Living in Zürich is expensive. Zürich is one of the most expensive city in the world, so it is expected that rent is very high. The universities do not offer dorm housing, so students can sometimes struggle finding apartments. The most popular place for students to live is in WOKO housing. WOKO is an organization that offers low cost housing to university students living in the Canton of Zürich. Students register with the housing organization and put in how long they need housing for. WOKO then assigns them a random building that fits their needs. Each building is unique and offers different amenities as well as having different rent. Most exchange students stay in WOKO housing and due to their short stay period are either housed together or in empty spots left by students who moved out earlier than expected. I currently live in a building containing that is mostly exchange students. Each student has their own room in a flat. Each flat has 15 people, 4-5 bathrooms, and one kitchen. There are 6 flats in the building. Because there are mostly exchange students in the building, everyone speaks English. Most of the exchange students are from Australia, Sweden, or China. America is one of the only countries in the world where students move away from home to live in dorms to go to college, so most of the students are living by themselves for the first time. Because of this, it feels a little bit like a freshman dorm.
There are some big differences in how people live in Switzerland vs. America. The first of which is recycling and sustainability. Switzerland is a small country with limited natural resources. Because of this, recycling and sustainable living is taken much more seriously than in America. All trash must be separated into compost, cardboard, metals, glass, and burnable/other waste and must be disposed in specific trash bags called Zürichbags. Trash isn’t put out but taken to the bus stop or other communal area to be disposed of and taken to be recycled. Another big difference are the hours of operations kept by stores. Unlike in America, the Swiss appreciate and enforce giving employees time off. Most stores close at 6pm and groceries close at 7-8pm. Stores open later must pay their employees overtime. By law, no stores outside of the train station are allowed to be open on Sundays without a permit. Sunday is seen as a family and relaxation day and most services are not open besides transportation, hotels, and some other tourist attractions and necessities. As someone who is used to grocery shopping on Sundays, this took a little getting used to; however, once I got used to the system, I began to like the system as it is relaxing.
Because of my situation living in WOKO housing, meeting other exchange students is rather easy, while meeting local Swiss students is rather difficult. Meeting other exchange students is interesting because I get to learn about different countries. They’re all fluent in English and it’s really interesting to learn about parts of the world I haven’t visited. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Switzerland has 4 national languages, none of which are English. Because I am living with native English speaking exchange students, it is easy to get to know them; however, the language barrier becomes a problem when I try to meet people from Switzerland. While I am taking classes in English and most Swiss speak English, it is difficult because I do not speak German and the local language is Swiss German. The way I am meeting local students is through group projects in my classes and the tandem program, which pairs two students who speak different languages so they can help teach each other. Overall, this has been working well for me and I’ve met many new people.
