Something that Roy and I have a chuckle and a sigh about is the bureaucracy in Switzerland. I'll give you a little bit of background info off Wikipedia about the little country we now inhabit, just so you can understand a bit more of what I'm talking about. Switzerland is officially known as The Swiss Confederation or Confœderatio Helvetica in Latin (hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE). It consists of 26 Cantons, one if which is the canton that we live in called Valais. To my understanding, it means that each Canton basically governs itself. The cantons have a permanent constitutional status and, in comparison with the situation in other countries, a high degree of independence. (source)
Upon arriving in Switzerland, one has about two weeks to get oneself registered with their local commune (town) in order to obtain a permit to stay or work in the country. This involves a trip to the local town hall with passports, work contracts, passport sized photos and money (everything comes at a cost). We took a trusty work friend of Roy's along for some French translating which was a HUGE help. The administration lady sat us down and typed away on her computer to begin the process of getting us into the database. She asked us the usual questions one might expect when registering to stay in a foreign country, but then she even asked us our parents names and our mothers maiden names. I'm still wondering what purpose this served. After the 20 questions, we left feeling a tad drained after the 'interrogation' but we were relieved to have gotten that out of the way and now all we had to do was sit and wait for our permits to arrive in the mail.
About a week and a half later we pestered the concierge at the hotel to see if we had received any mail until finally they told us we had received 'a' letter which contained Roy's permit. I started thinking "uh oh.. maybe they're not going to give me one... maybe I won't be allowed to stay here.. blah, blah, blah". A few days later I also received a letter in the mail, much to my relief. Even though we provided our marriage certificate and we both lived at the same address, they sent them out separately. Way to freak a girl out!
So, the permit was all done which was great. We moved out of the hotel in Martigny after three weeks and moved into our apartment in Saint-Maurice and we were told that we were going to have to go back to the town hall in Martigny, de-register with that commune and register in the commune of Saint-Maurice, even though it is about ten minutes up the freaking road and in the same canton. Oh and we had to fork out 75CHF just to change communes. We can only imagine what it would be like to move to a different canton.
We've been told by other expats that you eventually get used to the bureaucracy and that it all seems to work quite effectively. We're also told that even the Swiss have to go through this kind of thing when they move. Maybe I'll come back to Australia after two years and wonder why it's so relaxed.
I see what you mean now - it sounds like a painful process (and pretty much just like what we had to do in Flatland, not fun). I guess it motivates people not to move house very often, maybe why it's so hard to find rental properties???
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