Thanks rdiggle but I cannot nail down the existing thread. Is it recent or old? I'll check out NVC.

@kudokan - good suggestion but both of my wife's parents are off the road, so this might be tricky. As for replacing paper with cards, I am all for it. We arrived in Nov last year and got large paper Swiss identity cards. I think I read that plastic ID cards came into circulation soon after - I keep meaning to check if I can do a swap.