Why Switzerland?

If you have read my little "about me" blurb in the corner, you might be wondering....why Switzerland? Here are some of the reasons why my husband and I want to move with our son to lovely Switzerland...

We rented the top couple of floors of this chalet for a number of years....

My brother...

I grew up there :) I am a Swiss-Canadian. My mom, brother, sister, and I moved to Canada at the end of the '80's when I was nine years old. Coming fresh off a divorce, my mom wanted to be close to her sister (who lived in Canada with her family)....she also loved Canada, having lived here briefly in the '60's. We learned English fast enough, my mom already familiar with the language, and fell in love with this beautiful country. 

 

 

Though I visited Switzerland on my own over the years, the thought of moving back never really entered my mind. I did have a two month stint there where I was planning on staying for a year to work, but that whole mess didn't really work out....chalk it up to being an unrealistic twenty two year old at the time. ;)

Justin and I went together for the first time (he had never been) on our honeymoon. It was an amazing trip. We talked about it often after....toyed with the idea of moving there (doesn't everyone do that after an amazing unrealistic trip somewhere lovely?)....which we always shot down as being crazy! Who does that? Just moves to another country? Crazy adventurous people that we are not!

To keep it (somewhat) short....after an insanely hard first year of being parents, we took a good long look at our life together. Talked about what works and what doesn't in a really frank and honest way. The dream that we thought we wanted, wasn't what we wanted anymore....and that was hard to admit. It just didn't suit us and our wants & needs had definitely changed since becoming parents. 

I remember driving back from a city outing (two hours away from home) with Justin and Felix asleep in the car seat in the back...I can't remember our conversation exactly, but Justin made a joking remark about moving to Switzerland....and I didn't scoff....or snort....my thoughtful silence took him by complete surprise. In that two hour ride home, we basically decided to change our life course. :)

We also decided that quite frankly, "five year plans" don't work for us. Things change, life happens (no pun intended) and we are done putting ourselves under that pressure. It works for a lot of people...not us though....and that is okay. We still have goals mind you, but they are okay to change. We now have A LOT of plans in our pockets....some we might use, some we might not.

When we told some family and friends of our plan to move to Switzerland, some were supportive, some confused, some not-so-supportive, some asked good questions....some not-so-good questions ;) ....it actually didn't matter to us...we were done trying to please people. You really have to stop giving a shit at some point in your life....we were slowly heading that way for a few years now, and now it is official... ;) 

So to slowly sum up this massive post....after months of crazy research about living abroad & getting all my papers updated, getting a passport for Felix, getting my marriage & name updated etc... we decided to take the plunge. We sold most of our furniture and donated a lot of things (we now have about 32 boxes and 5 pieces of odd things in storage) gave up our house, moved to a different province to rent out part of my mom's house, Justin is going back to school this coming August to get his teaching certificate (it will just be a 10 month program for him), he is learning German, we both work now and have Felix in daycare. We are lining all our ducks up in a row so to speak. We hope to start looking for work abroad Spring 2014. Justin hopes to find work teaching at an International school....more than likely in Zurich. Are we a little nuts? Probably. Excited? Most definitely.

Some of the things we LOVE about Switzerland...

* We have family over there too! 

* The natural beauty

* The pace of life

* How close it is to other countries (lots of weekend trips in our future!)

* The FOOD!!!

*The school system

* How things are approached with common sense (not that they aren't here as well, but I find it is a lot more common over there (my opinion only)

* The transportation system....I don't drive, and over there, I am not missing out on anything by not driving, the rail system is so well mapped out!

***I think I will expand on these in a later post sometime....this one is already packed with things! ;)

This is just the tip of the iceberg....and this is not to say that Canada is not amazing and that we don't have an equally long list of things we LOVE about Canada....it's just time for a new adventure for us....with lots of visits back to Canada for sure :)

Do you have any adventures planned?