Throughout my journey of posting content in the past couple months, I’ve gotten lots of feedback, compliments, but most of all, questions.
What is it like living in Switzerland? What is the weirdest thing you’ve encountered? How about a culture shock moment?
All of these are very good questions, so I’ve decided to answer them all in today’s post.
Also, before I get a “but you’re only half Indonesian” or “but you’re half German, that’s not much different than the Swiss” comment, let me give you a little background.
Yes, I am half German and half Indonesian. However, 10 years ago my family and I moved here to Switzerland. Naturally, you’d think we moved here from Germany or Indonesia – well, no. I’m what you call a TCK, a Third Culture Kid. The direct definition being: a child who grows up in a culture different from the one in which his or her parents grew up. (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
Yes, my mom is Indonesian, and my dad is German, but I spent the first 14 years of my life in Uzbekistan. A beautiful country in Central Asia, rich in history, culture, and flavorful dishes. So, at the age of 14, my family moved from Central Asia to Europe. Culture Shock much? You have no idea.
I recently had a conversation with 2 of my other Indonesian friends that moved to Switzerland for different reasons. We discussed the questions you guys had for me throughout my posts to see whether we had similarities and differences in our experiences.
So here’s what we discovered:
The first impression of Switzerland was pretty much the same for all of us; the 3 words that kept coming up were: beautiful, clean, expensive. Beautiful in the sense that, there’s greenery, mountains, lakes, all things gorgeous nature, literally everywhere.
The biggest culture shock moment was the fast-paced life, punctuality included. In the Indonesian culture, as mentioned in a pervious post, we tend to be not very punctual, and that’s truthfully me being nice about it. Indonesians enjoy taking things slow, not rushing their day and not setting time limits to things – they like to take things as they come or go.
The biggest difference we noticed between the Swiss and the Indonesian is the directness the former tend to have. Indonesians will sugarcoat anything and beat around the bush before actually telling you what’s what. Also, my friend mentioned that the Swiss are very polite but tend to be more distant, whereas the Indonesians are also very friendly but rather nosey.
All of us enjoy living in Switzerland for various reasons, though it is very different from home, Asia. We found that the 3 of us really appreciate how clean public areas are, and how orderly everything is to prioritize the people.
We agreed that though we love that we were given the opportunity to live in a country such as Switzerland, nothing beats Indonesian Street-Food, and goodness gracious do we miss it! Not just Street-Food, but our food in general.
So in short, yes living in Switzerland is different and we love it, but we still miss certain aspects of home. In the end, that’s okay because it makes it even more special every time we get to go back to visit, and that’s usually also when I “accidentally” gain 5 kg within 2 weeks.
“3 Indonesians living in Switzerland”… – I hope you enjoyed this little recap of the conversation I had with my friends.
Til then
Valerie
