An Expat Talks about Moving to Zug, Switzerland

What is the name of the city or town that you are reporting on?

Zug

Name three things that you wish you had brought and three you wish you had left at home.

Wish we'd brought:

* fabric (I sew and the selection here is very limited)

* large size bottles of toiletries especially body lotion and hand cream

* more children's books and comics

Wish we'd left:

* vases, ornaments and all other "dust catchers"

* phones

* piano!

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What advice would you give someone preparing to move to your area about the actual move, choosing a neighborhood and finding a home?

I would say - GET HELP! And if you don't feel comfy with the people your company gives you to help you, then find your own (we used Le Concierge in the end and are really glad we did). The whole thing is pretty personal and the first people we had were jsut interested in getting "bodies in spaces" in their jargon.

Also, ask as many questions as you can while you are on the area tour. We asked about everything from local politics to buying special food for our wheat-alergic baby and I am so glad we did while we were in the car with Peter or Nicki. It was amazing what they could just tell us from their own knowledge and it helped us so much.

Take a notepad with you and write everything down as it's not possible to remember so much information when everything is new.

Look at areas outside Zug as well as in it. The tax differences can be off-set by the housing prices. Our HR department didn't tell us this and at first we panicked when we saw the Zug prices!

What type of housing do you live in? Is this typical for most expats in your area?

We live in a house. It has 3 bedrooms and a garden. In the neighbourhood there are a mix of families Swiss and expats. Our children are small and we wnated them to miox with local children and learn the language early if posisble because we don't know how long we will stay here - it might be for a long time.

How did you choose your neighborhood and find your home or apartment?

We hooked up with a relocation service (NOT the only given to us by our company but one we found ourselves thankfully) and with them we toured the length and breadth canton Zug and also areas in canton Lucern and Zurich.

We picked a place outside of Zug because ther we could get a lovely house witha garden and in Zug the only places in our price range were to small.

Peter, from the relocaiton agency, went to a lot of trouble to get us information about the tax implications of living in different places and so we felt happy to live outside Zug.

Are your housing costs higher or lower than they were in your home country? What is the average cost of housing there?

I think the housing cost itself is about the same as the place we had in the UK. The place itself is a bit smaller though.

Furniture is quite cheap here we found - IKEA etc especially. We had a lot of help from the relocaiton team with this because we don't sepak any German - Peter drove us from shop to shop, we could order what we wanted and then he supervised it being installed before we moved in. This was an absolute godsend as I was pregnant and just couldn't have faced all that as well as the move.