How Very Swiss-Like

(I’m tidying up my electronic files and discovered this one was left behind a few years ago…)

I am a person who lives by the ocean. I look out my window or stand on the beach and know that what I see and what I touch will not be the same the next time my gaze wanders back or I feel the rocky shore under my feet. In some moments on my trip to Switzerland I have felt a tightening in my chest and an impatience in my search for a limitless view. It was not the landscape that caused my distress, it was that I couldn’t connect. To put it simply, every time I called Switzerland, I got a busy signal.

To be amid such beauty—soaring, pointed, silent, massive Alps, glacier lakes in a teal green that forced a scream of ‘cold!’ from me each time I burst from the water, Heidi chalets tumbling across unbelievably emerald grass that undulates across the valleys in waves—all of it delivers such pleasure to the eye. However, beauty is not everything.

Someone told me once that people can be kind, but it does not equate to friendship. I would say that is true in Switzerland. Everyone has been unfailingly kind, but I have not met anyone who was willing to pull back the curtain and let me into their interior space where they unpin their hair and let it swing free.

For most people life is messy, and perhaps for some Swiss it is. Hot mess should be my first name. I am the one whose bra straps never tucked neatly inside my shirt as a teenager; I am the one who threw my head to the skies and howled to my children ‘you two are killing me!’; I am the one who “ugly cried” in public places and couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.

I want to be perfectly frank: I am writing about MY experience in Switzerland. I am writing from the lens in which I see the world. I know it is my experience, because I’ve spent the last few days wondering why I could not string together a few words to make a sentence. I’ve stared each night at a blank computer screen and questioned what was wrong with my fingertips. Most of the time they trip merrily across the keys. For a week they have been silent. They woke up this morning.

We left central Switzerland yesterday and drove as far south as possible while still staying in the country. We are in Gandria, a tiny hill village on Lake Lugano, a few miles from the border with Italy.  There are four languages spoken in Switzerland—German, French, Italian, and Ramanesh (an old dialect of Italian). If you divide Switzerland into sections that touch the surrounding countries, you can see that the Swiss who live in Geneva and farther east speak French while the Swiss who live in the north, for example Appenzell, speak German. Here in the south Italian is the language for the Swiss, but in my experience, I see no Swiss—it’s Italian through and through.   

The sound of people speaking Italian swirls around me like curling wisps of smoke. “Buongiorno!” cries the tabbacci shop owner as he peels back the doors to his kiosk. “Buongiorno,” sings the waitress next door as she sweeps crumbs from the table. We even got a muttered “Buongiorno,” from a grisly fisherman as he passed us in his dory while we bobbed in the lake during our morning swim. My heart is light, I traipse along the crooked, stone paths, and my smile is wide as I raise my wine glass and grin at the waitress.    

Why is it that I can embrace one culture and be untouched by another?   

There is only one war memorial in Switzerland. It is the Lion of Lucerne, carved into a rock in Lucerne. It is a dying lion, head in anguish on its paws, lying on its side. It commemorates the Swiss Guard soldiers who were killed in 1792 during the French Revolution. The monument is visited by over a million people each year in Switzerland. It acknowledges the loss Switzerland endured fighting for someone else. Mark Twain called it “the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.” The Swiss revere the monument but still feel the sting of its controversy. Switzerland is adamant. They will not glorify a moment in history where Swiss citizens died for a foreign monarchy. After the defeat in France, the country turned inward—developed their own economy, kept their own counsel, stated their own neutrality. That is the way it has been for generations, despite what happened to the rest of the world.

So, it has me thinking about the concept of collective history. I do not advocate for war as a resolution to a disagreement, but I do believe in two things: the value of speaking your mind and acting with your heart. Simple, I know, but those two values have been my North Star. Collective history means we were all there even if we saw it from different perspectives. It means we were all changed in some way and the memory of the events continue to inform us over time. Being a part of something bigger than yourself allows you to become something more. You may not have thought you had the courage to do something unknown, but with allies on your side, you trust someone has your back. Leaders are created through collective history. Leaders emerge because of events, not in spite of them. Sacrifice inspires us to find a common purpose and to rise above the fray.       

A few years ago, we visited Normandy, France, and Paul and I walked along some of the D-day beaches. We sat on the bus with people from Canada, England, France, and even Germany. Being American, I expected the tour to be all about the American’s role in D-day, but I was soon silent in shame. Yes, the United States landed on Utah and Omaha, but the British stormed Gold, the Canadians fought on Juno and the British and the French commandeered Sword. Collectively, eight allied countries, 7,000 ships and landing craft, and 160,000 troops stepped onto French soil on June 6, 1944.

The Swiss did recently break with some of its strictest approaches to neutrality—they joined the U.S. and others and imposed sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine. They also contributed 1.3 billion francs to aid Ukrainian refugees.    

So, what does this have to do with Switzerland and my struggle to connect?  I’m not sure. Just as I choose to stand on my ever-changing beach with its detritus floating in from all directions, the Swiss have their immovable mountains. We each know our place in the world, but perhaps visiting one another is worth answering the call.