We are moving an entire household in approx 9 months to CH.

I know I have to have owned things for 6 months so as not to pay duty so am thinking about things that we should buy here before the move that will be much more expensive to buy when we are there....

We have 3 cars that are all at least double the price in CH. One was brand new and all are high end, they need small modifications that I have spoken to dealers in CH about... all are doable and we will be able to do most in the US before leaving.

I am going to buy a Weber BBQ as there are very expensive in CH and am looking at Dedon furniture. I can obviously google everything but I was wondering if anyone had come across anything that they wish they'd bought before the moved ??
Any other thoughts ???

These are not things to sell... just things that we would normally buy in CH when we move to our house that we currently don't have or that we will replace as ours are old and have travelled through 4 countries in 6 years !!!

Please move this to another forum if you think it more appropriate I just didn't seem to fit anywhere else....

A search function may be
or brown sugar

http://www.englishforum.ch/search2.p...land&logic=and

Appliances - what to bring from US

What Should We Bring?

what to bring comming from the USA

Thanks I had read some of these and made a few notes.....I know about the electrics as I moved everything to the US and the reverse current situation got me !! and as far as food goes... I learnt 3 countries ago to just get over missing fave items and move on to something new....

I got a message about Le Creuset Kitchen wear who I have a couple of things from - I will look into that.

Good girl. You sure have the right attitude. Welcome.





P.S. You might still want to bring some brown sugar, just in case.

Can you REALLY not get brown sugar ?? Demerera ?? what do they make the creme brûlée with ??? I'll be going back to the UK regularly so I guess I'll buy it there
My shipment will be in storage until the house build is completed so am thinking more household things.... I have quite a bit to work with just didn't want to 'miss' anything. I have a whole house that will sit in storage until we are able to move to our house... just trying to save on things that I will ultimately buy.... I just started to think when we were looking at BBQ's this summer...

Hubby was chatting to someone in the office and apparently cycles would also be a good buy in the US..... I'll look at that this weekend...

I've been able to get brown sugar just fine in Germany, CH, and France - although in Germany I often found it as hard glass-like cubes for tea.

You might want to look into buying some electronics (new camera, MP3 player, etc) in the US since they're much more expensive here. Oh, and if you're a jeans gal - stock up on some Levi's!! You wouldn't believe it but they're at least 95 euros in France and 120 francs in CH!!

And depending on where in CH you're moving to, you might be able to take advantage of border hopping for extra deals and grocery shopping.

Good luck and welcome!!

You can certainly get a sort of brown sugar here, I currently have some mascobado brown sugar which pretty much has the right flavor to it but is not as soft. It (mostly) works for taste but my cookies are a bit crispier than if I were using the soft brown sugar from the US.

I seem to recall someone saying that adding some molasses to normal granulated sugar when baking will yield the "proper" results though, so it depends on whether you rather traipse a bit shopping compared to fiddling in the kitchen.

I would agree that a good BBQ grill that you are accustomed to and love (particularly if it is charcoal / smoker), it is worthwhile to bring. Otherwise, gas grills I think I saw are an issue because the fittings don't match up.

YES absolutely, bring bicycles also if you can. They are crazy expensive here, even for something less than "top of the line". I could find ones which would be suitable in the US for around $150 to $200, a similar style bicycle would run upwards of 400chf new (and honestly, the ones that caught my eye here were closer to 1000chf ).

Crème brûlée sounds pretty French to me. Believe it or not, practically all french crème brûlée recipes ask for plain sugar or white powdered sugar.

You can buy Rohzucker ("crude sugar," not to be confused with Rohrzucker, which means cane sugar = sucrose). It's brownish because of some molasses, but far less so than American brown sugar. Accordingly, it's almost as dry as ordinary crystalline table sugar, not moist and sort of moldable like the American kinds. Yes, it is a bit Demerera-like.

Peg's remark concerning DIY brown sugar is an understatement. I think there are at least 254 posts on this forum that suggest more or less successful ways of mixing table sugar and molasses to make your own American style brown sugar. Ok, maybe not that many, but the instinct for culinary self-preservation of some EFers must be very pronounced.

The brown sugar thing is an on going joke. Brown sugar is a non-issue.

Anyway, I was going to suggest a TV. Some of the new ones are dual voltage & multi-system. But it's possible that you could get one in CH for a good price. Check the online shops. (In Argentina they are 3 times more expensive, but I think in CH the prices are comparable).

My only caution regarding furniture is that US furniture tends to be much bigger and bulkier and be sure you don't bring more than you need. Check the size of the houses in your budget. You may not get a 6 bedroom house with two sitting rooms and and eat in kitchen with separate dinning room. So maybe don't bring 6 bedroom sets, two complete sitting rooms & two complete dinning sets. Kitchens are smaller too. So storage can be an issue. So weed out the old stuff if you are buying new stuff. And, think about where will you park 3 cars.

Personally, I'd say don't bring your US (non-dual voltage) electronics even with a transformer there is a good chance they will eventually blow up. Most people who I've met who did (Ie, Kitchenaids, Dyson vac) eventually had them blow up on them. If a kitchen robot is something you use a lot, buy one in CH and just chalk it up to something you'll just have to pay more for.

Check out compatibility re: US/EU games for play stations & the like.

I failed to check what area of Switzerland you are moving to. However - brown sugar - like the kind you use to bake and such - is available in Jelmoli on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. Likely other places as well. It is 5 CHF for a small box. There are other specialty/gourmet stores in and around the city that carry some items that you may miss from the U.S.

The brown sugar that everyone says is "everywhere" is not the kind of brown sugar we think of in the U.S.

If you're having a house custom built, I'll assume you know the dimensions of the windows. Buy curtains in the US as what's available here is limited and very expensive. Custom-made is eye-poppingly expensive. Buy a new wardrobe, too.

Didn't we mention that already?

She is having a house custom built? Well then. My advice is useless! I guess she'd now whether the furniture will fit or not! LOL.

But it might be helpful for others. I know people who moved from 400m2 house to 200m2 houses. So need much less furniture in CH than in the US as well as a guy who had a custom bedroom set built in Costa Rica. All the pieces were honking great big pieces. In the end he could never put all the pieces together in the same bedroom in Europe.

I googled a few bicycles and they are definitely on the shopping list here... they are WAY more expensive there...

I will be just outside Zurich so will following MIL to Germany grocery shopping...
And thank you - you reminded me to upgrade my Mac !!

I just found a women's refuge to donate my electrics to. I had to buy new when we got here because mine didn't work.... I didn't buy expensive as I knew they would only have a short life with me..... I still have some european electrics but we also had a few blow up even with a convertor !!!

I did think about this when I was thinking about bedding but I will go back to China to the guys who made the curtains I have now when I have windows I can measure. They are good blackout curtains and they were unbelievably cheap.... I am going to look at prices of good quality bath towels etc though....

Thank you everyone...... am getting so much more exciting now I am starting to plan !!!

You might want to consider bringing fabric if you want to have pillows or other soft furnishing made later on.

A storage Unit in the US to keep your stuff in until you have lived in CH for 6 months first.

Hi "Swisswife."
I am also from the US, and here is a list of a few household things that I've found really difficult (or impossible) to find here. And so I've either brought them back with me from trips to the States or I've had to order them online from sites like jcpenney.com or macys.com (which both offer international shipping at pretty reasonable prices):

1. Rugs! All the rugs here tend to be really expensive and the selection is not so great (this includes bathroom rugs as well as all sizes of area rugs. I've also noticed that it can be hard to find runner rugs and kitchen rugs are pretty much non-existent here).

2. Bed sheets! As you may know, the Swiss don't use top sheets -- they only use the fitted sheet. So if you like to also have a top sheet, I suggest bringing some with you.

3. Bath towels can be really expensive as well -- not uncommon to pay 40 CHF each for a decent one here.

4. I've found that there aren't many stores here that sell decorative things for the home, so you may want to bring some of that type of stuff (I've actually never seen any stores here that sell pre-framed prints for the walls, etc.).

So yes, you actually CAN find brown sugar here (the kind we use for baking in the US). Both the light and dark brown sugar is sold in a store here called "Jelmoli" which has a grocery store in their bottom floor that has a pretty decent selection of American and British foods. And there are also a few online stores here in Switzerland that sell British and American foods (including brown sugar, vanilla extract, Cambell's soups, etc.) and have great shipping rates:

e.g. http://www.afoodave.ch/

Also, I wouldn't worry too much about the things you ship here being more than 6 months old. Just remove any tags from new stuff, and you'll be fine. I shipped a LOT of new things to myself (via US postal service) when I moved here. I removed any tags and filled out the correct forms, etc. and didn't have any problems with customs. I also didn't have to pay any customs taxes.

I hope your move goes very well! Please feel free to private message me any time if you ever have any questions, etc.

not an option.

Neither of us is from the US... sorry I just realized I never added that I am a brit and my husband is Swiss. He has been away from CH for 14 years though. we lived in Asia for 6 years before moving to the US last year....

Am excited about moving to CH !! my husbands family are lovely and we have some great friends in CH. Also being able to design my own home... cupboards exactly where I want them, whatever flooring I like etc etc..... I can't wait !! we've been renting and moving around so much.. I just want everything in one place....

Haha, love how the biggest item on the home page is diet coke!
Like you can't find that anywhere?!

At the risk of getting the firing squad, I will point out that the above poster is correct about muscovado (aka muscobado) sugar in Jelmoli is a suitable substitute for the aforementioned brown sugar, but it is different, has a higher moisture content and will yield slightly different results than what you'd expect with good old C&H back home (read you need to adjust your recipes a bit). I'll also point out that Jelmoli, while it does have a selection of 'gourmet' foods, it's a far cry from Whole Foods - Don't get your hopes up. This store sells multi-grain cheerios for 9 CHF per box. The 'Mexican' section usually makes me giggle. Still, it's better than nothing....but the richest country in the world does not entertain worldly food shopping as curious as that seems. YMMV. HTH. HAND.