Hard to believe that almost one year ago to the day, we moved to Zurich. The assignment was for one year and man has this year flown by. We tried to see and do as much as we could exploring Zurich, Switzerland and the rest of Europe. And I’d have to say that we’ve done a pretty good job. But Europe is a big place and there is just so much more to see. I feel like it's just the tip of the iceberg. So what I’m basically saying is that one year was not long enough to live in Europe and that’s why we’ve decided to stay at least one more year. The only catch is that we weren’t able to stay in Zurich (there were some office space issues for me at Google) so we’re off to Paris! I have basically localized here and will become a French employee at Google. Eventhough I’m heading to the Google Paris office I will still be doing the same exact job as I have been doing all year. I’ll just come off of assignment and become a local employee.
Nate’s company continues to be extremely flexible with him and his job so he had no problem transferring to the Thomson Reuters Paris office as well. In fact, they probably welcomed it since it’s most likely more expensive for them to employ him here in Switzerland. In any case, they are flexible which really works out well for us.
Here’s the situation, I now have my French visa and am moving to Paris on Saturday, June 30. Just a week away! Nate’s company is processing his French visa for him and was a little bit slower in the process. Therefore Nate is just waiting on one more approval before he can go pick up his visa at the French Consulate in Geneva. It’s possible that this could all happen next week, which would be great as Nate could then come out there with me. But if not, I’m thinking he should only be a week behind me.
And then once we get to Paris, the fun part of moving to a new country begins. We will be in temporary housing for up to 60 days so will start looking for an apartment (luckily we have the help of a home search consultant), we need to get our residence visas, open a bank account, apply for a social security number, etc. The fun doesn’t end. We look forward to being settled so that we can start to fully enjoy Paris!
We are both extremely excited for this opportunity to live in and explore Paris and get to know it as a local. We are sad to leave Zurich and would have been just as happy to stay here. But I suppose things happen for a reason and now our European adventure continues in Paris.
We have loved Zurich though and Switzerland in general. As we may have mentioned in previous posts, you can’t beat the quality of life here. Nate calls it the country club. It’s clean, the air is fresh, everything is so organized and on time, the mountains are super close (Nate will definitely miss being just an hour away from skiing).....overall it’s an absolutely wonderful place to live. Paris should be an interesting change. For one thing, I keep hearing how the French hate the Americans and refuse to speak English. The Google Paris office is definitely less International than Zurich so there will probably be less English and more French spoken among the cubes. That’s ok though. We are in it for the experience and are ready to immerse ourselves in everything French. In fact, we have both already started Rosetta Stone. Nate at least took some French in college where I’ve never had any classes in it. We are hoping to get to a conversational level at the minimum and not embarrass ourselves. We shall see.
In any case, Paris here we come!!! Let the adventure continue!
Auf Wiedersehen Zurich and Bonjour Paris!
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