Finding a place to live

To find an apartment is really difficullt in Geneva. The first thing you should know is that 80% of all apartments is owned by big companies, e.g. insurance companies, banks etc. due to their heavy investment in real estate. And of course they have their agencies renting out the apartment for them. So you would go the these agencies (meglere på godt norsk, de samme som du vil gå til for å kjøpe hus) to apply for an appartment. Yes -- apply! With a proper application, and somethimes also including your CV.

A first filtering is performed by the agency, basically remowing most of those not having swiss nationality. They'll have a look at your police records, payment records, work stability, your family situation etc. Then the last selection is of course made by the owner or their representative.

As you can know understand, this is a troublesome process, which is why I was only hoping to find a subletted room, i.e. a room I could rent from someone who had already come through this needle eye. Well, even that's hard. I got plenty of responses located about 1 hour drive from CERN, and also some downtown Geneva living on (or is it with) a family... But this things REALLY depent on the family/the people already living there.

After looking at 5-6 different rooms, and a 150 e-mails later (half in French) I'm now so sick of looking for an apartment/room. This is the only thing I have been doing outside working hours, all week (except for talking with Tor Arne at skype). None of the appartments were tempting.

Exhausted...