Life in Lausanne, Switzerland: My Experience
An adult swan with four young swans, not yet white, on Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland.
At the time of this writing—and I’ll update this post every so often, so expect this to change!—I’ve lived in Lausanne for longer than five years.
Over this time, I’ve had so many people ask me what it’s like to live here. I’ve found it hard to say.
Only two years in a place, especially when trying to learn the language, didn’t seem like enough time for a fair assessment. Three years later, I don’t even feel like five years is quite enough time.
However, as someone who has now lived here for half a decade, has learned the language, and has worked to integrate with the local community as best as she can—and who plans to keep it all up for the long term—I can share the following observations about what it’s like to live in Lausanne (so far).
Incredible Art and Culture
I’ve said this before in another article: Lausanne stuns me with its museums, performing arts, visual arts and its culture in general.
For a city of its size, to have so many museums and so many theaters must have nearly no parallel.
And that doesn’t even count its dance scene, which is no doubt energized by the location in Lausanne of the world-renowned Maurice Bejart–founded dance school, which has international dance competitions each year.
Top-Notch Public Transportation
And while we’re on the topic of things unparalleled for cities of its size, Lausanne has incredible public transportation for a city of around 150,000 residents. You do not need a car here, even if you want one.
Now, the public transportation in Lausanne doesn’t come cheap. Alas. Public transportation in most of the parts of Switzerland I’ve visited, including Lausanne, costs a lot more per ticket than what I’ve had to pay elsewhere in Europe.
If you live here, you can buy transit cards that help with the cost. Even then, the cost is high.
No Friends = Boredom
If you don’t know people in Lausanne—which you likely won’t until you’ve lived here and made an effort to really mingle in the community—Lausanne will feel really, really boring. And lonely.
The city gets very quiet outside of the bar-and-nightclub scene after work hours, quite early on Saturdays (around 6 p.m., to be honest), and all day Sunday (when most commercial establishments close).
If you know people, though, even in these “quiet” hours you won’t find Lausanne quiet. You’ll head to the mountains to hike or ski or, in company, enjoy some other outdoor or indoor activity, from picnics and cookouts to brunches and lunches.
People who’ve lived in Lausanne a long while can’t understand why people new to Lausanne feel so depressed and isolated—and that’s because Lausanne has a completely different character when you have friends and plan activities with them than it does when you rely on stores, restaurants, and cultural activities to keep you entertained.
Research Required to Know What’s Happening
Another benefit to knowing people: They’ll clue you in on what’s happening around town and where you can find out about what’s happening around town.
Lausanne doesn’t have a single on-line or print resource outlining all the stuff going on. Even on-line searches (and yes, even in French, the local language) don’t tend to turn up solid, much less comprehensive, results.
A lot is, indeed, happening in Lausanne at any given moment, but where and what and when is spread all over the place in different media and you almost need to know where to look or have someone tell you about some cool thing ahead for you to know about it.
Unlike in some places—when I lived in London and Chicago, for example—the city’s happenings aren’t laid out neatly for you to explore. You’ve got to dig.
High Cost of Living
Switzerland in general—and Lausanne is no exception—is an expensive city to live in, aside from just the public transportation (as mentioned above).
Though the salaries of people working here are higher than they might be across the border in France, where life is cheaper, the salary levels here are not commensurate with the increased cost of living.
In other words, even at Swiss salaries, the cost of living in Lausanne is high.
Choice in Products and Services Limited
Switzerland in general is a small market.
As a country outside the European Union, you need to pay import fees to bring in a lot of products you find on-line and many products even available on-line aren’t in stores. (And even stuff available on-line won’t always ship to Switzerland, because the business doesn’t want to deal with the international-sales aspect.)
As a smaller city than some in an already small market, Lausanne especially has fewer options when it comes to products and even service providers. In the French-speaking part of the country, most businesses default to Geneva—if they decide to enter the market here at all. Why? Geneva’s bigger, yes, but it also has more tourists, more international residents, and more high-income people.
Though Geneva is only about an hour away from Lausanne, that’s far enough that you’ll find it annoying to need to go there for something. The trip there and back, plus the visit to the store or business, will take you at least a half-day. If you work, that means you either need to take vacation time from your job or luck into something open on a Saturday. After all, most businesses close on Sunday—yes, even stores selling to consumers who work for a living.
Fantastic Weather
The weather in Lausanne is mild and pleasant.
Whereas most people assume all of Switzerland’s cold and dry, Lausanne’s placement in a valley next to Lake Geneva, the biggest lake in Europe, means it stays relatively temperate year-round and has a little bit more humidity than other areas, which can feel very dry.
However, in the winter, its low position in the valley means Lausanne sits below a heavy layer of cloud cover, making it darker and gloomier than the higher-up mountain towns.
Outdoor Fitness Opportunities Galore
It’s not the Olympic city for nothing.
The International Olympic Committee has its headquarters in Lausanne, which has attracted every sporting association you can imagine. Who do they employ? You guessed it: Former athletes in the sport, among others.
A high population of athletes and a reputation for being the seat of the Olympics has lent itself to considerable development in Lausanne of outdoor athletic facilities and fitness opportunities of all kinds. For example, just a few feet from the back of my building, you’ll find an archery range, two tracks for running, multiple beach volleyball courts, private and public tennis facilities, a sailing school, a rowing club, and more that I can’t name off the top of my head while writing this article.
And then, of course, we have a massive freshwater lake great for open-water swimming or just having fun.
Though you do need to take a car or public transportation to get to ski slopes and hiking trails, you can get to both for day trips without a problem.
Hills, Hills, Hills
Lausanne is built quite literally into the side of what feels like a mountain to this flatlander, but is really just a series of very steep hills. What this means is that, to get around town, you need to hike up and down and back up and then down and, sometimes, up again. All in fifteen minutes.
In Geneva or Zurich, you can get away with a regular bike, but in Lausanne you will need an electric one unless you’re an athlete. (Even if you are an athlete, you might not always want to be intensely athletic—and, consequently, sweaty—just in getting around town.)
The joke is that the people in Lausanne have, because of its endless up-and-down geography, fantastic legs. Come visit and let me know what you think on that count.
Stuck behind a Lake with No Airport
Lausanne has no commercial airport, instead relying on the small airport in Geneva, which has minimal service. In U.S. terms, the Geneva airport feels more like a regional airport, mainly running short-haul flights within the European continent. (However, as the continent has several countries, it is technically an international airport.)
Geneva, however, is door-to-door an hour from Lausanne, whether you drive there or take the train.
This means that, if you fly somewhere, you need a connecting flight to go beyond Europe or, in some cases, to the more distant places in Europe.
Further, Lausanne is halfway along the Swiss-side long coast of the dolphin-shaped Lake Geneva. You must drive or train around it to get anywhere. The ferries to take you across the lake take you to tiny towns in France that do not have airports.
This means that, when you live in Lausanne, you’re somewhat stuck behind the lake. You need to take the train or a plane to a major city to get to any part of Europe on the other side of the lake or to change trains to get to cities across the opposite borders. Or you need to fly—which means going to Geneva.
In short: From Lausanne, unlike in many other European cities, you won’t find too many places outside of Switzerland that you can reach for an easy weekend trip.
Move to Lausanne?
I won’t pretend that I had a sunshine-and-rainbows experience acclimating to Lausanne. Every move and change has ups and downs, some considerable.
However, I can say that the more I’ve gotten my bearings, the more I appreciate the city.
Whether moving to Lausanne makes sense for you will depend on your time horizon, your needs, and your overall situation—so I can’t make recommendations. However, if you’ve found this article in your research about whether to move to Lausanne, I hope my reflections have helped!