Well you are paying to transport my mountain bike…
I’m fine with that, cheap entertainment and you should have a great time riding.
Any idea what the embassy wine budget is?
.
Several years back K&L got a stash of surprisingly good aged Swiss Merlots…but their original retail prices were even more surprising (expensive). Many Swiss wine drinkers plan driving trips through France, Italy, and Germany. They fill their car trunks with cases of wine purchased directly from wineries. Have fun, Eric!
Even though we don’t see many Swiss wines over here, they are VERY good and the wine region on the hills over Lac Leman are soooooo picturesque.
The region is small and most of the wines are consumed in Europe.
Yeah, I went to a wine shop in Basel recently and was shocked at how seemingly the majority of what was offered was Italian (mostly from Alto Adige, but still).
I studied abroad during college in Switzerland, and have had family who have worked on long term assignments in London. I would say first and for most to open a Swiss account, and open a CHF credit card. While it may be easier to use your USD CC, if you are going to have to transfer CHF to USD to pay USD CC it could be very expensive when exchange rates are not in your favor. When the exchange rate is bad and you use your USD CC you are paying visa/mc an inflated exchange rate, then buying undervalued USD to pay off your card. This becomes very expensive and annoying. Also, having a local bank will be very necessary if you misplace your a card or your card is damaged. It may be challenging now to open an account with a large international bank, but in Switzerland there is always a bank willing to do business with you.
On the fun or entertainment front, there is a coop farm somewhere near Geneva that has breakfasts on the weekend in the summer. They grow nearly all the produce, and ALL the dairy. When I visited in college I cannot recall if we paid them off to allow us to open a few bottles of Champagne but we did. I am unable to find it but if you are interested PM me and I can ask a Swiss friend for more information on it. To sober up after eating we decided to pay to pick out own berries. I didn’t understand why it was going to be something like 24 CHF a small basket before we picked, but after we picked and I had eaten 1 basket for every basket picked I understood.
Most importantly, when visiting Geneva please take a picture, while drinking a fantastic bottle of wine, in a public park, in front of le jette d’eau. There are no restrictions stopping you from drinking in public parks, while not drunk. A beautiful picnic is always necessary in Switzerland during the summer.
I am insanely jealous but cannot imagine taking a job in Switzerland and only being able to stay there 2 or 3 years. I wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions please PM me.
Eric,
personally I would not move too much wine except the stuff that needs to be drunk or that you want to share with friends.
From where you are in Berne the possibilities to go directly to wineries and buy wine are endless. The Burgundy is about 2 hours by car, Chateauneuf 4, Barolo country also about 4. Then you have the Jura next door (1 hour) and of course all the wines of Switzerland, and this is a bloody small country. I take the train every week from Geneva to St. Gallen, this is the longest journey you can make on the Swiss railways and it takes all of 4 hours…
Cheers
Christian
Christian, the challenge is that we need to pour American wines at the embassy…
In this case they should pay for the transport ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
But seriously, you could probably acquire a lot of wine here that you would not find in the US. Think about storage when you rent a house in Bern. A house with a bunker ( most have one) is ideal.
Let me know when you have settled down, then we drive down to CdP for the harvest!
Cheers
Christian
Well, you are already making headlines 
The Swiss newspapers are all enchanted that the new modern female ambassador swore the oath on an e-reader and not a book: Neue US-Botschafterin in Bern schwört auf E-Reader | Tages-Anzeiger
German only, sorry…
I guess thats you in the beige suit.
Cheers
Christian
I have lived in Europe both independently and working for the State Department, and I think you will be surprised by the support services at the Embassy. It depends upon the post, but most Embassies have cashiers where you can cash personal US checks and have ATMs on Embassy grounds that will dole out dollars and the local currency. In a place like Switzerland, however, the banking system is so good that maybe they won’t have all the banking services that might exist in less developed places, but they will still have ways for your to manage your funds. I would suggest writing the CLO (community liaison officer) at the Embassy. They will have all of this information about what is available and what isn’t. Once you have that, you can fill in the gaps with what you feel is lacking for your needs.
I know a lot of advice here comes from non-government US citizens who have lived abroad, but it really is a completely different beast once you are in the Embassy system. I just put that out there as you will have much more options that a regular expat will not have.
I would just make sure to have a couple US credit cards with no foreign transaction fees. They are becoming much more common and a lot of them have no annual fees. With suitable credit cards, ATMs and check cashing privileges, you may find that a national bank account isn’t an immediate need or a need at all. Most state department employees do not set up bank accounts at each country they go to.
With that said, I do think it is nice to have a local bank account in some instances, but in many European countries a bank account is also necessary for many services, especially renting an apartment. This will not apply to you though. As an employee of the US Government with your housing paid for and diplomatic plates on your car, there is probably going to be no need for you to have a national bank account for administrative reasons, it would only be the minor conveniences of not having to sign credit card slips and the ease of using debit terminals.
Because of your wife’s position, bureaucratically things will move pretty fast I assume, but also keep in mind that you will not even be able to apply for a bank account until you have all of your credentialing/residency status finalized through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after you arrive. There might be some lag – or not that much depending upon their bureaucracy. There is also the issue that you will be paid in USD, so if you start a CHF bank account, you will still have to deposit dollars and incur exchange fees when it is converted to CHF. Of course, you could always get a dollar denominated account to avoid that.
Another consideration is a bank that has no ATM fees. Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking gives you free ATM usage at any ATM worldwide, so you never pay any ATM fees. With no-transaction fee credit cards and a free ATM usage, you would avoid most of the common currency expenses of living in a foreign country and being paid in dollars.
As for phones, I would consider a VoIP provider. You can port numbers to Ooma (even cell numbers). I am pretty sure with the premier service you can port two numbers too, so technicality you could keep your cell number and landline and have them both ring in Switzerland. There is also vonage and magic jack, but I am not sure of their porting services. The bad thing about porting your cell number though will be that you can’t just reactivate your service when you come back to the US on business or vacation, so you may just want to do it with the landline number.
But once again, I think you will be surprised how little you will use your US cell phone past the first few months, and it may not be worth maintaining as an active number for the longterm. It will be expensive to keep paying monthly bills and have all the required international data and roaming plans so you don’t get (screwed) charged every time someone texts you, or a push notification comes in. Also, people just call you A LOT less because of the time change. I know phone companies used to put numbers on hold for government employees going abroad, so you may want to check that out. There also used to be parking services that would hold your number and forward calls, but I haven’t looked into these recently.
Lastly, you may want to consider a common Swiss bank that is also in the US such as UBS. Start an account up while in the US, get a portion of your pay direct deposited into it, and you are off with a US and Swiss bank account. They might legally be different entities, but I am sure it would makes some things smoother when setting up an account in Switzerland. I used to use UBS ATMs all the time in Geneva as it seemed they always worked better with my US bank cards.
k.
That is my son. You can see the whole family here: Vice President Biden swears in Suzi LeVine as the U.S. Amb… | Flickr