Since I arrived in Zürich on Tuesday (and even before), I have been looking for a permanent place to live, as I only have my current sublet through the end of February. While that may sound like a lot of time (6 weeks is forever, right?), it's actually not, especially given the whopping 0.1% apartment vacancy rate that one finds in Zürich.
My last week in Minnesota I invested a bunch of time on websites such as Marketplatz, wgzimmer, Google Translate and Google Maps to find and respond to posts for flats. While it is occasionally possible to find a studio or 1-bedroom flat to rent, most people in my situation look for a WG (pronounced vay-gay; short for Wohngemeinschaft in German). A WG is a shared living community in which (mostly) strangers agree to live together and share a flat as a way to make living a little more affordable and a little less lonely. Anyways, as a result of many hours of work, I had 6 appointments to see flats the week that I arrived, with more scheduled for later in the month.
Looking for a WG is tiring for an introvert like me, but, as a connoisseur of people, it is always interesting. Every flat that I visited had a different way of organizing their search and meeting with people. In one flat, I had beer and baklava with only one of the four current tenants, who pontificated on anything and everything remotely related to WG life, including money, kitchen appliances, mold, immigration, local micro-brews, languages and cooking. In another, I met with two of the four tenants and just talked about life and such. A third flat involved meeting with the three tenants and 6 other possible flat-mates to have one big, happy meet-and-greet. Since I was the only monoglot in the whole bunch, they tried to speak English, but ended up talking mostly in Swiss German. Luckily, there was another candidate who was kind enough to translate some for me. The whole ordeal felt a little like a beauty pageant in which we were all sizing up the competition and vying for the favor of the judges. Not my favorite. Another flat scheduled individual appointments with at least 13 candidates (via Doodle) over two evenings. Other ads require you to respond by filling out a form detailing your interests and hobbies, as well as sending a head shot and references. And these are all for WGs, which are less stringent and much more relaxed than actual flat renting! Housing in Zürich is intense!
