Monday, July 15, 2013

We’re Moving!

Q and I have decided to make the first major change to our lives as a married couple and move. We will be packing up our cozy San Francisco apartment and heading for a new adventure in Zurich, Switzerland! By the end of August we will be starting the next chapter of our lives in our new home town.


There were several small reasons that led us to this major decision. The main reason is that we were ready for a change and a new adventure. Every time we go to Europe we daydream about living there; taking the train to the ski slopes, hopping over to Italy for the weekend, riding our bikes all over town, learning a new language and culture. At this point in our lives there is nothing holding us back from giving it a shot.

It was hard finding a city that could follow up the beautiful city of San Francisco. We love our quiet and quaint neighborhood, our cozy apartment (minus our irritable downstairs neighbor), walking to restaurants and cafes and the views - oh the views. We had a discussion about what we wanted in our next city and decided that Zurich could be a nice fit for us. We chose it because it had a lot of what we love - moderately densely populated city, centrally located in Western Europe for easy weekend travel, efficient public transportation, walkability, bike friendliness, close proximity to the mountains, and safety. What pushed us to our final decision was the advantage that Quarup found a good project within Google that fits his interests and qualifications over there. Zurich is home to Google's largest engineering office in Europe. They already started Quarup's transfer process and are setting up our visas.

I do not have a job lined up. One of the main hurdles in securing a job will be language. Large international companies like Google use English - but smaller offices may require a proficiency in the regional language. The common local dialect is Swiss German and the locally used written language is High German. This means I'll be taking my language courses more seriously than I had with Spanish, French or Portuguese. We have started taking elementary High German class here in San Francisco in order to get a little leg up.

We don’t know how long we’ll stay in Zurich but we’re going to give it our best try. A year would be the minimum - more likely two years. Depending on how we integrate with the community and feel about the city, we might stay longer but at that point in time we would also be willing to try another city in Europe or in the USA.

We plan on keeping everyone up to date through our blog on the process of moving overseas and getting settled into our new home town. And of course, if you’re in the Zurich area or just miss us - come visit! We would love to share our daily adventures.

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