Serse Is Born

At the beginning of december 2022 our son Serse was born at a local hospital in Zerneve. During the previous months, Mei-Lin and I discussed over and over again our geographic options for giving birth. We are resident in Switzerland, but our families live in Italy and Taiwan, and to be honest it’s quite a struggle to deal with a newborn without grandparents’ support, especially given that we have already another hyperactive monster baby roaming in the house. We took into account many factors, but eventually we decided it would have been less stressful to give birth in Switzerland. Added bonus, we said, the bureaucracy will be easier. OH HOW WRONG WE WERE.

Giving birth here in Zerneve was actually good, great service at the hospital and cheapest option overall (I mean, we pay half a kidney per month to the mandatory Swiss health insurance system for a reason). My and Mei-Lin’s parents came to visit us in shifts, so overall we had plenty of support for the first month. The second month was horrible challenging, but we were expecting that, and we are still sleep-deprived up to this day but that’s how life is.

So, finally the fun part begins.

Clearly, we have to do some bureaucracy for Serse. Like, the urgent thing is enrolling him for health insurance, but also getting some form of ID, otherwise we could not even leave the country for vacation or whatever. Not that we are planning vacation in the short term future, but these things take time TRUST ME ON THIS. So, better to get ahead.

Regarding health insurance, in Switzerland is possible (and advised) to “pre-register” a baby before birth. This is also crucial in case, deities forbid, the newborn requires some special therapy. So that’s what we did, we pre-registered Serse with our health insurer and they told us the following:

• We start paying from the date when he’s born.
• The “health card” (that we have to show to Serse’s pediatrician and any other clinic we visit for him here and abroad) will arrive later, after we send them a copy of the baby’s residence permit, but in the meantime they will send us a letter confirmation that the baby is insured.
• We should send to the insurer as soon as possible the Swiss residence permit of the baby because this is a VERY TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENT AND SUPER BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO US IF WE DON’T DO IT SOON.

That sounds reasonable. So, how do we get passport and residence permit? Well, that’s not so simple…

I’m not going to explain in detail here how Swiss permits for foreigners work, see here for more info. Sufficient to say that the best one is the “C” permit, which is roughly equivalent to a US Green Card, and it allows to do basically everything in Switzerland except voting. I have a C permit, because I’m a nice person I haven’t killed anyone yet or done any terrible crimes yet and I was never on social benefits. Or, I don’t know, there might be other reasons, who cares. Mei-Lin still has a “B” permit, because she’s been here for less than 5 years and comes from a non-EU state (she has not applied for Italian nationality yet OH YES THAT STORY IS DEFINITELY GOING TO BE ON THIS BLOG AS WELL).

In order to get the residence permit (Serse should also get a “C” permit because it’s “inherited” by mine, like it happened with our daughter Penelope) we have to register Serse at the local Kreisbüro, which is the “district communal hall”. We have to go there in person with the baby and a shitload of other documents that, in theory, prove that the infant we carry is the pure fruit of our socially-approved love rather than some bag of organs we bought at the black market in some 3rd world country. Among these documents, it is necessary to show Serse’s birth certificate.

So, in normal many other countries, you get the birth certificate of the baby directly from the hospital or clinic straight upon discharge. But not in Switzerland. Here, at the hospital (if they are nice) they help you to fill and send for you a form which announces the birth of the baby to the Zivilstandsamt (civil state registry). Then the Zivilthing office will contact you AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS, REQUESTING FURTHER DOCUMENTS IF NECESSARY and finally sends you the birth certificate. Other Swiss friends we asked about it confirmed that this is an annoying process even for Swiss couples married in Switzerland, who still need to show birth certificate of both parents plus marriage certificate BECAUSE ALL THE FEDERAL OFFICES WHICH ISSUE THESE DOCUMENTS DO NOT TALK TO EACH OTHER. AYFKM.

Serse was born dangerously close to end-year holidays, so we were worried that the letter would take longer. But, oh joy! On December 23rd we receive the letter, where the Zivilthing asks us to send them, in addition to a copy of my and Mei-Lin’s passports, the following documents:

• An original copy of MY birth certificate, issued by the town of Spelunca, Italy, where I was born, which includes names and birthdates of both my parents.
• An original copy of Mei-Lin’s birth certificate, issued by the town of Taileng, Taiwan, where she was born, which includes names and birthdates of both her parents.
• An original copy of Mei-Lin’s family state certificate, issued by the town of Taileng, where her family’s residence is registered in Taiwan.
• An original copy of our wedding certificate, again issued by the town of Taileng where we got married.

All the above documents except the first one (because Switzerland has special agreements with Italy, and also Italian is an official language in Switzerland) must be, IN THIS ORDER:

1. If not already in English or German, translated to English or German
2. Legalized by the District Court of Taileng, or a public notary accredited therein
3. Legalized by a MOFA office (Ministery of Foreign Affairs) in Taiwan
4. Validated by the Swiss Consulate in Taiwan Trade Office of Swiss Industries in Taipei (you are not allowed to call it “consulate” or “embassy” because otherwise Winnie The Pooh gets mad).

Also, this must be done within 60 days, and no document can be older than 6 months.

A Y F K M

So, this is our situation: shitloads of documents and legalizations -> Serse’s birth certificate -> passport/residence card -> health card.

Under advice from some Swiss friends we called the Zivilsthing at the phone and we asked for an extension, because in our case 60 days might be tight. They registered our request and say that it’s not a problem as soon as we do as fast as possible.

This post ends here,  but the story continues. On a final note, if you are not familiar with the concept of “legalization” (sometimes also called “authentication”), it’s quite interesting and it makes a lot of sense in some way. The best explanation I found is here but it’s pretty easy to understand if you’re familiar with cybersecurity: It’s basically the same concept of PKI, or even trusted boot. Basically, you have a bunch of authorities who don’t trust each other, each of them only trusts the previous step in the chain, down to the issuer of an original document, like in an “onion” arrangement of layers. Legalization is at its core an official stamp that says “I have verified the signature on the outermost layer of this onion, it belongs to an office which I know and trust, and I certify this by adding my own signature as an additional layer. THIS IS THE BILL FOR THIS SERVICE THANKYOU”.