Greetings, if any of you may divulge some information about moving to Switzerland from Germany?
What are some major and minor differences and how to best approach moving there?
As said above me and my wife got a recommendation to move to Switzerland as a better option to Germany, i’m from the Balkans and my wife is German.
The main reason i’m asking is because if i’m moving there then i’m moving with intent to be a permanent resident, i don’t see a reason to make long term plans on a short term opportunity.


Honestly I wouldn’t think too much about fitting at work. It is somewhat the same as the rest of Europe. I cannot compare to Germany but as a comparison with France the job market is a bit more sane in Switzerland as the country does not push for long university studies and a shit ton of the work force comes from “apprentissage” (alternate between school and work). Whereas in France doing this type of school it is frowned upon and seen as “dumb people not capable of going to university” so you end up with stupid requirement like having a BAC+5 to work as a receptionist in an empty warehouse. Switzerland will put more emphasis on experience and capabilities (but as always, not everywhere, not all companies are the same).
Work is just work, work culture is probably similar to Germany so everything is squared out, mostly. As everywhere, you can find a job where the boss is lame and the management is a shit show. I’ve seen bosses that use company money for drugs and forgot to pay employees but I’ve also seen the opposite. Generally speaking in bigger companies everything is written and respected.
“fitting” and “job culture” is different between Zurich, Geneva or Lugano and I’d say it is more about fitting in life rather than at work.
If you go to Swiss-German, as you (probably) speak hochdeutsch you will have to quickly learn the local switzerdütsch. At first people will adapt to you and speak hochdeutsch, but after a while they will switch to switzerdütsch and assume it is your job to learn it (and yeah, it is). Whereas if you live in Romandie or Ticino, as you don’t speak French or Italian everything will be in English until you are able to speak the local native language (but in the end, yeah you have to do the job of learning the local language same as with switzerdütsch)
Fitting in Switzerland is quite easy according to me, just do the same as the others. If they are quiet in the train, do the same. If they are laughing around a beer, do the same. But the general rules are quite easy; Don’t put your feet on the seat in front of you in public transports, don’t litter, don’t be a dick. After all it’s only about being respectful to people and stuff.
Now for the clichés. Sometimes you can hear about the Röstigraben which don’t really exist but still exist in some ways. If you look at videos from Emily-National or Camille Federale you might often see us, Romands (french-speaking) describe the german-speaking with the word “square” and the hand movements that describe that (and honestly, it’s not always a bad thing to be “squared”, specially in a professional environment). The opposite is they say that we drink too much and like to party.
For example, there is a joke that a former federal counselor (aka, president) said about the French part while in fact he never said that, not publicly tho.
(to read with a strong German accent):
“Les Romands toujours rigoler, jamais travailler.” Meaning: “The Romands always laughing, never working”
All of that are clichés and jokes, in reality we are different but friends. And same goes with foreigners, approx 40% of the total population is not Swiss, that is a huge number for any European country. If they were treated like shit and not accepted by others would they still live here? (and again, you will find some dumb racist fucks, like everywhere with human being. But this is not the norm).
PS: I cannot vouch for the Camille and Emily videos on Watson as I’ve only seen a few in French but the links I gave you are in German and I don’t understand.
I realised i’ll probably have issues at first especially when i watched a video comparing Hochdeutsch and Switzerdütsch and it’ll take some time to absorb the differences.