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Gobble, gobble.

Sebastopol, CA - Happy turkey day! H and I are in Sebastopol, getting in a final hurrah with our families.

We are t minus seven days to departure. Chaos and confusion reign as we prepare to embark on our one-year European adventure. In one of our finer moments, Hannah - overwhelmed both by the enormity of the impending change to our lives and the amount of work still ahead of us - sat crying next to an open suitcase while Mike fumed over the inefficiency created by this moment of reflection and introspection.

The complications of moving to a idiosyncratic European country, protective of its culture and economy are numerous, but here are a few highlights:

  • There is no common language. Most Swiss speak German (~60%), but large numbers speak French, and Italian. Romansch is an official language spoken by <1%. Hannah and I are attempting to learn some standard German via duoLingo. This is slow going for three reasons: (1) we are busy/lazy, (2) the Germans appreciate linguistic complexity (there are eight different forms of our English article, 'the'), (3) the Swiss speak Swiss German, which is unavailable via duoLingo and mostly unintelligible to speakers of standard German. 
  • It took approximately four months to get a visa, a process that included about a dozen calls with both US and Swiss accountants and attorneys. We are (mostly) sure that we will not be in gross violation of Swiss tax and immigration laws.
  • The Swiss take Federalism to new levels. Our Swiss visa was issued by the Swiss canton of Zug, specifically, NOT the country of Switzerland broadly. The Zug canton is approximately the size of a US county and it does not include the nearby city of Zurich, where we want to live. This is important because we are expected to live and work in the canton that issued our visa and we must apply to move elsewhere.  
  • Flights to Zurich are outrageously expensive. Two airlines (Swiss Air and United) control the direct SFO-Zurich route and milk that duopoly for all it's worth. A one-way, economy ticket in early December costs $3,000 per person.
Photo courtesy of the local rafter of Albany turkeys. 

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Location: Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA

Comments

  1. JessicaDecember 2, 2019 at 1:20 AM

    I love how real comment #1 is :)
    Good luck!!! Excited to read future entries.

    ReplyDelete

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