Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

We thought we had settle on Baden-Baden for our Christmas trip but when we started thinking about the flight departure time we realised that it was much too early to be realistic so we’ve restarted our hunt.

At the moment, Dusseldorf is in the front position. It’s a fair sized city in Germany so should have the Christmas markets although seeing as they close up on December 23rd it’s possible that we’ll not actually see them. Still, it seems like a nice city to visit with lots of things to see and a very active tourist office which is always a good sign.

However, there’s also the possibility of a trip to one of the Spanish islands. Downside of them is that the flight times are pretty much all “package holiday departures” ie they’re either very early in the morning or very late at night. Those times pretty much dictate that we’d need a night in a hotel in Barcelona probably both before and after the holiday which, of course, increases the overall cost.

Anyway, we’re hoping to finalise things and actually click on the “book it” button today.

We dithered around too long with the decision on Aarhus and the flight prices went against us which is a shame as it looks like a seriously cute place to be at Christmas.

Therefore, we’re back to our original thought which is of Baden-Baden in southern Germany. That has the advantage of having loads of choice in terms of hotels so the prices are lower than we’d expected to be paying. It’s also in Germany so we should get to see some of the famous German Christmas markets.

Now, “all” we have to do is to check out the flight prices one final time before we hit the “book it” button…

When I put on my post about opening an American bank as a non-resident, I was amazed at the number of people who checked it out and of those quite a number would like to know how to open a Swiss account.

Opening accounts in both America and Switzerland used to be very easy but with increasing anti-terrorism legislation around the world many banks felt that they could no longer cope with the additional identity checks that the legislation seems to require of them. I say “seems” because it doesn’t really require any more of them than it does of someone living next door to the branch but they generally don’t make a whole lot of money on non-resident accounts anyway so it’s easier for them to use “the law” as an excuse to say no to non-residents.

However, for most “normal” countries all you actually need is a proof of address (ie an electricity or landline phone bill) plus a copy of your passport (usually this must be certified). More obscure countries sometimes ask for an apostile which is more of a hassle to provide.

For America, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the only things required are the proof of address and passport. In the case of America, 9/11 has meant that the banks prepared to open an account with minimal hassle has reduced drastically but includes Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC and, the ever-present, e-trade. Aside from e-trade, it’s easier to open an account with one of these banks if you already have an account with them in your own country and you may have one already as Bank of America issues a lot of credit cards in Europe under the MBNA name.

In the case of the UK, it’s easier to open a non-resident account with one of the branches in the offshore islands (Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man or Gibraltar) as they are more accustomed to dealing with non-resident accounts. Don’t worry about that “offshore” tag as those islands banking systems are fully integrated with the mainland.

For Switzerland it’s generally fairly easy though some banks will now refuse non-resident accounts due to the expense of running them whilst others will charge you extra. You cannot open an account with SwissPoste these days, despite numerous websites listing it as a possibility and indeed charging you for the privilege of providing you with the information. The major banks (UBS, Credit Suisse) will still permit non-resident accounts and are unlikely to stop doing so as a large proportion of their client-base is non-resident but now charge around SF 75 per year to maintain the accounts if you’re non-resident. However, if you just want a Swiss account by far the best appears to be via SwissQuote which is a free multi-currency account and offers the option of a debit card too (there’s a charge for the debit card).

What are Certified & Apostilles? To get a document certified, you usually just need to go along to your bank and have them stamp the copy and write “original seen” on it. Sometimes banks ask for it to be certified by a lawyer but usually a bank is sufficient for them. An apostille is a certification that the person doing the original certification is known and what’s asked for usually is a “state-level” apostille. This means, usually, that you need to send off your passport to the department of your home government which deals with international affairs (usually called the State Department but is the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in the UK) who will provide you with an apostilled copy.

If you’re interesting in more details on these options, either subscribe to this category here (international-banking) or check out the information on our Expat Banking site. I’ll be slowly but surely working through the various countries here and on that site, the next being Switzerland and after that probably the offshore British islands.

We’ve sort-of decided on Aarhus in Denmark for our Christmas break. Let’s face it, how much more Christmasy could a place look than that in the photo (of Den Gamle By, the open air museum of historic Denmark that’s in the town)?

It also fulfills our criteria of being walkable, having enough to do for a few days, “doing” Christmas and, as I say, it even looks Christmasy.

Normally, we’d book the flights first then look for a hotel but as it’s Christmas we’re checking that there is a suitable hotel before we book the flights this time as it’s easy to be caught out at peak periods like that.

Probably one of the most neglected aspects of immigration or indeed moving in general is labelling your stuff and yet it can be a major pain if you don’t do it sensibly upfront as most of us don’t quite manage to unpack everything after we’ve moved. Yeah, perhaps we should clear out some more first but realistically who does that?

Unless you’re moving to an identical house then there’s not much point in trying to label things going by the room they’re going to finish up in as chances are they’ll end up somewhere else. Aside from that, you’re more likely to remember packing the stuff in a particular room before you move than “remember” where it’s going to end up.

Ideally you’d do a proper inventory before you start the packing so you could create a nifty database to tell you where everything is packed but that’s hardly viable for most of us. Therefore the best option is probably a middle ground ie try to pack the boxes in a reasonably logical manner and keep a little book recording any additional information that you can.

Believe me, that’ll save you endless head-scratching at the other end!