Country of mountains, lakes and fondue

Only a week after leaving Japan, we were settling in in our new home. Surrounded by 3000 meter peaks and glaciers, our new home consists of a little room in a hotel from the 80s, now used as staff accommodation. Our balcony has beautiful views and we sip Mate, thinking about how lucky we are once more to be living where others go on holidays. We are employed in Food&Beverage, admittedly not our favorite job, but our goal for the next month is saving up, it’s Switzerland and the pay is good. At the same time, we got the mountains right at our doorsteps and what else could anyone want in life?

1. Work in Switzerland
2. Cost of living
3. What to expect

Work in Switzerland

As a European citizen it’s fairly easy to work in Switzerland. You will need a job (logically) and once you are on site, you’ll have to register at the local community as new resident. Once this is done, you’ll have to show up at the canton immigration office upon invitation. We got our working permits within two weeks after our appointment. For non-European citizens it’s tricky. We met a lot of coworkers from Asian countries but they were studying in Switzerland and were working as interns. For some Asian countries, there are programs such as the YoungProfessional program which allows to work in Switzerland for up to 18 months if we got it right.

Hotellerie is looking for personnel like everywhere else and usually offer staff housing which makes it easier to settle. With the right to work, it should be easy to find a job, especially in the shoulder seasons when the preparation for the main season is on. We had our job confirmation right at the interview and were even able to negotiate our salary. They were thrilled that we planned on staying long term. Speaking the main languages (German or French) is definitely helpful and leads to a better salary. However, plenty of jobs can be found with English only, most of them in Food&Beverage and housekeeping.

Cost of living

For most of the people, salaries in Switzerland seem utopic. In the Food&Beverage sector, an annual salary is around 55.000 CHF for a low position. The taxes taken from the salary depend on the canton, for our canton it was a maximum of around 25% tax deduction from the salary. On top of that, it is common to get a 13th salary. Ours was paid out bits by bits, every month.

However, depending on your lifestyle you will spend a lot of money too. When we work, we don’t spend much, saving most of our money for the travelling after. We enjoy having a kitchen to cook, after weeks of eating out, so our food expenses are reasonable. We don’t look to closely at what we buy, but we do make smart choices. In our case, we chose to stay in the staff accommodation to save up, paying around 900 CHF for both for a room with bathroom. If you decide to get your own place, it will get more expensive and you’ll have to figure out internet, electricity and so on by yourself. In Switzerland contracts are long term so if you don’t plan to stay a long time, it might not be worth it as you will end up paying for contracts such as internet after leaving.

In any case, everyone working in Switzerland must have a national health insurance. These vary in prices but all will be around 300 CHF at least. We found Concordia to be the best and cheapest choice for us at that time. Including an accident insurance, we pay around 300 CHF monthly.

And with these three things we have our basic expenses: Accommodation, food and health insurance, approximately 2000 CHF for two people per month.

What to expect

We have chosen Engelberg for our Swiss adventure. This cute little skivillage is nestled in the end of a valley on 1000 meters above sealevel, close to the city of Lucern. In the Summer there are endless hiking possibilities and in the winter it is known for a decent amount of snow and amazing off-piste opportunities. This winter however (2025/2026) there hasn’t been an overwhelming amount. The piste are very nice though and plenty enough. Most importantly for us, it is empty. During the holidays it fills up but you often have the piste for yourself. The weather in the winter is mostly good, sunny and bright and the views throughout the resort are just incredible. In the Summer, it was a bit more rainy then expected, but also less hot than anywhere else.

We definitely recommend getting a season pass. For locals the pass was 750 CHF for the year, starting in October. The advantage of a pass is that we can just go skiing for 2 hours or even less without feeling like wasting money. We also often just take the gondola up for a walk or to have Mate on top of the mountains. For the Summer season, it means that you can skip the 800 meters elevation gain you need to hike up bevore being in the mountains and get straight to the nice, alpine parts of the hike.

If you need skigear, you can check out the Swiss second hand online platform ricardo.ch or find a local fleamarket. For this area, there is also a second hand store in Lucern.

Engelberg is small and therefore obviously cheaper than the bigger resorts such as Zermatt and St. Moritz. Expect to pay more for everything if choosing one of the bigger resorts in Switzerland.