Hi all,

Just thought i would introduce myself. my name is gary and i am originally from bristol in the uk moving to Basel in september from Copenhagen.

I love taking part in all kind of sports especially football so if anyone wants a extra team member of good quality, or a training partner for cycling etc i would be grateful.

Any advice on living in basel or good places to go to meet people would be very much appreciated.

Many Thanks

Hi Gary,

Welcome! Have just moved Basel too w/ my husband, 2 weeks ago. It's great here. Have met lots of great people so far, there's lots to do and the EF is a great place to start.
Haven't had any real hiccups yet so far...
Banking - opening a bank account was a breeze, even with L permits. Went to Credit Suisse, took 15 minutes. Would suggest them just because of that, and got debit cards in the mail a few days later.

Housing - used homegate.ch If you are eager to get housing set up quickly, I would suggest finding places online the week before you come to Basel and making appointments with respective agencies or people. We got here and thought that we could just walk into the agency and found that wasn't the case at all. It may save you some time and energy if you do that. We looked at about 6 places before choosing the first place we looked at, haven't moved in yet so don't know whether we have yet been "approved" for the place, but so far so good. The agency was great - they sent us the contract right away to sign and the woman that we have dealt with didn't seem too concerned with our statuses here in CH (with L permits).

Language - we're both enrolling in German classes here with Volkshochschule http://www.vhsbb.ch/sprachen/kurs_DaF.html Another place is Migros http://tinyurl.com/5nddhj but there wasn't any availability at night.

Hope that helps! Good luck and hope to meet you at an event when you come over

Hi Gary,

Welcome! Have just moved Basel too w/ my husband, 2 weeks ago. It's great here. Have met lots of great people so far, there's lots to do and the EF is a great place to start.
Haven't had any real hiccups yet so far...
Banking - opening a bank account was a breeze, even with L permits. Went to Credit Suisse, took 15 minutes. Would suggest them just because of that, and got debit cards in the mail a few days later.

Housing - used homegate.ch If you are eager to get housing set up quickly, I would suggest finding places online the week before you come to Basel and making appointments with respective agencies or people. We got here and thought that we could just walk into the agency and found that wasn't the case at all. It may save you some time and energy if you do that. We looked at about 6 places before choosing the first place we looked at, haven't moved in yet so don't know whether we have yet been "approved" for the place, but so far so good. The agency was great - they sent us the contract right away to sign and the woman that we have dealt with didn't seem too concerned with our statuses here in CH (with L permits).

Language - we're both enrolling in German classes here with Volkshochschule http://www.vhsbb.ch/sprachen/kurs_DaF.html Another place is Migros http://tinyurl.com/5nddhj but there wasn't any availability at night.

Hope that helps! Good luck and hope to meet you at an event when you come over


hi KirstyJayne,

Many thanks for the advice, i am really interested in the German classes would be very interesting thing to do, How do you sign up for them.

Glad you are enjoying yourself and everything is going well excited about my move.

At the moment i am looking for rooms for rent, been keeping my eye open for some on here, great site though.

http://www.vhsbb.ch/sprachen/kurs_DaF.html