Registering with the Commune of Pully

Tomorrow is a very big day. We will register with our commune: Pully (POO-yee). This is the big event that will allow us to do things like register our car, buy train passes, get a driver's license, open a bank account, get a cell phone, and most important get permission to receive our Permit B -- our Swiss residency permit. Tomorrow morning, we won't actually receive the Permit B, but if we're lucky and assertive enough, we will walk out with a "letter of attestation," which will still allow us to do these things. The actual Permit B will come (hopefully) in a few weeks.

Switzerland is unique because it really is a confederation of individual states (cantons) which are a further confederation of communes (towns or villages, basically). It's really the dream of most of my Republican friends, because the federal government does not have very strong powers. Our registration and residency, for example, is really driven by the commune and the canton. In fact, any significant federal law changes generally require a direct referendum of all of the citizens. Unlike in the US, however, every citizen is required by law to vote. And, apparently, a typical referendum can run into the dozens of pages. So, in any case, while we will have a Swiss residency permit, it is really authorized by the canton of Vaud (Voe) acting on behalf of the commune of Pully.

Tomorrow is also a big day because, assuming we get a letter of attestation, we hope to open our Swiss bank account and then meet with an insurance agent to get insurance. (What insurance? A lot of insurance. That may be a topic for another post.) Opening a Swiss bank account is really nothing like you see in the movies, or maybe it is if you have a few million dollars you want to deposit, which we obviously do not! Credit Suisse is out, because they don't give credit cards to Americans. We have heard that the cantonal bank (BCV) has a quota for the number of Americans they'll allow to open accounts. Perhaps we'll be lucky since we'll be meeting with them on January 4. Or, perhaps we'll go the route of basically all of the expats we know and open with UBS. I don't think they'll be very impressed when we want to open an account with...hmm, maybe $500?

So, I guess we'll close with a little bit about our commune or village of Pully. Pully is basically an inner-ring suburb of Lausanne. We can drive to central Lausanne in about 10 minutes, or be at the Gare de Lausanne (Lausanne train station) with a 2 minute train ride from our nearest train station, Pully-Nord (about a 5 minute walk). Pully has about 16,000 residents, and about a quarter of those are foreign nationals. It's somewhat unique in that it has two train stations: Gare de Pully and Gare de Pully-Nord. The Pully village center is located on the downhill side of Gare de Pully. Everything around here is on a hill sloping down to Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), either a steep hill or a really steep hill. Our apartment is located up on the hillside looking over the town and the lake. It would take us about 5 minutes to walk down to Pully-Nord, another 5-10 minutes to walk down to Pully Center, and another 15 minutes or so to walk down to the lakeshore. Coming back up the hill, you may want to extend those times! I guess we're ending with our apartment. So, if you're lucky and it's a clear day (we've had one of those since we got here), you can look out from our living room over the town of Pully, across Lake Leman, and see the French Alps looming over the horizon. At night you can see the lights of Evian across the water. It's really not a bad place to be....