Tom
Ironically, I've taken a liking to spaghetti westerns in the semi-original Italian!
Peg A I have enjoyed this thread very much. I am moving to CH with my Swiss hubby in July. He has lived away from CH for 13 years so is not quite as 'Swiss' as most of his friends and family and we have relocated to 4 different countries so he understands the process
HOWEVER
now he is simply going home he doesn't see that I still have to go through the immigration process. And we won't get any help from his company as we did in Asia and the USA.
I've bought 'Living and Working in Switzerland' and he sniggered at it... and when I address any concerns I have about anything he just shrugs it all off.....
I asked him to look at the CH authorities website to see what paperwork I needed to do etc and his reply was "there won't be any, you just turn up. You're European" I've managed to sort that out and know what I need to do now but I took a lot of nagging
I asked him to help me find a driving manual / lessons in English and he just laughed and said "its easy I'll teach you....."
I've tried on and off for the last 10 years to get him to help me learn German.... I can manage hello, goodbye and count to 10. His reply to my concerns is that it will be easy when I get there.
He suggested I get my paperwork in to apply for a passport and when I told him I needed to do that in the canton we will be living in he laughed and said just fill it out at my parents house and Dad will go and tell them to move it along....
On the other hand I am leaving complete responsibility for finding an apartment , arranging the furniture shipment/customs and importing 3 cars from the US entirely up to him - since its so easy
He does have some great friends and a lovely family so I am excited about that side of things however I do have random nightmares about being deported for having incorrect paperwork.
I think all you with Swiss spouses will see what I mean when I describe him as not being very Swiss !!! lol
This forum has been and will continue to be invaluable !! And I am looking froward to having my own friends to meet up with.
I'm thinking he might have a harder time adjusting to his own country than you will
Good luck.
Not sure why I remembered this quote that says " The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think."
Helps that I met my Suisse spouse in the US, I suppose...I'm lucky in many ways with my wife but the fact she traveled on her own, studied abroad and broadened her mind through these experiences has been very fortunate...She's less naive than perhaps the typical local Suisse and has navigated the unreal amount of bureaucracy in the US for just about anything
Best of all, when another Suisse person complains about something here, she reminds them it's far worse outside these borders for many of those very things
But having a Suisse spouse alone does not guarantee you an advantage, you have to be open to those changes here and navigating through a different world...No spouse or HR department is going to be able to undo a closed mind or unwillingness to adapt
It does, however, afford you a tremendous degree of insight into not only how things work but why...I'm a person who needs to understand the why of things...So sure, there are some things here I still struggle to quite understand why and many others that eventually make perfect sense
I think it's important to point out, as well, that it's not always easy for Suisse family to understand everything about a foreigner here either...A lot of my early hurdles here, I quickly realized weren't readily apparent to many of my family members...I affectionately think of the Suisse as a bit Little House on the Prairie , they often times only have a very faint understanding of the world that operates outside of these borders...I think many of their fears for me early on were that I'd become bored and want to return to the US...For them, they find that most Americans & Brits don't understand the way of life here...Coupled with a very different mentality/culture, they find that most of you have no desire to really integrate - to simply live a posh life apart from the locals...It isn't expressly put this way but I get a sense of 'They don't want to integrate, we won't bother them either'
As for speaking the language together, it's a question we revisit quite a bit...We try, even when we lived in the US, to have days or time periods where we tried to only speak French...It never worked or lasted long, truth is I think I did a better job of trying to do it than her...I've heard people say that you tend to continue to speak the language together that you first started with...I think our French together increases all the time but English is unquestionably the first language between us
FCBarca, I really liked your post, you make some excellent points, and bring up some of the hurdles/questions I face everyday. My OH is not Swiss, but has been here 15 years, has no intention of ever moving, and loves it. I struggle a bit more, but I must say that, in addition to my own Swiss friends, I have gotten some excellent insights from him (and his Swiss friends) about how things work - although I've had to do a lot of legwork myself, which I don't mind doing as I have done that quite a few times (why is it that, somehow, I am always a foreigner wherever I move? )
On the language question, I try to take advantage of the fact that he is a German speaker (and he encourages/pushes me on this one), but I will say that, because my level is still fairly limited, I still find it easier to speak English, the language we first spoke when we met, when we are having a serious conversation, or for matters where there is no room for doubts. He is fairly eager to learn my mother tongue as well, so sometimes the mix that comes out is quite interesting/entertaining!!!
This is VERY true!
We can be so lucky living in this country and don't even realize it! Trains on time, not too much violence, "working" politics, "working" economy and so on... we think it should be like that everywhere and when we find out it's not, we are surprised and arrogant about it...
And those bloody expats with the good jobs who don't even bother to integrate! (secretly I think we're just jealous)
I find this is part of what makes life wonderful, discovery...Navigating a new country/culture constantly reminds one that they've been pretty comfortable in their own cultural/country bubble for a long time...For us, we had decided even ahead of the move to Suisse that if we weren't ultimately happy here we'd try somewhere else in Europe, maybe Asia or somewhere else...We just knew we weren't going back to the US...Not so much because we disliked it so much but that there was so much more to discover in the world and time is short
I'm right there with you I'm sure you two have also created a new set of words from the mix of German & English as we have with Franglish...I love the word deĢconcentrer , it's much more precise than distract...My wife used that so regularly in the US that I stopped reminding her it wasn't English and adopted it in my English as well...Plus, she's misused some English words that are now an inside joke for us...Always entertaining...I think I'm most fascinated by her addiction to Seinfeld now (Although we're both BIG fans of English humour)...She said she had heard of it before traveling abroad here en Suisse but that she never 'got it' through the translation...Now that her English is quite strong, it's her series to watch to relax...She's dropping Seinfeldisms like it was the mid 90s, again like Suisse
That is true, actually in some cases it is easier to have an EU partner rather than a Swiss partner in CH in terms of official papers. I`m a US citizen and my husband is Italian and my work permit, marriage certificate and all my paper work was done ten times easier and friendlier by the Swiss authorities than our friends who have a Swiss partner with a non-EU citizenship.
That's purely attributable to the awesomeness of us Italians
(Tongue-in-cheek, but nonetheless I had to say it )
Yes, Italians are great, I love my new Italian family, when marrying an Italian you are always well fed, well dressed and life is always full of action, never a boring moment .
That's not really related to Switzerland per se. It's always easier to go to any other EU/EEA country with your non-EU spouse than it is to go to your own country. If you had been trying to move to Italy it would have been much more difficult. That's just a quirk in the way the treaty is set up.
I agree with the last post complety.
However, if one of you is Swiss and the other foreign sometimes the Swiss part simply cannot understand certain difficulties his/her spouse is having because for the Swiss part, this is all normal.
Salic??
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What Iāve observed as benefits of Swiss spouse:
- Grandparents around who are there for the kids. Esp. if they help with childcare - a major plus where both parents are working considering the astronomical costs of daycare
- A house - some colleagues have inherited a house or been given a house. Given the difficulties in finding accomodation, this is also a great help.
- A network - helpful both socially and professionally
A Swiss spouse can help with such things as job applications,insurance, contacts,officials etc etc. In short what they as a Swiss national should be able to help with.