Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Zürich bureaucracy

Yesterday I had to run a couple of errants in the morning. First I had to register at the local Kreisbüro – which is your local municipality – I guess they need to know where to allocate the taxes .

Then I had to open a bank account (in order to get paid). I must say I felt kind of important opening a bank account in Switzerland! Zürich is a banking town, the call their bankers the Zürich gnomes – sort of made me thing of Harry Potter and Gringotts. One thing that I did learn is that, contrary to popular belief, Switzerland has never had 'unnamed accounts' like everyone thinks. What happens is that if you bring in a suitcase full of money you get a personal banker and a lawyer, and then the lawyer is the contact for the account and your name remains hidden. But since I forgot my suitcase, I had to give them my name :)

And finally I had to go and get a monthly tram pass. I'll blog about the trams one of these days.

I must say that everyone is pretty helpful here.

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