Introducing... Heidi/the snowmobile

After much debating over whether a car would be a good option here in Switzerland and searching for a car that wouldn't break our Swiss piggy bank, we finally purchased a car over here!  Here she is, by Facebook survey and popular demand her name is either Heidi or the snowmobile (interchangeable depending on whether you ask Ryan or me). She is a 2004 Audi A4 with all wheel drive so that she can attack the snowy mountain roads with her prowess.

A couple of interesting things we discovered about purchasing and owning a car in Switzerland:

1. Swiss people take VERY good care of their things, whether it is an apartment or a car, everything is meticulously maintained. The car we bought is a 2004 and you can barely tell its even been used even once. Even though the Swiss' finicky rules can get annoying sometimes and prices are certainly higher than anywhere else in the world, its times like this where you realize how this translates into everything here being top quality, you will always get quality for your money in this country (which is one of the reasons that Switzerland is always one of the front runners on the quality of life index by country each year).
2. You can lease used cars in Switzerland. We ended up not going this route and purchasing; but, this is often a really attractive idea for expats in the area because it can be very affordable if you don't want to shovel out the purchase price up front and don't mind the financing costs.
3. Due to the price of fuel in Europe, it will still probably be cheaper for us to take trains pretty much anywhere within Switzerland with our half fare card (a special card that lets us get half price on all Swiss train tickets). But for trips to nearby France or Italy which aren't on the Swiss train system, or when guests come to visit, the car is the better option financially. To give an example, a round trip train ticket to the nearby town of Lausanne which is 45 minutes away by train costs a visitor without a half fare card almost 80 dollars.  Multiply that by 2 or 3 people taking the train together and you can easily spend hundreds of dollars in train tickets just going a couple of hours away within this country. So the car becomes a very attractive alternative.  
4. There are a surprising number of people in Europe who don't know how to drive! Because most people take trains throughout Europe due to the convenience and the price, we actually know a couple of people that either don't know how to drive at all or have just started to learn recently. 
5. The last part is not necessarily specific to Switzerland; but, it was pretty neat so I'll tell the story anyways ;) We bought our car through a company called Autociel, which essentially is a Swiss car agency that buys and sells cars on behalf of expats in the area. We negotiated the 'keys in hand' package into our car price and as part of this package, Autociel completes every administrative task related to the purchase of the car for you. So after we saw the car online and agreed to a price, they drafted the contract, brought the car to its rigorous Swiss inspection, registered it, brought it to a garage after finding there was a recall on one of its parts, helped us coordinate with the car insurance agency, put the license plates on, got the annual Swiss highway road sticker for us, and then drove the car to the front door of my office and handed me the keys (and flowers! how funny to receive flowers with your car). Given the months and months of administrative tasks that come along with having to move countries, it was SO nice to just have someone entirely manage yet another "administrative" process for us and then just show up and hand us the keys and flowers to our new car! 

With the purchase of Heidi/the snowmobile, we are officially done with all of our moving and settling in tasks! Although I've come to terms with the fact that our "to do list" will never go away, at least now its filled with more things like "plan Easter vacation" and "plan wedding" instead of boring administrative moving tasks. So after just passing the one year mark of when we started to plan this whole crazy adventure, we can say that we are officially "settled in".  HOORAY!