“You can only regret the things you do”, my free-spirited mum had replied when I first floated the idea of packing up an established life in Wales and moving to a country I had never visited.
The opportunity to move to Switzerland came about due to my husband’s work for a (then) Swiss company. Over a decade or so, he had visited annually, become annoyingly (!) good at snowboarding, and always said he thought we’d like living there, should we ever have the chance.
Having never visited, Switzerland simply wasn’t on my radar. I remember thinking a move sounded great in principle – but it would probably never happen. Equally, though, I was proud of my husband’s enthusiasm to consider a completely new life challenge.
In the background, despite my initial reluctance to admit it, the hands of fate were very much at work. After having my first child, I had left a full-time role as a PR Director to go freelance. Not long after this, a position in Switzerland became available for my husband.
So, after several Zoom interviews and countless ‘are we actually doing this?’ conversations, we were packing a removal lorry to begin a new chapter in a pretty town called Aarau – with a toddler, a bulldog, and a second baby on the way.
“We’ll give it two years”, we assured family and friends as we said our goodbyes.
Fast forward two and a half years, with a third baby on the way, now seems an apt point to reflect on the journey so far.
Why Aarau? Pros and Cons of living outside the big “Expat” Cities in Switzerland.
We often get asked how we settled on living in Aarau. After all, most people we spoke to recommended living in Zurich. However, with a growing family, we were after as much space as our UK home, which we knew probably wouldn’t be realistic in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Someone recommended Aarau as a great place for families, just 25 minutes from Zurich, an hour from Bern and 45 minutes from Lucerne. We made that our goal and fell in love with the first apartment we viewed.
There are certainly pros and cons to living in a “more Swiss” area. Had we moved to one of the flagship cities, we’d have been plunged straight into an international English-speaking Expat community. While that initially might have been easier, it perhaps would have provided less incentive to learn German.
Naturally, building a community in a less international town has taken longer. You rarely hear English spoken on the streets of Aarau, and people often spot we are Brits a mile off – especially when they see my husband wearing shorts in March!
Moving here was absolutely the right choice for us, but I still find it a breath of fresh air when I visit the bigger cities and hear English spoken everywhere.
That said, Aarau is vibrant and beautiful and a brilliant base for exploring Switzerland. We’ve now built a really good network, of Swiss and international friends, in Aarau and neighbouring areas like Baden, Olten and Zurich.
Tough Settling in
The first six months to a year were difficult. It was initially a freezing cold winter and I was totally unprepared for how alien it would feel. I barely knew a soul, and I found the language barrier hard.
Adding to this, I was pregnant with my second child and transitioning into a new role as a mainly stay-at-home mum, with some reduced freelance work alongside. Introduce a global pandemic into the mix and, at times, I felt totally disconnected.
I can’t pinpoint when this dynamic started to shift, but as our first summer approached, I began to see Switzerland in all its jaw-dropping glory. I consciously tried to have a more positive mindset and appreciate the experience for what it was/is.
Finding My People in Switzerland
But what did help me settle in were my very first friends: my lovely Swiss neighbours. All with young children, they really couldn’t do enough to help me navigate the new systems—everything from finding doctors, telling me which supermarkets to shop at and everything in between.
A key takeaway for me in terms of making friends as an Expat in Switzerland is that you really can’t sit around expecting things to happen – although I definitely did plenty of that at the start.
I found if I was proactive and prepared to do things like unashamedly throwing myself at British strangers in a doctor’s surgery (she’s now a really good friend!), there was more of a chance to find people like me.
Overall though, I’ve also been on the receiving end of a lot of good luck and kindness. From Swiss friends offering to translate my birth plan into German and take care of my toddler when I was going into hospital to have my second baby, to handwritten notes left in my post box asking if I’d like to meet up.
Finding ‘your people’ certainly takes time (and is absolutely an ongoing process), but it can happen!
Grappling (swiss) German
Getting my head around the language has probably been my biggest challenge. There really is nothing more alienating than being in social situations and not being able to contribute a word.
What’s more, it’s pretty humbling to go from being someone with (I’d like to think!) relatively interesting life experiences and a story to tell – to basically a child again: only able to tell people where you’re from and where you live. While the majority of people speak good English and will switch if they see me struggling, I’m naturally expected to make an effort to speak German.
While I’ve spent the last six months learning relatively intensively and am currently midway through a B1 German course, it’s taken longer than I anticipated. And I feel fluency is a long way off.
But, with my eldest now nearing Kindergarten age and likely to enter the Swiss school system, the importance of mastering the language is definitely becoming more real, and will certainly factor into any decisions on how long we might stay long-term.
(For tips on learning German, check out past z’Nüni articles here and here.)
The future and lessons learnt on moving to Switzerland
While we’re unsure what the future holds, this experience has really shown me how to be content in the moment. In reflecting on the past few years, here are a few things I’ve taken from the experience of moving to Switzerland:
- Give it time! It took a long time to feel settled, and I still have days where I wonder what we’re doing here – so don’t expect integration to happen instantly. I have a friend from Manchester who’s lived here for more than 20 years, and even she says sometimes she has pangs for ‘home’.
- Use the experience to grow: In my experience, more often than not, new directions happen for a reason. Having the chance to step back from old norms can also open up new opportunities. Along with using this season to focus on my young family, for me this has been an opportunity to really consider what I want from life and a career in the long term. To that end, I’ve been able to pursue an opportunity as an evening online volunteer counsellor – something I’d never have had the time or headspace for previously.
- Moving from the philosophical to the practical: Be prepared to embrace a new way of living and make compromises. This will often mean, for example, embracing apartment living and probably compromising on space if you’re after a busy city setting. There really isn’t infinite space in a country like Switzerland, so take that into account and adjust your expectations from the outset!
- Focus on the positive: There are lots of daily annoyances that come from living in a new country (rules, culture, formalities, language, and sometimes a real lack of warmth from people which is hard for a chatty Brit!), but once you accept that negative experiences are a part of life wherever you live, it really is a privilege to live somewhere like Switzerland. From its natural, immaculate beauty, to the winter sports culture and summer badi seasons, the opportunities for high-quality life and amazing opportunities for kids and schooling – there’s an awful lot to fall in love with here.
In that sense, I can absolutely understand why so many come and never leave…
About the Author:
Anna Hartt originally hails from beautiful Wales where she spent the bulk of her childhood and early adult life, but she’s currently on a Swiss adventure with her husband and two (soon to be three) preschool-aged children. Formerly a PR Director, Anna currently splits her time between raising her young family, freelancing, counselling and trying to master Deutsch!
