Hi there
 

Haven't been here for a while. How's things?


I've been living in Switzerland for almost 2 months now, so far it's been a blast. Such a great tiny country with relaxed pace of life.

What's new with y'all?

Hey there Slavo! I'm glad you're having fun over there.

More or less the same for me, except that I'm making progress with gender stuff at school. Also, my family is going on holiday later this month :D

Hi Claire

What kind of progress with gender stuff are you doing at school?

yahoo mail is down and slavo is back. I wonder if those two are connected in any way?


for the rest I'm the burnout bitch, started taking antidepressives two days ago, hopefully it will start working some day soon ...


how is life in Switzerland, is it as expensive as people say it is?

@ slavo

oh, im so glad you’re liking it. congrats!

do tell more

@ tunic

hang in there. they will kick in...

I made them go out of business because I'm a bad mofo and now I'm hiding here. Because, this is, you know, a safe place.





oh, that's bad, my brother. Burnout from work, I presume? Must be bad when you're on antidepressants. My wife had a burnout a couple of years ago and it was quite bad.







It depends. Some things are insanely expensive (having a lunch out is 15-30 CHF, which is equal to cca 12-27 EUR), having a beer in a restaurant is cca 7-8 EUR, but what is REALLY expensive is housing - I have now only one room in a flat and I pay cca 1000 EUR a month for it. Insane, isn't it?
But on the other hand, some things are cheap (like groceries, petrol or public transport, etc.). So, if you cook for yourself on weekends and don't go out too often, you can save a shitload of money, because, yes, the salaries are insanely high as well here.



I'm just a bit scared what happens when my family comes here, because this will increase the expenses to a whole new level.

first of all, dude, I hope you realize that you have quite a high chunk of responsibility for me actually gathering enough courage to come up here and try this thing out, right? Because I remember you how you were telling me to go for it (well, not literally, but you know what I mean). You deserve a lot of credit.


It's beautiful here, no exaggeration. Zurich is small (300k people), ecological (not too many cars, people preferring to use bikes and trams/trains), quite hip (many cafes, handcraft shops, museum, concert venues), and very close to beautiful nature.


The other thing is that some things are just absurdly awkward and clumsy here - for example I've been trying for 5 weeks already to set up health insurance here and I still haven't managed to sign a contract with an insurance company. In these cases, I feel that even a country like Slovakia is light years ahead of this country.



People are quite reserved (some say that it's hard to make a Swiss friend sooner than in 10 years horizon) but very polite. And I couldn't care less, when most of my co-workers are from Poland, Hungary and Latvia :D


I'm happy here. The job will be tough later on and I will see if I manage it fully, but overall, the living standard is extremly high here. I'd be happy if I could settle down here with my family.

yes haha. well i remember you were stressed out in your job, having reached your limits, with unavailable colleagues, questions about the future, etc.

im a bit of a lifelong nomad (just moved again, lol, to a city, it’s great) so i know changing environments is not as scary as what people make it. the act of moving house, yes, it’s a goddamn plague, so this time i did not “move” it. donated most of the stuff and just bought a few things for the new place. i’m loving it.


nice! i read above you live in a small place, but sounds like you can make the whole city your home (e.g. see: fumio sasaki). i’m living sort of like that as well, btw—small apartment with walking/bike access to everything, and cheap lyft/uber.


yeeeessss. they have mandatory insurance, but it’s all private as i recall. it’s where we would have gone with obamacare (but aren’t quite there yet). no single payer/national health. however i understand the insurance industry is tightly regulated and they have the best doctors in europe, so it should be worth getting it if you ever need (here’s hoping you don’t, but eh, life).


hahaha. great! i really love international communities. they’re the best everywhere. i get impatient when everyone is the same.


awesome! please keep us posted on the regular.

waddup slavo. Great to hear of your good times in Switzerland. I left my job of 7 years at the University of Houston 4+ months ago and am now working at the Baylor College of Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. It kicks ass. All I deal with is PhD candidates.

Congrats Slavo......good to hear that you are prospering in your new country.


Rob, is there a big difference in your job from the summer months to now that the Fall Semester has started?

The Grad School of Biomedical Sciences does not run on semesters or quarters. but instead runs on 6 week sections. no spring break. no winter/xmas break. we even have to work the day after thanksgiving, but it's cool.

That means that everything is busy all the time. summers at UH were fucking brutal slow.

Everything's burning.