I started a thread a few days ago regarding my frustrations with apartment hunting and the interesting questions I've been asked. Yesterday I had the surprise of my life during my apartment hunt. Here's what happened:

First:
My wife (German) made an appointment to visit an apartment yesterday evening. We toured the apartment, loved it, the landlord was cordial enough, so we requested an application form. He asked us for our names and he wanted to check-off his list containing the names and numbers of everbody that had made an appointment. He couldn't find my wife's name and so asked for our mobile numbers and proceeded to search for us by contact details. It was a bit of a shock when we found our names listed on his sheet as "Deutsche/ Ausländer", and he proceeded to put an 'X' through our names which he hadn't done with anyone prior to us (we checked). I have no idea what that means, but I was laughing my head off when I saw that, and might have thrown the landlord off a bit. I don't really mind, I'm not too keen on residing there after that experience.

Second:
My wife had sent an e-mail yesterday morning requesting to see another apartment. We had received no response till noon, so I decided to call and ask for an appointment. I spoke to the landlady in German (I'm a beginner), and she asked me my name and a little bit about my background. I forgot to mention that my wife had sent an e-mail earlier, so she must have approached me as a different inquirer. She proceeded to inform me that the apartment has already been rented out and was no longer available. A few minutes later my wife informed me that she received an e-mail response stating that the apartment was available for a group viewing on Thursday in the evening. I was taken aback, but I'm laughing this one off too.

I was not comfortable living in apartheid South Africa, I left Zimbabwe (I'm a citizen) because of the prejudice held by the African population there towards foreigners. I'm beginning to realise prejudices here against foreigners are existent(in the housing market), and I'm not terribly pleased about that. My wife has never experienced it since she was always the local in Germany, but is this a problem for foreigners there as well?

We're now slowly leaning towards leaving the country, and while I know there's prejudice and racism everywhere, I guess I'm a little disappointed to the extent I've witnessed it in Switzerland. I might be a foreigner everywhere I go, but in NYC/London I felt like I could do something about it if I was being mistreated (question it/speak my mind in my mother tongue at the very least), and people were apt enough to be very subtle so as not to cause offense.

Dude, what do you want to hear? A landlord doesn't want foreigners and that's that. This thread will descend into "Me toooooooo, innit terrible?" and "Not all Swiss are racist" and "I like milk and cookies": there's nothing you can do about the attitudes of others on such matters.

What's with the repeated racism threads?