dear EF friends,

I so hope you can help me!
although I'm really in love with my new swiss life I am missing my job so much... I've always been working with books, specifically in the past 10 years as a self-employed book producer for major international publishers (art, architecture, photography, children's books etc).

alas, moving here from germany I had to leave my office *sigh* and I quickly had to rule out the option of renting an office in zurich, as it would be suicidal to start in CH a business in what is a traditionally "poor" industry. I'm still doing some small jobs just to stay in the business, but cannot take on anything big under the present conditions.

so now I'm at home and the walls are closing in on me... and I can't even go shopping for a bit of comfort (for obvious reasons)...

I'd love to work in publishing or in a bookshop or library, since that's what I know best (books). a museum, gallery, charity or association would also be spot on.
I speak italian (mother tongue), german and english fluently, familiar with french and spanish.
I enjoy the company of people from diverse backgrounds and helping others.

I wonder
A. if any of you have a bookshop or similar business for which you need some help on a flexible basis, even if just for a couple of hours a week?
B. if you have any ideas or advice of where I could start looking. maybe some of you went through a similar phase and managed to find a new challenge to start their new swiss life?

I'm optimistic that someone out there needs me

THANK YOU in advance for any response!

You know it girl!

Sent you a pm so noone else sees it first

I thought I'd been forgotten - you give me hope!
THANK YOU SO MUCH

Venice,

Have you seen this website? And what about these guys?

Good luck!

thank you very much federica!
the zurich publisher directory is very useful to get an overall impression with detailed description of the specific areas of each publisher.
as for the bookshops, I'm wondering what it means exactly if in a job ad it says you're supposed to work on weekends (fair enough, that will mean saturdays) but holidays? and in the evenings? I mean, how bad can that be in switzerland? aren't we always complaining that the shops have too unflexible and short hours?

any experience with working long hours in shops anyone?
I'd rather not call first thing and ruin all my chances by asking directly...

thanks a lot

From what I know, you'd be expected to work the standard 5 days a week, often on Saturdays and getting one of the week-days off along with Sunday. Maybe once a month you'd get Saturday and Sunday off together.

As for hours, the common is either 08:00 or 09:00 starting time, 1h to 1.5h lunch and then quitting time at 18:30. If you're working at places like Zurich, expect the store hours to stretch further to 20:00. Here in the Berner Oberland, were still a bit more human :P (No offence to anyone else out there!!!)

This is at least the case for my sister.

Holidays can be expected to be working days some of the time, depending if the shop is more tourist dependant or not. Also depends if the canton you decide to work in is Protestant or Catholic.

Cheers,

Arthur

very useful information, thank you!

I think we might say that compared to other countries these opening hours are indeed human