https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-li...us-zurich.html
There is just the problem of needing to ship the boxes from Seattle myself, and not knowing to what address to send them until I have picked out some apartment in Zürich.
I can imagine several options:
Rely on a personal connection in Seattle to store my boxes and ship them once I know a destination address. I'd rather not have to do this.
Secure longer-term temporary accommodations from abroad. Sounds like this is possible (either a temporary furnished apartment, or a shared flat on e.g. wgzimmer.ch). I'd rather it be something I could tolerate for several months while looking for a permanent place, though, so I think I'd rather conduct this in person after I arrive.
Rely on new coworkers in Zürich to do the opposite of (1) (receive and store the packages, which I will later pick up). Really don't want to do this.
Pre-select a hotel or AirBnB where I can receive packages, and plan on staying there long enough to wait for all the packages to come in. I think this would work-- the hotel would handle my packages possibly for a small fee, and I could just stack up my boxes in my room (or leave them in their holding area if they allowed), and then deal with moving them locally in Zürich, first to my longer-term temporary flat once selected, and then finally to a permanent apartment. If one or more packages were delayed until after my stay in the hotel, that could be interesting, but probably they would just hold it for me as usual and I would just make a trip to pick it up.
Some sort of storage or moving company which could basically do the work of (1) or (3) as a service. For (3) It doesn't seem likely that a storage-only company would offer this, although maybe I could convince them as a courtesy or for an extra fee or something-- to just shove my boxes into a unit as they arrive. I did find a Zürich storage company that has this in their FAQ:
Ask my new company to help (like (3) but relying on another department instead of coworkers on my team). It is a good sized company so they might have the resources, but it is such an odd thing to request that it might require a personal favor from whoever would be coordinating it. I like to be self-sufficient outside of my job, so I don't like this option if it were even possible.
(4) seems like the best option to me. I will check with the individual hotel, but in theory I don't see any issues with this. If I went ahead with it, then the only puzzlement I still have is dealing with registration. If I understand correctly, the proper thing to do would be to register/de-register as I moved from address to address. Presumably my first registration upon landing would be okay for me to say I'm in a hotel and will be staying there until I find a temporary flat. I don't see any other issues with this plan, but for all I know I have overlooked some glaringly obvious thing.