Wanted to point out this NZZ story, which is a portrait of four English-speaking women in Switzerland (in German):

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/schwei..._1.571749.html

I think it makes for a nice balance to that recent Tagi-Magi story. Bit of a puff piece, but nice.

Footnote: this is one of the few stories I have seen where readers actually use the NZZ's new comments function .

Thanks for showing this. It's nice to see an article showing something from a foreigner's point of view in a positive light.

indeed, an interesting arcticle.

What I would not like if I come next year are the lots of regulations
(anoym messages from neighbours, your bike stands at my place, Sunday is it not allowed to wash clothes).

But ohter countries, other rules.

Could someone summarise the article in English please?
My German sucks.

Quick summary: the story is a portrait of four English-speaking women living in Switzerland. Three of them – Yasmine Meguid, Kate Michaels and Michelle Johner - are putting together a show that will run in Zug and Zurich (sorry, no real details about the show itself in the story. Maybe someone on EF knows something about this though?).

The story tries to illustrate why the over 70,000 native English speakers living in Switzerand – 17,000 of them in the canton of Zurich alone – join clubs to connect with other native speakers, and how they settled in here in Switzerland. The women talk about things like unwritten social rules, how they ended up socializing mostly with other foreigners – even though they hadn’t specifically sought that - or the quirks of everyday life, like laundry sharing rules or business hours for shops.

All of the women say they feel welcome in Switzerland and have been faced with little to no discrimination for being foreigners. There is comment from Greater Zurich Area, a business lobby, which says English-speaking foreigners are an asset to Switzerland becasuse they represent such a big part of Switzerland’s economy.

If anyone has the NZZ, it’s worth looking up the story – there is a cool portrait series of the four women.

Thanks for the summary Bart.
It's not surprising that a business lobby would support foreigners - there's a skill shortage here. Maybe it's just plain people shortage.
I remember a Reader's Digest article "Where Have All The People Gone?" and it talked about how people seemed to vanishing in Switzerland (and other parts of Europe). They also called it an environmentalist's dream because the forests appear to be re-generating (if that's a word). Of course, some of it is the migration to cities. Anyway, this is getting soooo off-topic!