During the past weeks, I have gone through highs and lows. I honestly still don’t know whether moving to the Swiss Alps will be our biggest failure or success. It’s certainly one thing – scary. To give you a little insight here is what went through my mind the first weeks after I found out about the move to Switzerland:

Week 1: Confusion

OMG, OMG what to do? I cannot leave all my life behind. I have my stuff here. How are we going to move all our things? We cannot do it! But then again what if it all works out? I am so confused.

Week 2: Dreamy bliss

I want it right now! I don’t want to wait another month and a half – I want to go now! If for some reason the whole thing was canceled I would be so disappointed.  For goodness sake, I have an opportunity to fulfill my lifelong dream. If this doesn’t happen I will regret it.

Oh, look and there is this wonderful flat on offer only 15 minutes from my partner’s new work. The place has a huge balcony and windows with stunning views of mountains, and there even is a fireplace! It’s twice the size of our London flat and it’s a lot cheaper. I cannot believe this is happening!

Week 3: Reality sets in

The lovely flat (I already imagined myself living in) was taken…Why are we doing this? We have a tenancy agreement in London until 2019! What if they make us pay the rent until the end of tenancy and not re-let the place. That would make a total of £15,000! Plus, we have a wedding to plan and pay for. We should have stayed in London and saved up.

And how are we going to find a place to live in Switzerland? There are barely any rental offers because of the skiing season. We have millions of issues to fix, but so far – no concrete answers. This is totally bonkers.

Week 4: When life gives you rotten lemons…

I guess things cannot get any lower than this: We have to move out of London flat by the end of January, so my partner will fly out to Switzerland and look for a place. He will have 5 days to secure a tenancy agreement. But then…life happened.

On the day my partner was supposed to fly out there was snowfall in the UK, which means that the whole country doesn’t know how to function anymore. Of course, his flight was canceled.

The airline did reschedule my partner’s flight for the very next morning. But SURPRISE! The other flight was canceled too. UK, how hard is it to prepare for a little snow? I understand that it is not feasible for you to maintain snow machines for the roads, but airports? Come on! Now, we have lost a lot of money when it’s already expensive enough to move to a different country. Not even mentioning the fact, that we might be homeless after January.

We don’t have time or money for my partner to fly out again, so we decided to take a big leap of faith and sign a tenancy agreement for a flat that was advertised on a Facebook group. Let’s hope that is not a scam. Otherwise, we will arrive in Switzerland with all our stuff but no place to turn to.

This article was written in December 2017.