Moving to Zurich - where to live?

[heather1]

Hi, In May my husband starts his new job in Zurich and we (me and boys 4 and 6) are coming along too. He will be working next to the station Zurich Oerlikon.
My DH doesnt want to do more than a 40 minute commute door to door. When my DC are old enough for school they will be going locally, not to an international school. I also wouldnt mind being in an area with an expat community. But I dont really want to be in the middle of the city centre.
Any help you could give me with this would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Heather

We lived on the Zimmerbeg side of the lake - Adliswil, Langnau, Kilchberg, Thalwil, Horgen etc all have large expat communities and fast train links but bear in mind most will attend International school (hours/term dates often differ). This is known as the silver coast and rents are less expensive than the other side of the lake , knwon as the gold coast! You may find that the eldest at least should be in Kindergarten on arrival, so you'd need to laiise with the local Gemeinde of where you live about a place for him , even if for just a few weeks. There are Yahoo expat groups covering CH, Zurich, Zimmerberg and Zug and for those using local schools which you may want to join.

If he is driving, avoid living the other side of the Hirzel, same goes if he is using the train, I don't think there is a station there.
The Albis' are nice, although the roads are windy and it can be a bit hair raising driving through the snow for the first time.

Thanks for the advice. It will give me something to tell the relocation company.

We used to like in a village on the Rhine, half an hour from oerlikon. I guess you could find loads of lovely places to live close than half an hour, but the kindergarten was fantastic, the village magical. My kids used to walk through the vineyards along the banks of the Rhine on their way to school.sigh. Wonderful.

Hope you love it. I did. I'd go back like a shot, except I can't cos dh won't. Sob.

Hi, we moved to Zurich 2 years ago, DH works near Oerlikon. We wanted to live on the silver coast but it was too expensive for us. The relocation agent thought a 30min commute was crazy and thought we should live in a large block in a town near the airport. So we ended up finding our own place in a village in the Albis region on homegate.ch and the relocation agent sorted out the application.

It was hard at first as none of us spoke German and our village doesn't really have an expat community. Now we've learnt enough German to get by we love it here and the kids are happy in the local school and kindergarten.

In canton Zurich kindergarten is now compulsory for children who turn 4 by the end of April, and they start in the August.

Good luck finding a place!

Since you say your husband is working next to Oerlikon station, it may make sense to take a look at a tranport map to start with, seeing how far you could be from Oerlikon in 40 minutes. Something like this....

mappery.com/map-of/Zurich-Transit-Map

Local schools are a great choice, especially with children so young, they will end up trilingual English/German/Swiss German plus surely a good knowledge of French too, if you stay long enough.

We love Zurich in Summer, it must have one of the highest concentrations of outdoor swimming pools / river pools / lake pools of anywhere in Switzerland.

Hello. My DH works close to Oerlikon. We live on the "Gold Coast" and my DH gets the train every morning - it's easy and very reliable.

There are lots of nice communities within a 40 mins distance. As a rule of thumb, the further you get away from Zürich, the lower the rent. Do look into Zollikon, Küsnacht, Herrliberg, Feldmeilen etc.

We have been moving around quite a lot and have found that relocation agents are more helpful in negotiating contracts and sorting other paper work, but you really should browse the letting web sites yourself to make sure your criteria are met.

Good luck with the move!