Moving to Switzerland

When I started my online career back in 2004 I shared my stories about moving abroad after high school. Since then I been living the nomad life back and forth but now I have once again officially migrated from Sweden. This time to Switzerland for work reasons so there this is the first and it might be some more stories to come from my new country. I will try to sun up the first week.

Staring a new job

The reason I moved to Switzerland was work. Last Sunday afternoon I flew down to Zurich with my new employer Swiss. On Monday it was time to meet my new colleagues for the first time. When I got the job offer in December it was no time for a face-to-face meeting so it was with a lot of curiosity I stepped in to Swiss Headquarters in Kloten for the very first time. It was not just me but also another guy that joined the team the same day. We got picked up in the lobby and then got introduced to more faces than I could remember the names of. It is a very international crowd and since it is aviation the office language is English. Hope I can improve my German skills a bit outside of work though. We then had sat down for coffee with the whole team to have introduction and I also got a new “Head of” that was taking over from the person that was part of hiring me. Since the aviation business is fairly small I kind of knew him since before because we have had email contact for many years.

After the first round of introduction we had lunch in the canteen and the rest of the week was about setting things up, join in at meetings for my upcoming project at Malta, take some courses and other intro things. One half day was also introduction for everyone who joined Swiss and we got to know about the company, sustainability work, goals and so on. It feels great to be part of the Lufthansa group again and work setup is very similar to when I started my professional careers at Lufthansa back in the days. What I really noticed was the optimism among colleagues, they are not struggling for the survival for the Xth year like at my former employer and it felt like a positive vibe all over the line.

Moving to a new country

Of course there is some paperwork to do when moving to a new country but since Switzerland have the same mobility as EU it is quite easy. The only thing I had to do in person was to show up at the local town hall to get my residence and working permit. But it went very smooth.

During my first week I have been around quite some parts of the city. Mostly in my running shoes. That is a perfect way to get to explore it and I have this far found four good running routes near my place.

I don’t know many people here yet but a few so my social life isn’t busy. The few I know I have had a good time with having dinner, playing video games and drinking cava. I don’t have any problem finding new mates when I move to new places and often I do so through one of my very many sport interests. I have even met some of my best friends in Stockholm through sports. It’s just a matter of investment like every other relationship. Since I will be traveling a lot also for my new job I take this first month I spend in Zurich as a slow start, getting to know the city, find a gym that I like, a running club I can go running with when I feel for and of course get to know my new job.

I still have my apartment in Stockholm for vacation purpose and it is just a two hour flight so easy commuting when I need a touch of Scandinavia. The new week already started but feels like Sunday today and if I will make a new weekly summary next week time will tell.

/ Pernilla on adventure in a new country