My favorite topic, SHOPPING

Living in Switzerland is slowly turning us into cross-border shopping experts.  Although we do still buy quite a lot of things locally in Geneva and around Switzerland (chocolate, cheese, and wine happen to be the most frequent of these things of course), over the past few months we have started to take more advantage of shopping options outside of Switzerland to take capitalize on lower prices.

Shopping in France

Because France is only 5 miles away, we often find ourselves crossing the border to purchase various goodies.  For example, we needed new sneakers for our upcoming half marathon training and rather than purchase them for 300 CHF (approximately $300), we crossed the border into France to a shopping mall and bought the same shoes for 160 EUR (approximately $200) (still expensive for sneakers I know, but better than Switzerland!).  Its so intriguing to me that the second you cross a border (and the shopping plaza we went to literally was right across the border), prices drop immediately. The difficult part about shopping in France however is that the border patrol officers may or may not be at the border at any time and they may or may not stop you and ask to see your receipts and open your bags to make sure you haven't purchased over 300 CHF in goods and to make sure you are not over the required limit of meat and wine.  This has happened quite a few times to us (particularly when Ryan slows down at the check point and starts looking suspicious, at which point they ask him to stop and start asking us questions) and resulted in us having our groceries laid out on the pavement while the officer added up the number of grams of meat in your grocery purchase.  Its intimidating and just plain ridiculous to go through this experience, so this often discourages us to make shopping in France a weekly occurrence. 

Blurry picture, but this is a picture of one of the border patrol stations, you go through lanes and the border patrol officers stop you if you look suspicious.  Non-residents and newbies often get stopped because we slow down and don't know whether we should say hello or just wave and nod.... we have since learned saying waving and nodding gives you a much better chance of not being stopped.

Online Shopping

The other day one of our friends had on a jacket that I loved and asked her where I could buy it.  She gave me the name of the store (a popular European brand), and I was about to purchase the jacket online when I decided to just quickly check what the price would be if I switched the country listed on the online store to the UK.  Instead of it being $180, the jacket was $100 if I simply bought it through the UK store!  Bingo!  Saved $80 buy just changing the country of the online store, crazy Switzerland.

PS, shopping in online US stores doesn't work because the shipping and customs costs required to get purchases from the US to Switzerland is just cray cray.

"Visitor" or "Travel" Shopping

I will apologize that many of you have (or will be) subjected to "Visitor" shopping while we live abroad.  It involves having visitors from the US bring things over to us when they come to visit.  Not only is this cost effective, but it also means we can enjoy some of our favorite brands from back home.  So far visitors have brought peanut butter, Frank's hot sauce, garlic salt, Reese's peanut butter cups, Sour Patch kids, Tom's shoes, toothpaste and the list goes on. While it is often obnoxious to visitors that they have to use up room in their suitcase with these goodies on the way over, I like to this that it makes room for souvenirs and purchases in their suitcase on the way back :) 

"Travel" shopping involves Ryan and me bringing things back with us after we visit in the US.  I have found that the best way to do this is when going back home on a business trip because a business class ticket means that I can check two bags for free.  So I arrive in the US with only 1 bag packed and then bring along another empty bag to fill with purchases.  Voila!