Im new to this board and basically I will be moving to Switzerland in late July. I will be starting work at Dow (sitzerland) in Horgen as part of my university placement,and I need accomodation for at least a year;

- 1 medium/large room, with bathroom (shower) and a kitchen

- Ranging from 400 chf to 900 chf per month

- in Horgen, or local vasinity (e.g. Wadenswil ot Thalwil)

- From July 27th 2006

If anyone has any contacts to which I could locate I would be very grateful.

Hi Tony,

Welcome to the forum. let me give you a tip. If you want people to read your messages try and thinkof a relevant subject line. I have changed your original subject from:

Help!

to:

Seeking apartment in Horgen area

I think you'll agree that makes more sense.

Now another bit of advice - first ask your company / whoever is organising this what they will be doing to help you with accomodation. I think the chances of you finding an apartment in that price range is pretty much close to zero. Are they able to give you something short term until you can sort it out?

I'm presuming that you've already read through other messages on this forum where people give tips about finding apartments? The subject has been discussed quite a bit.

The University of Surrey has given me a package of such things including where Horgen is, where DOW Horgen is situated and other places in the vicinity. The package gave me two websites to look at;

wgzimmer.ch and hsw.ch

I have advertised for accomodation on both sites. I came here just to open my options, just in case nothing comes through from the above websites. I need to tell my university where I will be living as soon as possible, so they know where to send to my study modules.

Your uni obviously doesn't understand that things are not always so easy here...

When I was talking about assistance, I meant like paying for some short term accomodation - will the company you will do your placement with assist at all?

As you might have gathered by reading some of the posts on this forum things aren't always straight forward!

Sending you to a few German-speaking websites isn't a very nice thing to do. You've done the right thing to expand your options - you'll need them!

Thanks. As far as I know it is entierly up to me to find accomodation.

Ok - but this isn't easy from another country. Question is what happens if you can't get it sorted before you arrive?

I have no choice. I have to find accomodation or the Senior Professional Training Tutor will take me off my 4 year course (one in which involves working for a year in industry), and I will have to do a bachelors istead of a masters degree.

it might be worth finding out also if there is someone already at Dow who want a housemate. There's many a foreigner there

Will do. Thanks!

To be more specific about Lob's suggestion - call up the HR (Human Resources) dept and explain the situation. They may be able to post on an internal bulletin board or tell you what their policy is in these cases. Since you are coming to help them for probably a very low salary they also should have some sort of social obligation to help you out a bit. But if you don't ask - you don't get!

Mark