Homebirth in Switzerland

[Bellabaz]

Anyone here in Switzerland? If so can you tellme how it works for homebirth there? We will be moving in May/June and we weren't considering CH before but dp found a job that interests him so now it is becoming a serious possibility. Is hb common, is it allowed by the medical system, is it expensive? TIA

[calynde]

Home birth is no problem in Switzerland, and is even paid for by general health insurance (which is mandatory). Good luck with the job!

[Bellabaz]

Thanks for the info! How is it there in general? i have been there for the day here and there (when I lived in Italy) but never for any extended stay. And living somewhere is so different from visiting.

Do they offer language programs to help foreigners learn German? Do you know off hand if they have partner visas (my and dp are not married. We may get married when we go to Italy)?

[calynde]

Originally Posted by Bellabaz

Thanks for the info! How is it there in general? i have been there for the day here and there (when I lived in Italy) but never for any extended stay. And living somewhere is so different from visiting.

Do they offer language programs to help foreigners learn German? Do you know off hand if they have partner visas (my and dp are not married. We may get married when we go to Italy)?

It's an amazingly beautiful country...and the standard of living is great. It can be a tough social climate for some, though...it depends a lot on your personality I think. And where you live in the country. There are plenty of ways to go about learning German if you plan to live in the Germanic part, but since the people actually speak a dialect of German, it can take a VERY long time to learn.

I am fairly sure they do not offer partner visas.

good luck!

[LPBC]

Hi,
My experience so far with Switzerland has been good. We are only here for like almost 8 weeks, so not that long. So far we haven't run into difficult or hard things.
My partner and I aren't married, but we haven't had any problem with the kids and me living here. There is a but to that. I am Dutch, which makes things in general much easier because of treaties.

I also think the country is gorgeous. The standard of living is very good. There is an abundance of organic produce, dairy & meat available at every supermarket.

I already speak German, but not the German they use in this area. So far everybody has been very nice about it and just spoke German to me and not their local dialect, which is different all over the place. There is no one Swiss German. Here in Canton Bern there are already 4 different dialects that I know of and that only in the last couple of weeks that we have lived here.

When we registered ourselves we right away got a leaflet on learning German and also on learning to speak the local dialect.
We are going to try to get a teacher to come to our house and teach the lot of us. But first we need to get some other stuff sorted.

HTH