Thanks everyone for your replies. It seems to boil down to deciding what we really want and what is best for us in the long run and this is precisely what is difficult to do. We have never lived in a village, but then these villages around Geneva are not like back home -- I mean, in most of them you don't see any farmers around. On the other hand, the places where we found houses that we liked enough to buy are either tiny (Vich, 700 people) or quite far (Rolle/Mont-sur-Rolle, 35 min drive on the motorway on a quiet Sunday), so we are not sure how it will work. But we now live in downtown Geneva with all the conveniences (walking distance to the office, shops nearby) and problems that come with it (pollution, traffic, wafer-thin walls and neighbours that complain when our children cry and a rent of 3,500 CHF). Perhaps we would know better if we tried living outside Geneva... anyone willing to swap houses for a month this summer?!