Ten things you only understand after living in Switzerland

Before moving to Switzerland, you have the essentials: mountains, chocolate, promising salaries and trains with what appears to be a personal commitment to the timetable.

The proper induction begins after you have unpacked. This bit is absent from the brochure. You discover that the scenery is magnificent, although enjoying it with a clear conscience may depend on resolving a small administrative matter first. An excellent quality of life is available. The operating instructions are in the adjacent drawer.

What follows is an outsider’s field guide, with a certain amount of satirical licence. Switzerland varies between cantons, towns and even neighbouring blocks of flats. The ring binder enjoys rather more national consistency.

1. Punctuality gradually becomes a personality

At first you are simply grateful for reliable public transport. Then you learn exactly when to leave the flat. Then you check your watch. Then you check it again.

One day a tram is three minutes late and you find yourself staring at the display as though it has brought the constitutional settlement into question.

You once understood ‘on my way’ as a generous philosophical category. Now you would like the driver’s coordinates.

When snow disrupts the service, the problem is not merely the delay. You are required to improvise. You have not improvised for six months. You appear to have forgotten the password.

Integration is under way. Regrettably, it has got inside.

2. The salary is splendid. Other people have noticed

Your first Swiss salary produces a brief but convincing impression of landed wealth. You open the banking app and imagine saying ‘my round’ without performing a private calculation.

Then come the rent, health insurance, groceries and dinner out. All punctually. None wishes to leave you alone with that money.

This does not mean you cannot live very well. You certainly can. It means your landlord and dentist take a touching interest in your professional advancement.

The gross salary is a promise. The net salary is an opening negotiation. Disposable income is what remains once Switzerland has welcomed you properly.

You had pictured prosperity as a personal achievement. It turns out to be rather a team effort.

3. The peace and quiet is lovely until you contribute a noise

For the first few nights, you sleep beautifully. No horns outside. No motorbike defending its right to be heard across three postcodes. No couple conducting a public inquiry into their relationship at two in the morning.

Then you drop a fork.

You stand perfectly still. You listen to the building. You consider whether to pick it up or hand yourself in.

Nobody has knocked. Nobody has complained. The arrangement has reached a more sophisticated stage: you have become your own downstairs neighbour.

On Sunday, the thought of using a drill prompts you to prepare a defence before you have selected the bit. The picture goes up the following week. Silence has prevailed without troubling itself to attend.

4. The block of flats is a small state. The laundry is its ministry

If your building has a shared laundry and a booking rota, washing your pants acquires an unexpectedly geopolitical dimension.

Your name occupies a slot between two times. You have territory. It expires at six.

Arriving late requires negotiation. Leaving the filter dirty creates evidence. Moving another person’s belongings calls for diplomatic skills your CV had not previously advertised.

The neighbours may be perfectly charming. It is the rota that has the difficult temperament.

Eventually, you master the arrangement. Your shirts are clean, the filter is immaculate and you possess conflict-resolution skills which would justify a modest consultancy fee.

You came to put a wash on. You have emerged qualified to chair a summit.

5. Even your rubbish has an administrative career

You used to ask where something should go. Now you enquire into its status.

Paper, cardboard, glass, the appropriate bag, the appropriate day: the local rules make sense and do useful work. Remembering all of them at once is the part for which you are still on probation.

You study a cardboard packet with a plastic window as a border official might examine an unusual passport. You separate the components. You check your work. You allow yourself a little satisfaction.

Someone explains that the cardboard should have been folded differently.

Before buying anything, you now consider the complexity of eventually parting with it. This is your first relationship in which you have researched the divorce before agreeing to meet.

6. A spontaneous coffee requires reasonable notice

‘We really must meet up.’

You hear a warm expression of goodwill. The other person opens a calendar.

There are advantages. Appointments are kept, afternoons are not spent waiting for vaguely possible arrangements, and people can be relied upon. You need only accept that the desire to have a drink together requires a colour code.

You suggest tomorrow. A short silence follows, during which you seem to have proposed relocating the lake.

A date is found. It is far enough away to allow a small change of personality, but the coffee will happen.

When you finally meet, you have a lovely time. Carried away by the occasion, you book the next outbreak of spontaneity there and then.

7. Courtesy and consent occupy separate departments

They listen. They thank you. They fully appreciate your circumstances.

For a moment, you think it has gone rather well.

Then you discover that appreciation was comprehensive, whereas approval was never on the agenda. Your request has received a warm welcome in the department authorised to turn it down.

A British reader may feel on familiar ground here. We too have devoted considerable cultural effort to saying something unhelpful very pleasantly. There is nevertheless much to admire in the Swiss finish.

You leave feeling respected and defeated, unable to identify quite when the one became the other.

The refusal was tucked inside an immaculate sentence. You thanked them for the wrapping.

8. Integration means knowing when to laugh

You learn German. You do the exercises. One day you order something without switching languages and experience the quiet triumph of a person who has annexed a very small province.

Then, in German-speaking Switzerland, a conversation begins in dialect.

You recognise one word. Possibly your name. Everything else proceeds with the confidence of a train you have failed to board.

People may meet you halfway, and often do. Still, classroom German and the language of a group of friends are not always quite the same service. Everyone laughs. You decide whether to join in or request the minutes.

The breakthrough comes when you understand the joke a second before the collective laughter.

At last, you belong. Naturally, everyone goes on holiday the following morning.

9. The scenery is terribly inconvenient for your argument

You have prepared a serious case. Living costs. Rigidity. The faint impression that even Thursday must somehow be earned.

Then you step outside. There is the lake, the mountain view, the clear air. The tram arrives. The footpath is properly maintained. Somebody you barely know helps you without making a production of it.

You must concede, with some irritation, that quite a lot is wonderful. And not merely for the photographs.

This is where the cage becomes interesting. If the place were uniformly dreadful, leaving would be straightforward. Instead, it offers substantial reasons to stay while you try to work out what, exactly, it wants in return.

The view does not settle the argument. It deprives you of the considerable comfort of always being right.

10. The post knows you better than your friends do

You have mastered the laundry, the glass and the calendar. You can even buy a cappuccino without immediately checking the account. You begin to relax.

The letter arrives.

In German-speaking Switzerland it may be written in a sort of German your language course tactfully avoided. The paper is crisp. The layout is impeccable. The references at the top suggest that, somewhere, you exist in several copies.

In our little administrative tragedy, a reply is required within five days. Understanding the question would take six.

You ring. They ask for the reference number. You read it with the care of a person defusing something. They explain that you must complete the enclosed form. No form is enclosed. They advise you to request one.

For a moment, you consider writing ‘I was only hoping to live here’.

Instead, you create a folder on your computer.

You call it ‘Important documents’. It already exists.

Inside is another: ‘To be clarified’.

The actual eleventh thing

Eventually, you realise that you have learnt it all. You arrive on time. You separate the cardboard. You schedule the coffee. You keep the envelope with the letter, just in case.

The system no longer needs to explain the arrangement. You explain it to the newcomers.

And as you say ‘that’s how it works here’, you hear a composure in your own voice which you do not remember ordering.

Switzerland, The Golden Cage grows out of that moment too: when comfort stops being merely an advantage and begins to instruct you in the person you are expected to become. Work, bureaucracy and everyday life, observed by a foreigner who stayed long enough to become part of the joke.

At least the letter came with a deadline. Making sense of the rest took a book.