-Doors in public buildings don’t always open outward. When leaving the market, post office or wherever, don’t hit the door at full speed if you like your current nose.
-Produce that’s sold by weight isn’t weighed at the cash register. You have to do this at the scale provided in the produce section and it will spit out a sticker with a price and a bar code.
-Markets don’t provide plastic shopping bags for free. You can buy reusable shopping bags the first time you are in the check out line. If you are like me, you can provide a good living for the people who make shopping bags by forgetting to bring them back and always having to buy more.
-Ikea has lunch for about 10 bucks with free refills on fountain drinks. This may possibly be the only free drink refill opportunity in the whole country.
-Shopping carts are not free. You have to insert a coin into the handle to unlock it from the rack. You may or may not get your coin back at the end of your shopping experience.
-Parking garages spit out a paper slip with magnetic strip on it upon entry. The payment kiosk, however, isn’t at the exit. It’s inside the store or at some other random location in the garage. Take the slip with you and pay the parking fee before getting back into your car, otherwise you can’t get out. This is not a time to make friends with the motorists in line behind you.
-It’s entirely possible that you will have to provide your own light fixtures when you move into your new crib. The landlord only has to provide a circuit and a bare bulb. You can go on the cheap at Ikea or the Migros DIY center.
-Fuel is sold by liters (duh) but near the borders it may also be sold in either francs or euros, even on the Swiss side. if you plan to pay in cash, get good at doing math in your head.
-People in Europe smoke...a lot... get used to it.
-Don’t pack like you’re moving to Mars, pretty much everything you can get at home, you can get here...for a price (disclaimer; okay, you can’t buy brown sugar or root beer, but pretty much anything else, really).
-Another disclaimer; If you have kids, and those kids have an xbox with wireless controllers, bring AA batteries...lot’s of them. If you run out of batteries, force the kids to read a book, because batteries are friggin' expensive.
-You probably don’t need a new power cord for your computer, phone, or whatever. Read the teeny print on the transformer. It will probably work over here with a simple plug adapter. Alternately you can put a new Swiss plug end on an American power strip and plug in all those chargers to the power strip.
-17 days to get a dryer delivered isn’t considered overly long. The phrase “runs like a Swiss watch” doesn’t mean that things happen fast, just that they happen the same way every time.
-Chicken McNuggets at McDonald’s cost as much as diamonds. Fake McNuggets from the frozen food section only cost as much as fake diamonds.
-Vanilla ice cream is half the cost of any other flavor
-You can get a prepaid cell phone with only a passport, but won’t get a contract without a residence permit. If you only have an L permit, be prepared to pay a monster up front deposit on said contract, as insurance against you skipping the country.
-It may be cheaper to write a check from an American bank and deposit it in your Swiss account than to wire money from the states, but the funds won’t be available for at least a couple of weeks.
-Personal checks are unheard of. You can pay bills by taking them to the post office and paying in cash. The post office will give you a receipt and transfer the money for you.
-If you are American and live in Geneva, it's assumed that you probably work for Proctor and Gamble.
-Your old American cookie sheets are probably too big to fit inside your new Swiss oven.
-The first few times you use public transportation you will buy the wrong ticket. I believe that in most cases there is no right ticket, only tickets that vary in degrees of “wrongness.”
-Mobile speeding ticket cameras are everywhere. There is no sign or advance warning. They reside in plain concrete boxes at the side of the road and have absolutely nothing to do with public safety. They exist for the sole purpose of catching you speeding.
-And finally: “But this isn’t how we do it at home!” doesn't accomplish anything. The fact is that you are not home. This is the way that they do it here, and here is where you are, so adapt, enjoy the experience and don't be afraid to laugh at yourself