Hello all, and congrats on maintaining a wonderful resource here! I'm new to the Forum, so here's my scoop...

I lived in Switzerland way back in 1993, and loved every minute of it. I had such a rewarding experience living in Lausanne that I've always hoped to find a way back for a more permanent stay. In fact I distinctly remember when I was preparing to leave making myself promise (to myself) that I'd get back there someday. I'm kind of hoping that the time for that has come, so I thought I'd check things out here and see how things have been.

During my time in Lausanne this Forum didn't exist, and to be honest I didn't really consider myself an ex-pat at the time. I knew two native English-speaking foreigners who I saw every couple of weeks, but otherwise my friends and community were entirely Swiss -- a fact that I think led to my feeling very, very welcomed and at home there. Swiss flatmates, co-workers, neighbors, they all helped me out so much that I constantly asked myself "what have I done to deserve all this hopitality and generosity?" In the end I concluded that it's just who they were, these Swiss people, and I couldn't have been more pleased to be considered, for all intents and purposes, one of them.

I was in the middle of my University studies in Psychology at the time, and worked at the Institution Esperance in Etoy -- a fascinating experience to be sure! Since, I've gone another direction and have worked managing operations in QA departments for software companies and more recently running a golf course in Vietnam (successfully merging my management experience with my passion for golf!)

So now it's time to work on the puzzle of how to get back to the beloved little country my friends back home have had to hear about ad nausea over the years. Frankly I'm a bit daunted by how expensive things seem to have become. As a young worker earning basically a stagiere's wage, life in Lausanne in the '90s was grand, and while I didn't buy steak every trip to the Migro, I wanted for little. This time around it sounds like I'll need to be working with something of a different salary scale...

Of course I've been poking around the forum threads about jobs and living and will continue to do so. But if anyone is struck by some new insights to help -- or naturally if you happen to know someone needing my particular mangement skill set, drop me a line! Otherwise, I'm still happy to just hear about how other folks' experiences are going, and hoping that I can get back and be part of the community myself soon!

Hello and welcome to the forum !! It sounds like you've had an interesting life so far.......

I guess that a lot of things have changed since 1993 here, at least that's what the Swiss use to say, that some years ago things were cheaper and easier. I don't know, since I have been here myself only for 5 years.

Good luck with your new start in Switzerland !

Hi le_nooch and welcome to the forum. What a lovely introduction! I just can't understand why you didn't get a better response. Well, by answering here I probably can bring it back to the daylight

I wish you best of luck in your further plans to settle back to Willy Tell's own country!

Thanks Zürihegel for getting this very nice introduction back to the surface, and special thanks to le_nooch for the original post. Welcome to our forum.

Things sure have become more expensive, but please know that the Swiss love complaining at a very high level. In other words, all in all, salaries have grown much more than prices, no matter what certain circles say.

When I was a kid, some 50 years ago (!), a café crème in an average restaurant cost CHF 1.10, and a young mason, just having passed the final exam of apprenticeship, earned CHF 2.85 an hour. Now said café is around CHF 4.50, but the mason earns CHF 35.65 an hour.

Things can't be that bad, then.

hello nooch.. welcome back to lausanne..and welcome to the forum