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I moved from California to Lausanne and I highly recommend it. Quality of life is truly outstanding, and the high level of infrastructure development makes liv
by kyboren 13y ago
I moved from California to Lausanne and I highly recommend it. Quality of life is truly outstanding, and the high level of infrastructure development makes living here very convenient.
The biggest problem is, as the article gently suggests, housing, which is almost impossible for foreigners to find (even with asset sheets in the hundreds of thousands of USD). Affordable housing is essentially nonexistent. Every now and then voter initiatives crop up to change the situation (remove building restrictions, reduce bureaucracy, etc.), but the problem only seems to get worse.
Fortunately, an all-Switzerland unlimited travel card is only ~$4k/year for adults and ~$3k/year for <25yo's. Given the reliability and extensive reach of the public transport network here, it's definitely possible (and even fairly regular) to live in somewhat 'remote' villages and towns and still commute to work in <1hr. It's pretty cool to have the ability to live in, say, Saint-Maurice (with Bronze Age roots) and still be in the door at work within 1h15m.
This is made more palatable by the extensive fiber network available in Switzerland: multiple providers are now offering 1Gb/s connections in Lausanne proper, and the reach continues to expand. Some more-remote locations are still only served by the Swisscom state pseudomonopoly, but service is usually still reasonably cheap and line rates still reasonably high.
The mobile offerings here offer real competition, and along with the small size of the market, make cell service cheap and fast.
Finally, EPFL itself is highly ranked and has some top talent, not only in faculty (among others, includes Arjen Lenstra, Martin Odersky, Ed Bugnion, George Candea, and Katerina Argyraki), but also in PhD and MS students. EPFL also has regular workshops for entrepreneurship and actively encourages commercialization.
There's a lot of uncertainty about the new immigration mandate, which will almost certainly hurt Switzerland's attractiveness to entrepreneurs, but the ETH/EPF domain will probably not be affected; if you're a prospective graduate student interested in entrepreneurship, EPFL is definitely worth a look!
- cyphunk 13y agocommute >1h is one of the main reasons most move away from the valley. I agree though, moving away from the US is a breath of fresh air on living standards when it comes to culture and public transport. But you can pick other cities and countries to get this. Cities that have comparable burgeoning tech scenes of their own. Berlin comes to mind. All the scrappy push of a high tech culture without all the fascist government baggage of say a US, CH or Israel.
- kyboren 13y agoThat's fair, but it is still possible to find something closer. And a 1hr commute is a lot different stuck in traffic on the 680 or 101 than working on your laptop in a train.
- cyphunk 13y agoi'm just saying: the commuters paradox (described by two swiss) is known to have a high(est) negative effect on happiness: http://brunofrey.com/articles/C_481_08.pdf http://brunofrey.com/articles/C_481_08.pdf
- collyw 13y agoI am amazed that people are saying that < 1.15 hour is good for commuting, yet think fibre optic is great. How much time do you actually spend waiting for downloads? I live ten minute cycle from work. Central Barcelona. OK, my apartment is small and expensive relative to wages, but I can't stand commuting. It really does seem like a waste of your life.
- balladeer 13y agoI would like to point out sth that is obvious that Switzerland is (emphasis) an extremely costly place to live in. When you talk about a place or city that is known by monikers like "silicon valley", or "city of dreams", it is imperative that people who are part of that culture actually live there. What you described above can be a "silicon valley of commuters" in true sense, or a the "city of dreams" who have the money and want to make more of it. Because I think it doesn't make much of a difference for a start-up, or bunch of guys with deep pockets, to live in SF, Berlin, or Bangalore as long as they can do what they want. Now, if your target audience was people with asset sheets in hundreds of thousands of dollars then that's an entirely different story. > EPFL is definitely worth a look Fingers crossed :-)