Hi , I know when living in someone else's country one must abide by their rules but if one has a problem with a neighbour, why not just call to their door and explain the problem to them rather than ring the landlord with a hugely exaggerated story?
I had visitors for one night only and my neighbour rang the landlord and said a family had moved in with me!! the landlord understandably had to ring and check if that was the case which it was not.
Its such a shame that people behave so strangely towards each other.
it would be better if we just were pleasant towards one another.
simpler and better.

The Swiss generally do not like to talk and confront you if the "House rules" are broken or not followed.
I have heard stories from friends and experienced where they have sent the police- e.g. we were too loud chatting in the balcony after 10pm.
We have also had difficulty with our Swiss neighbours on a number of instances. Where we broke the rules one time they simply stuck the Geminde house rules in German on our door with the appropriate rule broken highlighted.

reading these stories just makes me be thankful for how lucky i have been. my last apartment was great. no trouble from neighbours and no hassle with washing schedules etc.

on noise, this varies between people. for example, my sister stomps around the house like an elephant and slams every door shut (even makes a noise when opening doors!). i'm sure if she had neighbours, she would drive them up the wall.

Hey SparksLeo, yes im starting to see that, its still think its unusual. I wasnt given any "house rules" or other information from the landlord when i moved in. I also made sure to ask him if it was ok to have visitors at the weekend as I had planned on having friends over and he said it was fine. the house rules appear to be unwritten in my case...

That just means you now offically live in Switzerland.

I received a letter from my landlord stating that my dogs should not poop in the garden as the neighbour above thought it was an eysore. I ignored it of course as one should.
I only ever didn't pick it straight up if it was pssing down.

You should sign any letter you receive from the LL and leave it on their door saying the complain has been noted...

bizarre how one has to note everything officially huh? i guess you just have follow the when in rome rule

speaking of Elephants Phil MCR. Our downstairs neighbour complained that we were walking like elephants. However, most of the stomping was from 3 year running and jumping around the house and this was at 8pm at night.
Really if you have kids you can't stop them being kids.
Luckily we have changed our landlord who is in the same building and has kids. They know that this neighbour is very difficult and typically Swiss.

First week we moved in here, we left one sealed garbage bag outside of our front door for a couple of hours until we brought it down. In that couple of hours one of our neighbor(still don't know who that was..) must have called Super to complain... We got an official letter from the Super(Hauswart) that we should not leave our garbage outside. We just never did it again and we have a great relationship with our neighbors.(other than Swiss German issue that I complained about here!!!)

THe first time I left my garbage bag outside my door, it disappeared. The neghbour had taken it down. I have since noted over time, that at least half of the tenants in this building, will grab their neighbours rubbish bag , along with their own if they see it outside the door. I like it.

Sure it's not because they are actually looking through your garbages(to see if there are any illegal substance)?

The house rules are usually in a glass notice box right by the main entrance? Usually with some emergency numbers next to them as well as other announcements or ads for parkings spaces for rent.

Absolutely sure.

We've had experience with living in several different apartments over the years. We never seemed to stay longer than about 1.5 years before moving again. We often moved just due to our neighbours complaining, or just not feeling welcome in the building. We've had neighbours complaining about noise coming from our apartment while we were not even home and once while living in Scotland, we received a letter from the landlord about neighbours that were bothered by our lack of curtains and would we please immediately put curtains up (and no we did not walk around naked or do anything that we thought would be offensive to anybody). So I don't necessarily think it's only the Swiss. Anyways, it's very stressful dealing with these kind of people that you will see every day.

I have often wondered if the only apartments that come up for rent are the ones where the neighbours are the most annoying. (Kind of like all the good jobs are taken, all the good men are taken, all the good apartments are taken...?)

I think your best bet for finding a good place is renting something in a building where there are only renters (not a mix of owners and renters- that's the worst). Or where everyone moves in at the same time. Obviously, not exactly easy to find! If your neighbours continue to be awful, I would suggest moving. It's not worth the stress they cause you and you are missing out on good times with great neighbours!

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Maybe you have to give it some more time? 18 months is a relatively short time in the grand scheme of things and, knowing the Swiss heart is a difficult one to melt, it might be that you need to work at it a bit longer rather than jumping out at the first sign of trouble.

I think it must be almost impossible to find an apartment block where everyone is all hunky dory with each other all of the time.

Being an unknown quantity, newcomers are often first viewed with a negative slant before they can be seen in a more favourable light and any slight misdemeanour will probably provoke a more major reaction than if you'd been in the building for an extended period.

I think that might be part of the problem with expats running into problems with their neighbours - they're only in 5 mins and they've already made a cock up of the laundry plan, clattered a door after midnight or left a pair of mucky shoes outside their door.

That's not to say that the existing tenants could be a bit more tolerant but I just think people have their needle in the red zone far too quickly over stuff that really doesn't matter.

This reminded me of when I lived in Spain. I lived in a town house and my daughter was a baby, produced some pretty awful nappies. So, until I could take it to the communal bin, I would bag the up and stick them out on the window ledge on the ground floor. One time this bloke, and English expat walked past and was eyeing up the bag on the window ledge, I could see him through the window, but he couldnt see me.....he did a look side to side a couple of times to see if anyone was coming, then he ran off with my nappy bag thinking he had got some treasure. Bet he had a nice surprise when he opened it.....

I fully understand that one has to follow the house rules but one also has to live. Hopefully my neighbour will not continue in the manner she has started off. My landlord has actually told her to stop! Nice to have him on my side. Apparently she rings him every time something bothers her so she phoned to say I didnt remove ALL of the fluff after using the tumble drier....lets see how the story continues!! Hopefully she will just stop.