An Aussie in the land of cheese and chocolate

Relocating to another city, country or hemisphere (as I did) is always going to be a challenge, but most certainly a mix of both positive and negative challenges. Apart from the obvious differences in language, climate, currency and which side of the road you drive on, what is hidden under the surface will either make you or break you.

Wind the clock back 4 years... I was based out of the Leica Geosystems office in my hometown Brisbane, Australia. I enjoyed working for the company, but I was searching for a change, a new challenge, when an opportunity came up to move to Heerbrugg, Switzerland. I jumped at the chance! After all, I love cheese and I love chocolate, and most importantly I love snow.

Sure, I'd been in the business for 5 years already, and had travelled to Heerbrugg for meetings on several occasions. So I had some idea about what living and working in Switzerland was going to be like. Right?...

打包我的生活（以及一间两居室的公寓），出售我心爱的汽车，向家人，朋友和同事说再见，然后搬到世界的另一侧 - 所有这些绝对是品格建造。这一切都发生了很快（就像新工作是催化剂时一样），在我不知不觉中，我正乘飞机去苏黎世。节省的恩典是我在熟悉的环境中，我已经认识了我们办公室的一些人。

但是，没有什么能让我准备进入新公寓的准备。当我与房地产经纪人一起观看该物业时，我确定天花板上有轻型配件，但是当我在交换过程中进入公寓时，我认为有一个盗窃案。整个公寓中没有一个单一的灯具，盲或窗帘，只有几根电线从天花板上悬挂。奖金是我有一个冰箱在厨房里的一些镶板后面隐藏着，所以我不必购买新的冰箱。
人们仍然觉得很有趣，我在我的新公寓中使用iPhone火炬应用程序作为我唯一的光源，在新的（非常空荡荡的）公寓里幸存下来。将垃圾回收并放在特殊的绿色袋中，并将其放在街道路边，也成为了我的新“正常”。

Apart from differences in lifestyle, working cultures differ quite substantially between Australia and Switzerland - not quite as huge a gap when compared with some other countries, but it is still substantial. While the Swiss tend to be "early birds", the Aussies tend to work later in the day, which probably has something to do with the amount of daylight and sunshine available in both countries throughout the year. The Swiss work hard, but they also make time for family and spending time in nature or engaging in some physical activity or another. While the Aussies have beautiful natural surroundings, they do tend to take them for granted, and quality family time is reduced more to weekends.

澳大利亚人往往是直接，开放和任务为导向的，并且在向同事或商业利益相关者讲话时更加熟悉。同时，瑞士人更多地面向关系，更不直接，更私密 - 了解瑞士可能会很困难。作为一个陆上锁的国家，我可以理解一些想要隐私的理由。澳大利亚本质上是一个远离世界其他地方的大岛。我们也是一个年轻的国家，拥有自己的历史很少，所以这也许这是我们更开放和与陌生人更容易互动的原因。人口都没有错，他们只是不同的。学习如何有效地围绕这些差异进行导航本身就是一项技能，而我仍在努力掌握的技能。

I attended one of our Intercultural Awareness training sessions recently, and it was still enlightening to see the difference in perspectives between mine and those of the local and international colleagues in the class. This is one area that our People Development department is focusing on in terms of providing our people with the skills and knowledge about these differences. Quite often conflict can arise out of a very simple misunderstanding or miscommunication. What is visible in terms of a country's culture is quite often just the "tip of the iceberg". We are part of a global company and with the introduction of social media, web and teleconferencing solutions, and team collaboration tools and portals; the globe is becoming more accessible to all.
I've met some wonderful people and visited a lot of amazing places since moving to this country. I'm glad to say these experiences will stay with me for the rest of my life, and are now part of what has shaped me as a person. I'm not the same person who left Brisbane four years ago. I've learnt an enormous amount about life, people, different cultures, and my profession, but none of this is visible from the outside - you need to dig below the surface to understand what a person is really about.

Yasmin Sethi
Head of People Development
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