Fixed hours and long evenings

In Belgium, many physiotherapists are self-employed and work long days. In Bern, Luna works 85 percent, in nine-hour shifts. “On a morning shift I'm in at half past six, but then I'm out the door at half past four. You still have a whole evening.” Even at 85 percent, she reckons she earns a lot more than in Belgium. You often hear that the Swiss are reserved, but Luna notices little of that in Bern. “Tonight I'm having dinner at a colleague's place.” What she did dread was German. At secondary school she was bad at languages, and at home she found it hard to make herself study. “I'm no natural at languages, but Flemish isn't that far from German. If you talk to patients and colleagues for nine hours every day, it comes by itself.”

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Sundays are for the mountains

On Sundays, Bern is quiet and almost everything is closed. Whoever can heads into the mountains: skiing in winter, hiking in summer. Luna happily joins in. “The most Swiss thing I've done is simply going into the mountains every weekend.” On weekdays, too, she often goes cycling or running after work, because from the city centre you're out in nature in no time. And then there's the Aare. Once she took the train to Thun to float all the way back to Bern in a small boat, about three hours on the water.