kita although when I've seen the

staff out walking with a group of kids they seem to use both Swiss German and English. But that is a private Kita and I assume is paid out of pocket, unlike a kindergarden.

However, we do have a dog and most dog owners here do not usually have their own fenced-in area off of their apartments. Instead they take the dog to a local green area - I don't use the term park because there don't seem to be parks as such as there are in other countries. At least in Zurich, there are open areas around fields or up on hillsides or in the woods where you can take your dog. It's nice. Every neighborhood seems to have at least a couple of options and if your dog is well behaved then you can let him/her run around off leash. It takes a little bit more organization than just letting the pooch out the door to do his or her business but it is good for you and your kids and so much more fulfilling for the dog. My dog actually goes to work with me as well. He takes the bus and the tram like a trooper. He absolutely loves the fact that he can go into cafes and restaurants. I suspect he thinks Switzerland is like some kind of doggy heaven.

Today was warm and sunny and we hiked up over Uetliberg (Zurich's mountain) and down the other side to Bonstetten. It took about 3 hours with a break for a snack along the way. Absolutely beautiful walking through the woods and then down into farmland. And from Bonstetten we got a bus back into Zurich - all of 17 minutes and we waited maybe 10 minutes for the bus. The public transportation here has to be seen to be believed. The Swiss really do believe in making it possible for everyone (not just car owners) to enjoy nature.

4
Hi,

We've just arrived in Baden with young children. My 5yr old has gone into the local school with almost no German (just a few words and having watched some German kids t.v on the internet). His teacher can speak English and there is another English child there so he seems very happy. He gets extra German language lessons 3 times a week. My 4yr old will start kindergarten in August when he is 5. He goes to Speilgruppe a couple of times a week for now.

5
Don't be concerned about the move - Zurich is a lovely place! http://www.englishforum.ch/images/smilies/smile.gif

There's a great quality of life here with a beautiful lake and the mountains a short train ride or drive away.

There are plenty of English only speaking children in our local state school who are getting amazing language support for free from the local Gemeinde (town hall) I don't know about Kindergarten - but check with your local Gemeinde and they will be able to help you.

Again, http://homegate.ch and http://immoscout24.ch and http://www.ronorp.net/zurich_en/classifieds/all-ads are very useful for finding accommodation. Also of course, the English Forum.

Enjoy your stay in Zurich and good luck!

6
Some great advice posted here already. I just wanted to say/reinforce "don't be nervous". Zurich is a great safe, clean, quiet place to live. You'll love it.

7
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Hi Swisspea

We are a young family of 4 currently in Sydney, considering moving to CH.

We have not decided for sure where to go in Switzerland, but probably somewhere in the Swiss-french areas.

We have lots of concerns about the move; how the kids will cope in school especially when we don't speak the language, and worried about how we (adults) will adjust to the lifestyle.

So I was very happy to come across your post since you were from Sydney!

Could you share how your kids coped with the move, and with the local schooling. My kids, 2 boys, are 5 and 3 this year.

Are there public schools that offer subjects in English, or mainly french or german depending on where you are?

Also, coming from Sydney, what sort of lifestyle adjustment should we expect in Switzerland? We probably want to live just outside the city. We are currently in The Hills Shire district so about 40mins from Sydney CBD. Would life be too rural for us in the areas outside of big cities of Geneva or Zurich?

After the move, if we do, we'll be completely by ourselves without family nearby. That's also a big fear for us, wondering how and if we'd cope. Mind sharing your experience?

Hope to hear from you.

Sy