Lessons in moving

So admittedly I’ve been a bit radio silent lately. You could hardly blame me after the constant moving about of the last four weeks though. What a debacle. We’ve certainly learnt lessons along the way – and so you can profit from them, I’ve listed them in gory detail below – but the important thing is that we’ve finally moved into our permanent apartment, and don’t intend on moving anywhere for a rather long time!

Lesson #1: If you think you think you need to extend your sublease, then do so!
So our problems started when we realised that our new apartment (which is just that – brand new, therefore under construction) wasn’t going to be ready as soon as we’d hoped. We’d signed a lease in early February and were told we could probably move in mid/late March, although our lease, to be on the safe side, was dated from 1 April. Our sublease in Sticksville ran out on 21 March and we thought we’d probably be safe. Wrong. When we realised that we needed a place to stay for an extra week, thinking we could move in on 27 March, it was too late to extend our sublease.

So we had to move out and we spent the next week shifting between friends’ place in Nyon and a temporary sublease for a few days in Geneva. Then on the Thursday before we were due to move in, I got the bad news that it was pushed back by an extra week to 1 April, April Fool’s Day. I wish it had been a joke. It wasn’t.

Not able to stay where we were, we had no choice but to find a hotel for the week, an expensive prospect to say the least. After an ultimately fruitless search in which neither the web, asking in hotels directly, or just asking at the tourist office – where we discovered there was not a hotel room in Geneva to be had for love nor (anything less than an exorbitant amount of) money – we gave up and headed for Lausanne for three nights, before finding a bed in Geneva for the last two before finally moving in. Glad to be in our own place at last, but the fun had only just begun.

Lesson #2: Don’t buy IKEA furniture in bulk
Of course, a brand new apartment is usually unfurnished, so we needed furniture. Ergo, like any good expat in Switzerland who needs furniture, we took ourselves off on a trip to IKEA.

To kit out our apartment, we needed to buy up big. BIG mistake. I love IKEA and - most of the time - their furniture. I have this mild obsession with anything Scandinavian, so usually that's enough to ensure my favour - the price, functionality and design is a bonus.

But good things need to come in small doses. I've spent the better part of the last 10 days on the floor putting things together - dining table, chairs, tv cabinet, lamp, bedside table, bed, bathroom cabinet, and joy of joys, a Manstad fold out sofa. We usually don't have problems putting together IKEA stuff, but this sofa is proving to be a nightmare.

You can have the chaise lounge left or right; they provide the instructions for first right, then left. We've chosen to put ours on the left, so it's meant that a couple of times we've put bolts on the wrong side and had to take them out again because we've looked at the right-side instructions first, which are wrong.

Then there's the end part which we're supposed to fasten to the seat, but the part in the hole that the screw goes into fell into the end part, rendering it useless. We took another trip to IKEA to get a replacement part, but that hasn't worked either, so we now have a half-finished sofa lying in pieces all over the living room. After two phone calls and two more visits to IKEA, it’s still not fixed. I’m not impressed at the lack of Swissifficiency (a hack word of Swiss + efficiency that I’m claiming I coined). I love IKEA but I've learnt a good lesson - don't buy it and put it together in bulk!

Lesson #3: Be prepared to fit your apartment out with just about everything – except the kitchen sink
So the above may be a slight exaggeration, but I was nonetheless startled to find that we need to fit our own light fittings in our new place, plus things like curtains. I thought the bare light bulbs (or no light bulbs, in the case of the kitchen) were going to be replaced, but it turns out that if you rent an apartment, you often have to bring or buy your own light fittings and curtains, etc. Each to their own, but I was a little surprised; that’s just not The Done Thing at home in Australia.

View from my new apartment - Alps
in the distance!

Lesson #4: Be prepared to sit back and allow your amazing surroundings to sink in
After all the hassles and stress, it’s important to stop for a moment and let things sink in. A couple of days after moving in, I stopped for lunch out on the balcony. It was gloriously sunny and (for early April) ridiculously warm. I was finally in my new apartment – it dawned on me that I won’t have to move again for a very long time. It’s brand new, so it’s a blank canvas, complete with shiny new kitchen toys, including a dishwasher (hello Empress Eats blog!). And then I looked up – and saw the French Alps, rising above Lake Geneva. No matter how long we live here, I don’t think that’s something I’ll ever get tired of.

Home sweet home is… the first place you’re offered

Anyone reading this who is Swiss or an expat living in Switzerland might be mildly surprised I haven’t blogged on this topic before – housing. I read an article recently that said housing was the number one area of concern for expats, beating security and transport. Then I read another article that said Geneva was ranked the tenth most expensive city in the world for expats to rent. I’m only surprised it wasn’t higher up the list. A decent one bedroom apartment in Geneva costs CHF2000 a month. At least. That’s CHF500 a week. And that’s just an okay apartment in an okay neighbourhood. Then a lot of owners want three months’ rent upfront as a security deposit. If your apartment is CHF2000 a month, then that’s CHF6000 you have to find. No wonder people worry about it.

I found very early on, in my research before leaving Australia, that housing in Switzerland – and in Geneva, especially – is both difficult to find and very expensive. This was only reinforced on day one at work. On my first day, I met a lot of people whose names I couldn’t (and some of them, still can’t) remember, plus a lot of other details that very quickly went out the window. But one thing stuck – the typical conversation I had with most people on meeting them. It went something like this:

Them: Nice to meet you. It’s great to have you on board.
Me: Oh, thanks, nice to meet you too. I’m really glad to be here.
Them: Where are you from?
Me: I’m from Australia; Perth to be exact.
Them: Australia? That’s great, I love Australia.
Me: Thanks. I think Switzerland will be great.
Them: So… have you found a place to live yet?
Me: Er, no – I arrived only four days ago.
Them: Oh, okay. Well, good luck with finding a place. Housing here is pretty expensive and hard to find.
Me: Oh, er, thanks for the tip (and after having this conversation five times)… I’m beginning to get that idea.

And they weren’t kidding. I’ve read that other expats, if they ‘go it alone’, can take up to three months to find a place. Emperor D and I decided before we left that we would take the easy (read, more expensive) route and hire a relocation agent. They are people who deal with mostly expats to help them find cars, schools for kids, etc, but especially a place to live.

When we arrived we stayed in a hotel for two weeks, then moved to a sublease for two months (where we’re still currently staying) just outside a village I’ve nicknamed Sticksville. Two weeks after arriving, we found a town just outside of Geneva, called Nyon, that we wanted to live in, and hired a local relocation agent. He did the job. After two weeks of meeting him and giving him our requirements, we signed a lease on a brand new apartment, seven minutes’ walk from the train station. It won’t be ready until later this month – and we can’t wait – but we’ve had a few sidesteps along the way.

We also found a sublease in Geneva that was literally next door to where I work. I could’ve rolled out of bed and had the world’s shortest commute. Things were very positive and we were looking good for getting that place, until we heard we’d missed out because the current tenant found that one of the people who applied had a workmate/friend in common. It’s not unusual for an apartment viewing to have 20 people show up.

But it seems ‘who you know’ is a common theme. A South African couple we’ve become friends with after they moved to Geneva and she started work the week after me, found their rent-so-cheap-it-must-be-too-good-to-be-true apartment through a friend of a friend after less than two weeks. Needless to say, I was a bit envious. I have a close friend here – actually more like family; my host sister – who lives less than two hours’ drive away and even works in real estate for expats. She couldn’t help us much because she doesn’t know the area and doesn’t know anyone here.

Then we found a place in Nyon that is bigger, cheaper and only two minutes’ walk from the train station, and on the ‘right side of the tracks’, that we thought was great. We saw it, applied for it, but it’s since become a little complicated. Although compared to other expats we’ve had it rather easy, we’ve now got to that point where we’re saying ‘home sweet home is the first place that’s accepted us’. And that’s fine. It’s a brand new apartment and, in a few weeks, we’ll be living there. We can’t wait. But watch out for blogs on the joys of moving and IKEA furniture buying!