Dear all,

I am a newbie in the site, hi, nice to meet you all. This is a very nice forum with useful info.
I live and work in Scotland and I have been offered an attractive research position to work in Basel in a large pharma. Been there once and it looks like a decent place to live. I quite like moving there.

However, I am a bit concerened on my move from Scotland to Basel. I am the proud owner of 9 cats and 2 dogs, which I would like to bring over eventually. They are all microchipped, vaccinated (rabies also), with EU passports and comply with the entry requirements. It easy enough to have them in my house in Scotland (owned), but I am concerned on how tolerant a landlord would be on having pets in their rented property. In my experience, when I have tried to move to England (London/Cambridge) in the past, it has not been possible to get the cats with me. The standard policy was no pets allowed. I suppose and hope that the Swiss are more pet friendly.

I would like to ask the forum for people's experiences on having pets in rented accommodation, especially in Basel, how to go about it in searching for it and if I should specifically target specific types of accommodation, i.e. houses rather than flats. I want to move there, but I need my pets with me ideally, I hope it will be possible.
Any advice welcome.

Many thanks

Antonis

Hello and welcome to the English Forum!

(You may wish to make an introduction post in the Intro area as well as that is were most of us look for new folks)

Meanwhile, I will say that in general, the folks here (in Switzerland) ARE more pet friendly than a lot of other places. In addition to being pet friendly though, they also take a lot of interest in animal welfare...

I imagine it won't be a problem straight up for you to bring all of your pets, you may have to be very particular about where you live though, not simply because you have cats and dogs (and so many) but because you will need to make sure you have adequate space (actually enforced!) for all of those pets.

There are many others who can give more precise knowledge to you than I but I believe you're going to need to look specifically for a ground floor apartment with a garden... and likely will be much better off looking for one such abode in Basel Land as opposed to Basel Stadt... just because you'll be more likely to find the space required (and a better price for such space).

Welcome to the EF, I think it is really cool that you have so many pets, I wish! Unfortunately, I believe that so many pets would need a house and not an appartment. SO maybe for you it would be probably better if you rented outside the city in Basel Stadt (but still pretty close to the city).
Usually finding a place for cats (usually a couple of them) is not a problem but 9 cats would not be a common number (although I am loving the idea ) and dogs, it is not so easy...

Good luck!


Angela

Wow, that is certainly a crowd! I would rather recommend a house, silence is very important here and the neighbors would definitely complain if the dogs would happen to bark. Our rental contract did specify no pets, but when we wanted to get our cats, the landlord didn't have any objections. After all, it is your obligation to eliminate every last scratch when you move out. And both neighbors of us have dogs - swiss dogs though, they never bark, I don't know how they do it.

My dog didn't bark when we lived in an apartment, she surely started after we moved in with my mom and she had her own territory though, she barked at everything that came in the yard.

thanks to all for the feedback. I think I will go for a house or a large flat and see how it goes.

Same as the other posters ... generally it's not a problem to have pets but you'll find some resistance to the whole menagerie concept! (And you'll find your bank balance dwindling even faster here, with food and vet bills etc),

Check out Homegate for houses in Basel Land, for a start. There are never many available so you might have to be a little less than fussy. I can see 5 houses for rent now in reasonable proximity to Novartis/Roche (assuming that's where you're headed).

Hi..

Having such a number of furballs does pose a challenge in terms of finding a place to reside, but it's doable. We brought over 4 dogs and 5 cats. Yes, the neighbors thought we were a bit strange having so many dogs, but there are a few neighbors that out number us with cats...=)

We live just outside of Zurich very close to the airport. It is a mixture of farmers and airport personnel( retired and active pilots, stewardess etc..) We were told by the owners of our flat that, as long as the animals are well taken care of, they didn't care about the number.

We have two cats that are not allowed to go on the ground outside, but they have a huge balcony to play on. Oddly enough, only one of our cats have the desire to jump off the balcony and go exploring.

The dogs(2 small and 2 medium) are taken for long wlks 3 times a day. And all the children in our village love to play with them.

There will be an issue with bringing in more than 5 at once, you will fall into another category. I believe you will have to get a special permit. We just brought ours over in in 3 separate trips.

If you need more info. just holla....