Transcript
This Village Pays You $70,000 To Move There (is it a scam?)
From Yes Theory · Episode page · Watch on YouTube
· 27 min · 4,311 words · 105 timestamped sections
This is the full, timestamped transcript of "This Village Pays You $70,000 To Move There (is it a scam?)", an episode of Yes Theory published October 5, 2025 (27 min, about 4,311 words). It mentions 3 people, works and ideas, including Albinan, Maurice.
What is discussed, and when
Notable quotes from "This Village Pays You $70,000 To Move There (is it a scam?)"
Who and what is mentioned in this episode?
People
- Maurice — Person · 5 mentions · first at
Places & events
- Albinan — Place · 8 mentions · first at
Sponsors
- Surf Shark VPN — Sponsor · 1 mention
Full transcript with timestamps
Have you ever wanted to pack up and move somewhere completely new? Not for a vacation, not for a few months, but to actually leave everything behind and start over. We've all seen those€1 houses in Italy, the abandoned homes in Japan, places trying to lure people back with a bargain. But what if they weren't just selling cheap houses? What if they were willing to pay you to move there? Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, according to the internet, it's not. We kept seeing posts all over social media saying the same thing. There is a tiny beautiful town in the mountains of Switzerland that will pay you to move there. And so, in the hopes of debunking this internet myth, we knew we had to check it out. However, to make this even more interesting, we decided to do something we've never done before by asking ourselves, why don't we bring a stranger from the comment section of one of these viral posts who might be
interested in moving there? We found an interesting comment, reached out to the commenter.
Hello, Mr. Wildland free. Have you ever been in Europe? No. No, I haven't. And in a massive leap of faith, he said, "Yes,
let's go to a flight ticket to Switzerland the very next day." So, why is this town paying people to move there? And is it even a good idea? We're about to find out. A lot of uncertainties here. I don't even know if this town is even real.
We only believe the internet and we flew a guy from Atlanta to be with us. So, you know, one of the first things that my mom told me whenever I got on the internet is like, "Be careful of strangers on the internet. And now we're going to a town that we've just read some Instagram posts about with a random dude who commented on that post." I've had zero part of picking this person. His Instagram name is Mr. while I'm free. His actual name is Sean.
Sean. I wonder how he is feeling because imagine you're getting a DM and then you're on a plane and now you're in Europe.
Yeah, he must be terrified or really excited. I don't know. Oh, I think I see him. He's just sitting on this bench with all these other people.
Hey, man. Nice to meet you. Everything's good. From the comment section, too. You know, lie. I still only know what I've looked up about Alvin.
We will see what's about to happen. We have no idea. We don't even know if this town like exists. How do you feel about like filming this, man?
Still very surreal. I'm like still reconciling the concept of like me being here right now. I'm in awe. You know what I'm saying? I'm I'm pretty excited though. You know, like I'm I'm big on adventure. I'm big on saying yes to things. I default to trusting the good in other humans. And I think when you do that, you you get the good out of them, you know,
100%. That's exactly what we live by. So, real talk. I'm I'm still just trying to figure out how close is the nearest grocery store.
How are y'all living here without a grocery store? After finally meeting Shawn, we made our way to the hotel, flipping through his photos from Geneva.
Nice, man. You've been living it. You know, I was out there. And wondering what tomorrow in Albinan might have in store for us. talking about notion.
Good morning, bro. How are you? Good. How's everything? I'm good. It's a nice little spot of good.
This is Quinton. Oh, what's up, man? Sean, Quinton, it's pleasure. Indeed. Indeed.
Quinton has no idea that we brought you once again. I don't know what's happening.
Oh, you guys are cross. Quit. We have a fun story for you. All right. So basically what happened was a couple of months ago and I randomly come across this post about a space in Switzerland called Alban that's like paying people to move there. And so I comment I'm like, "Okay, hey, one, how's the internet speeds over there? I work remote. I I got to have good internet. Two, where's the nearest grocery store? Cuz I got to have food." And third, lastly, how do you treat black people over there? So I had to ask. Like I checked my phone on Friday and I see a DM from Stefan.
He's like, "Yeah, like this is going to sound crazy, but you had commented on a post about Alvin in Switzerland and uh yeah, just wanted to know, do you want to go?" Like what?
We're going. The only thing is it's like now it's like it was real and here I am. And
so welcome to my country, bro. Thank you. I appreciate it. But out of one to 100%. Yeah.
What's the likelihood you moving to this village before you even go in there? Before I even go there.
Just give us a percent. 3%. 3%. 3% is still good. That's pretty good. It's better than nothing.
It's better than better than nothing. Okay. The Avengers are assembled. We go. I just keep on thinking that Sean actually said before that there's a 3% chance right now that he's moving there.
3% chance. This is like the most beautiful inhabited valley I've ever seen in my life.
That is that is that is very beautiful. Oh my god. And we are rolling into the town, I think.
Alan, is this the entry? Oh, this is what we came for. This is what brought us here. This freaking Instagram post about this town. They've set up a sign here saying Albinian, one of the most beautiful villages in Switzerland.
Okay. Okay. The scale of this place. Wow. Huh. Yeah. I'm surprised that a town like this would struggle attracting people because it's really beautiful.
Yeah. I literally can't see a single human being here. We're here. First impressions pretty cool. I mean, the dog isn't too happy about us being here but
Albin looks very nice. What's the percentage right now? It was 3% before 3% before. 6%.
6%. Let's go. I mean, I I can't lie. It's a kind of a beautiful place. Hey, we all know what it's time for now.
Yeah. Mission, go and talk to people. Yeah. Thought it was going to be more like run down, you know, cuz the one houses that was like bad, you know, but this is actually a beautiful town. It's just that it's kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Guys, guys, guys, it's a grocery store. They got a grocery store.
12%. Oh, is it open? Oh, it's closed. 3 to 6:30. So, it's closed right now. Hello. Are we still exist? The payment thing. Okay. Okay. Hotel.
There's a woman who owns the restaurant who married a Canadian husband, but he's not here at the moment. We'll find a way. She's saying there's been like families that roll up here like ready to move here being like how do I get the money
and they're like it's not how it works like from Romania and stuff. They received 10,000 letters from people
the people from the world to apply to come here. They go they go straight like they drive and they go straight to the to the office to apply and ask uh where can we get the money and the offer. She offered us coffee. She's very sweet. We she was telling us no restaurants are open. They're all on vacation. And we were asking her if there's anywhere we can get a coffee. And she said, "You want a coffee?" And we were like, "Yes." And then she went and got us some coffee. Oh,
the water from Alban. From my grandma in Albian. It's mint and honey. Oh. Oh my goodness.
We believe that there is kindness everywhere in the world. And you are another proof on that. Wow,
it's a bit sour, she said. Yeah, sour. Okay, it's happening. You're not bad at all.
This tastes like my childhood in Sweden when you eat this. Thank you. Thank you, Sean.
Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Sean. Sean. Oh, she's so so sweet. I'm going to miss her. Sean, what do you what do you think of that encounter?
Exactly what I thought would happen. Mhm. What' she say when we were sitting there? She was just like, "Yo, no, like you're all a positive energy."
Yeah. Right. Cuz we were complimenting her. We were like, "Wow, like you're so kind. You're very positive. You're very nice." She's like, "No, like y'all brought that energy to me." So,
is this like um No, this is the hotel. That's a hotel. Oh, yeah. Burger Hotel. Let's go. That's nice.
I think it's I don't think it's open. How do you have a hotel that's not open? Yeah, it just says closed. I don't know. I don't think it's a timing thing. Feel like I should be whispering in this town for some reason. Like, it's so quiet. Speaking out loud feels like disturbing the peace in this town. She did say that to move here you have to spend $200,000.
$2,000. Yeah. So where does that leave you? You spend 200,000 and you get paid like
I'm back at 4%. You end up at a net negative though, right? You end up in a net negative.
Yeah. Yeah. Cut to Thomas explaining something in voice over about this. Albinit started out as a medieval village more than 800 years ago. Many of the wooden chalets here date back to the 17th and 18th century, which is why the village is listed as part of Switzerland's inventory of heritage sites. For most of its history, Albinan was isolated until the 1960s. There was no road into the village and in winter it could be easily cut off by snow for weeks. Life revolved around agriculture. But as farming became less sustainable, residents began moving away. So in 2017, to keep the town from running out of residents, Albin's town council came up with a program that brought us here. A cash incentive for young people to come and make Albinan their home.
Switzerland will pay you an insane amount if you move there. Move to Switzerland and even get paid for it.
A place called Avenue Switzerland. The program was open to anyone under the age of 45, but it came with a few caveats. Applicants would have to buy or build a home in Albinan to the tune of at least 200,000 Swiss Franks and commit to staying for at least 10 years. If you could do that, then Albinan would pay 25,000 Swiss Franks for adult plus 10,000 for each child. Committing to a life in Albinan is committing to a pastoral lifestyle. There is no school, no bank, no post office, just one shop, one pub, and a bus that comes by once an hour. The more we learned, the more we realized that this program was less about getting paid to live in paradise and more about incentivizing new families to become part of a community that is keeping a historical way of life.
But would we be willing to make that jump? Hello. Hello. How are you? Good. You speak English?
Yes. Oh, amazing. It's not open, right? No, it's not open. And we just just came back, so we have absolutely nothing.
Oh, I see. I see. I see. You live in Albin? We live here. Oh, hello. How are you? Hi, I'm Thomas.
How's it going? We are from Sweden, the two of us, from Switzerland, from America. Yeah, we're very curious about the Albina. Now, we didn't realize it at first, but this is the one couple in town that speaks English that the lady was just telling us about after spending the last few weeks out of town. They just got back and meeting them was about to turn our entire trip around.
There's posts on the internet, on Instagram that are like talking about the program that you all have here to like encourage people to move here. We we just saw that there was a um a general assembly where people voted to renew the program.
Really? Yeah. So they just just renewed it last week. Last week you lived in the US cuz you
I I I'm I'm Canadian. Okay. I was born Canadian. I went to McGill. So I lived in Canada for Miguel graduate as well.
You are? We went to the same school. That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. We would love to explore. Like we're basically here today and tomorrow. It turns out saying we would love to explore would set the stage for the next day, leading us towards a local legend and something hidden in the mountains that would test us in ways we didn't see coming. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Well, as we travel to essentially a new country every single week, I have to admit that we end up logging on to a fair amount of suspicious looking Wi-Fi. But I have full confidence doing that thanks to the sponsor of today's video, Surf SharkVPN.
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And so, click the link in the description below or go to surfsharp.com/yestry. And now, back to the video. The next day began with us making our way back to Alpinan. Our objective today to truly assess if moving here would ever be a possibility is to become true locals.
Oh, good Morgan. Hey, good to see you again. Thank you. Thank you. To see if despite so many leaving, there is still some magic to be found in this small village in the mountains. However, we did not imagine it would happen in the way it did.
Hi, welcome. Nice to see you guys. My gosh. Wow. What a nice and cozy home you created in here.
Really feels like home. Yes. So, one thing that uh a lot of people are interested in where when they come here is the ladders. The Albinan ladders. There was no road coming to Albin until the early 60s. The only way you could come here is through a foot path from the bottom. There's a little village called Chingan. And then there was a train stop at the bottom here and then they had to climb. There was a about 300 m uh elevation gap. The only thing is if you're afraid of height then it's not recommended.
Why you zoom in on me? What would you say the conditions are the last time you all went to the ladders?
Well, there were a couple broken. Yeah, one a bit broken and few loose but like
doesn't sound good loose but and you said that some people have died here. Well the so I mean it's it's
this is getting worse. There's snakes. Some people have died. There's some screws and things didn't say that.
Nobody's died since 1947 that we know of. Okay. Okay. So, as we debated climbing these terrifying ladders, we first went looking for some of the town's rare locals.
Hello, how long have you lived here? Always. Always. Always. to funtop. We were getting a lovely tour of the village here from our new friends. It is really charming. Found out also that a lot of these old towns that were very remote like Albinan in Switzerland have burnt down. Why most people still heat their house with wood. So every house has these wood reserve and uh unfortunately that is quite high risk and uh a lot of these towns over the decades centuries have burnt down. They say that they consider Albin and still existing today and being this preserved a little miracle. I love the charm of this place. Like hearing Steve talk about the history of it and just like the endurance of this place. It's very peaceful. It's very quiet. The people are very kind. It would definitely be hard to see myself living here, but coming as like you were saying like a month
to like just wind down from life. Little mini sbatical. This is it. As we continued wandering around the village streets trying to meet locals, we were lucky enough to stumble upon someone who Steven Vivian claimed to be a local legend. Hello. Hello. Hello.
He brought his car for repair for service. Walked back up this ladders to excuse. Yes. Okay.
Let's go right now. He's He's like down to go right now. That's amazing. I'm amazed.
That's amazing. Are you surprised? Totally. He doesn't normally maybe do things like this. Yeah.
No. But before tackling the ladders, Maurice decided to show us his seller. The cheese.
Oh, cheese. This is a three-year-old. 2 to 3 years old. And as with every remote European village we visited, we weren't getting out of here without being offered some mid afternoon wine.
Local legend something. a moment if you want high on life. So, there was a post that went viral about this place,
Albany. Yes. And I commented on it. The third question was, "How do you treat black people out here?"
Maurice is trying to understand what's happening. He's like, "What?" So, he's saying, "Well, black, white, it doesn't change anything." Well, at least not me.
I don't know. We're all humans at the end. There was a moment when we were coming up, right, when we first got to Alban. We didn't see anybody. And we were like kind of nervous because we were like, we don't know what we're walking into and we don't know how well we'll be received. But I was like, you know what? We're going to go in there with positive energy and that's going to reverberate back to us. So,
I mean, and that that's your secret, I think. I mean, we were coming back from holiday, right? We had just driven what 6 hours. We arrive and we're looking forward to just
little did I know looking for something to eat. But your energy was I mean you want us over. It makes me so happy to see like this whole thing in Switzerland again because it's hard to sometimes meet people and to get to know each other even between us
and it makes me very happy to see like the whole thing now happening with Swiss people and and Maurice and I'm proud of my
Swiss people as well. What do you think about of us doing these letters? Found footage afterwards. Please, please don't say that. If we have Moritz with us, nothing nothing can go wrong.
Okay, so how did we get coerced into now? I feel like because Moritz is doing it and he's like over 70,
I feel like we can't. But here's the thing. If we would have went out there on our own, we for sure wouldn't have been doing it.
Yeah. No, that would have been not good. But if he's there and he can coach us through every single step, it gives me a little bit more confidence. Those pictures did not look reassuring.
Sean, have you seen what these letters look like? Oh my god. It's like that's a deathdeying excursion right there.
Okay. Well, to the ladders we go. How you feeling? I just my pants. Oh, Maurice. He's freaking ready.
Maurice is super ready. Okay. This was supposed to be a really chill Swiss village video, not an adrenaline video. legend. He's still backing out now and we're all scared and he's like,
he did this walk yesterday to go get his car in the other town. But the thing is as well, he has done it probably since he was like five, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is a lot. This is pretty high. Oh my god. Wait. This is like This is like a straight up drop here.
Hello. Straight up drop. Definitely. Okay. So, just walk slowly and slowly instead. I'm like terrified right now. This is This is
This is This is um Yeah, this is this is Oh, this was bad. You guys said we might be disappointed in terms of how sketchy it is. No, it's it's a bit worse. It's a bit worse. This is just a straight
That's a hilarious straight line down. Oh, that can't be the ladder, right? Yeah. Okay. Focus. Well, we got the
No, we'll be. This is great. Morit on three. 1 2 3. We're literally doing a summer hike in Switzerland now. One of the most beautiful countries.
Yeah. In the world. Yeah. We did the loneliest cabin in the world. We had ladders like this at the end and it was sketchy. And this is sketchy. It's a bit intimidating.
It's good, but I can't like Yeah, I can't down right now. This is chilling. I think we did it. Let's go.
Damn, that was That was wild. They definitely did not underell it. That was That was sketch.
Oh, Maurice is doing it holding the camera. What? With one hand. He's climbing with one hand.
Look at this view. Wow. That was high. That was more than I thought, but that was beautiful. That was epic. Yeah, we did as a team is just still smiling.
Amazing. Let's go. Oh, look at that. Look at that, man. Yeah, that was something extraordinary. But look at his smile. He has a
We traveled to this town to debunk an internet meme and in the end found ourselves surrounded by several new and unexpected friendships. When you think about it, the odds of this exact group of people sitting on the edge of this historical cliff of this ancient town is probably close to zero. But in that way, the internet, as polarizing as it often is, really can be a catalyst for real life connection if done safely and intentionally.
I did not expect that we'd make a new friendship from this comment idea. So, I'm super grateful. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful as well, man. Thank you so much. Oh,
I'll keep doing it. All right. You know, just we have a we have a small gift with us as well. Inside of here is a piece of a rock from the mountain and made into like a art piece from a local artist here. So, hope you will enjoy it.
Bless your bless your home or place. None of us will be moving to Albinan despite definitely falling for its charm. And the headline of getting paid to move here certainly isn't as sweet as it sounds as it comes with its caveats, which explains why only a few families have taken up the town on its offer. It is clear, however, that for people seeking for a pocket of the world to settle down in with some peace and quiet, surrounded by pristine nature, Albinan would not be a bad contender.
Questions about this episode
What is discussed in "This Village Pays You $70,000 To Move There (is it a scam?)"?
In order: 0:00 Albinan; 10:00 Albinan; 15:00 Albinan, Maurice; 20:00 Maurice; 25:00 Albinan, Maurice.
What is mentioned in this Yes Theory episode?
3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Albinan, Maurice. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.
How long is "This Village Pays You $70,000 To Move There (is it a scam?)"?
The episode runs 27 min; the transcript is about 4,311 words in 105 timestamped sections.
More from Yes Theory
About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.