What a difference!
To be able to speak the language, to move through society unaided, to look and ask for things easily, makes all the difference. It took me two years to get a studio in China, in Bern, one of the groomed, polished, neatly organised cantons of the Swiss federation, (there is not a thing here that is not groomed, polished or organised) it took me a total of three weeks. Long live the internet and the simple roman script!
My new studio is in "Das Alte Loeblager" once a storage building for one of the more fancy warehouses of Switzerland, now a creative and entrepreneurial 'breeding ground' for artists, designers, musicians, small businesses, you name it. It is a dusty, slightly unorganised place, which pleases me - there is only so much polishing, grooming and organisation I can deal with, after China - that smells of the academy and a student house's kitchen combined. It has light, it has true heating, it has internet, it is a on a 15 minute bikeride through everyday fresh air from my house. What else could I ask for?
Well, for the intercontinental movers to take less long for bringing our stuff from halfway over the world... but that would be pushing it, I realise.
(EDIT: halfway september 2015 all my stuff arrived, and I could start for real in this new space which suits me very well indeed)