Dear Forum,

How are ya all, hope you're doin' well.

Can I ask you guys something?:

How long an Australian can stay in Switzerland in a calendar year?

I am currently living in Luzern (and what a fine city it is!). Here are my arrival and departure details:

.entered 22.06.07
.departed 1.08.07 (to Malaysia for a holiday)
.re-entered 30.08.07

I think (but am not 100% sure) based on the above that :

.I need to leave before 30.11.07 and then must stay out till 01.01.08 when everything gets reset

.from 01.01.08 I am allowed to come back for three months and can live here for six months provided I leave after the first three for a month

Please help me with any relevant information.

Thanks heaps
Daryl



PS

I have tried contacting the Swiss Immigration authorities in Bern on +41 31 325 1111 but they don't speak English well enough there to understand me. They either don't answer the phone or ask me to call back later; then when I do, the next person does the same. Nice [Do Loop] that one is.

The Australian embassy in Geneva is also useless in this matter. A nice waste of our taxpayers dollars! In fact the woman who answers the phone there is quite rude and unhelpful. You know I thought embassies were meant to help, not hinder. If you want to phone her and hear her attitude for yourself, please ring +41 22 79 9100.

Dear Daryl,

Since your stay outside Switzerland was shorter than one month, you are already in breach of immigration regulations.

Howya goin' dude,

I would think that a departure on 01.08 and arrival on 30.08 would just squeeze in to be counted as a calendar month by any reasonable standards. And the Swiss authorities seem reasonable to me. There just nice and simple farmers after all.

Now thanks for your post but I did not need to know if I was in breach of any Swiss laws, what I wanted to know was: How long an Australian can stay in Switzerland in a calendar year?

Regards
Daryl

Good luck. Since you left on the 1st and returned on the 30th, you were technically away for only 28 days, so maybe you can convince them to count as if it were February?

Six months in total, maximum three months at a time with a minimum of one month in between.