I moved from Germany to Lugano, Switzerland 4 months ago. Here are some habits that I have changed

1) In Germany I avoided downtowns because all the bigger cities are not in a good spot.

They basically consist of the same budget chains (H&M, TK Maxx, Tedi) combined with low-quality shops (Tattoo, Barber, Döner, Shisha, Gambling).

Also they feel very unsafe and are dirty.

This is totally not the case in Lugano and the other Swiss cities that I have visited. There is no trash on the streets, there are pretty much no homeless, there is 0 tolerance for bad behavior. The people dress nicely and are respectful. There is a big variety of shops, which makes me happy.

I am currently visiting the 10 largest cities of Switzerland to better understand whats going on and every city has had its own unique identity so far.

2) I have started to collect the coupon points from supermarkets.

I always go to the same supermarket and I have read that pretty much all of the Swiss people use these apps, so I thought there must be some reason for this.

For a purchase I sometimes get 5 CHF off, simply for collecting the points. It takes 5 secs at checkout to scan your QR Code so I think it makes sense.

I always told my girlfriend how useless it is to collect these points, now I am a collector myself.

3) While I was always a fan of trains, I completely stopped using them in Germany, because its so unreliable, expensive and also rundown. You have to go to the main station with sketchy people only to be informed that your train was cancelled.

I travelled to Zurich with SBB and the toilets were broken. The train conductor walked through the train to apologise for this. In Germany you would need to thank them that they even have toilets on the train.

4) I have stopped going to restaurants. Mainly for two reasons: time and money. A misconception that I had is, that I thought "cooking" takes so much time. For me its actually faster at home, max 10 minutes, because I only cook very simple dishes.

Sometimes I go to Pizza shops, here is one very close that sells Pizza Magherita for 10 CHF, but it takes a bit of time to receive it.

5) I stopped going to any form of public pool. In the evening my brother and I go swimming in Lake Lugano (its free).

Lugano has its own public pool, but I was there only once. Its just faster and nicer to go to one of the spots at the lake and go for a swim.

I cannot think of a life anymore where I cant go swimming in 5 minutes. This is probably true for a lot of people that live close to the lake

Conclusion: In retrospect it became clear to me how much I avoided doing things where I had to accept either bad service, sketchy people or uncleanliness. Happy that it changed here.

You Swiss people are doing so much more right than the countries around you, thank you for letting me live in your country!