There are some places in the world that instantly feel like home. Without any rhyme or reason, there are some airports you land in and it’s as if you’ve been struggling to breathe until the moment you touched down, but you didn’t realise it. Switzerland is like that for me. I have spent a lot of time in Switzerland and maybe that’s the only reason. Perhaps, it’s just the familiarity of it but then again, I’ve spent a lot of time in California and that never did, nor will, feel like home. So what is it about these surrogate countries that make us feel as if we belong there?
I had a boyfriend when I was about 16. He was the love of my life…at least he was in the way that only a 16 year old can believe. If I’m honest, it was all a bit Dawson’s Creek. We lived in the middle of nowhere in a small village in the Yorkshire Dales and, pretty much, we were the only people of the same age in the village. For that reason, it was probably lucky that we didn’t find each other repulsive. In fact, we ended up going out together for about three years and those three years in that small village without him would have been hell on earth. He was my world and he was my first infatuation (see previous blog!) but he had another infatuation…Canada.
I didn’t understand it at the time. He came back from a school exchange in Vancouver and from that moment on, he felt out of place back home in Yorkshire. Vancouver, and all things Canadian, were where his heart now belonged. I’d done some travelling but I’d never been bowled over by a country; a country had never stolen my heart; I’d never cheated on a boyfriend with a country. And honestly, that’s how I felt. I felt like he’d left me for another woman, decided to come home and make the best of it, and realised that he was stuck in a loveless relationship for the sake of trying to do the right thing! Dramatic much? Possibly, but isn’t every 16 year old in love for the first time dramatic?
Come the age of 18, we weren’t together anymore and I was embarking on my own life. I was finishing at school and suddenly the big, bad world was opening up to me. In a typical teenage fashion, this big bad world seemed far too big and bad for me to contemplate and I found myself in June 1999 with my exams behind me and nothing organised for the summer. I’d got a place at university in September but what was I going to do with myself until then? I was pretty sure that the olds weren’t going to stand for me ‘relaxing’ at home. If I mentioned it, all they heard was, “I thought I’d spend the summer sleeping and freeloading at your house if that’s ok?” Not surprisingly, it wasn’t so I needed to find something to keep me occupied and quickly.
At the very last minute, my headmaster came through for me. He used to a work in a boarding school in the Swiss Alps, he said. They run a summer school, he said and they will take you on as a member of staff but they can’t pay you, he said. Well, apart from the Alps bit, the rest of it sounded pretty rubbish to a girl surrounded by others jetting off to Thailand, Asia, Vietnam and placements in London. But, there was no other choice. My parents had locked the door at the family home and they seemed to hide behind the sofas in the dark whenever I turned up, hoping that I’d go away and find something worthwhile to do. So, I packed a rucksack stuffed full with clothes, hope, nerves and a lot of trepidation and off I popped to the easyjet check-in desk (you see, it was all glamour from the start).
I remember the exact point when I fell in love with Switzerland. I was on a easyjet plane (it gets better, I promise). I was just waking up. I looked out of the window and it was then. Right at that moment. The plane was suspended between mountains that made me feel small and insignificant in the most beautiful way. It was the last day in July and the sun was bouncing off snow-capped peaks. As we came into land in Geneva, Lac Leman spread itself out underneath the plane like a shimmering Swiss version of the red carpet and I remember hoping at that moment that this would not be the last time I ever landed in Switzerland.
Despite this, I was still nervous. I had basic instructions on how to get to the school via train from the airport. I was just 18, I spoke barely any French, I was on my own, and I had no idea how to buy a ticket, which train to get on or where to get off. Five minutes into the train journey that didn’t matter. I must have looked like the freshest, most wet-behind-the-ears tourist the Swiss had ever laid eyes on. My face was practically stuck to the train window as the train went along the shore of Lac Leman through towns such as Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux until it finally rested in Aigle. Hands down, it beat any train journey I had ever been on. It still does.
And that’s where my love affair with Switzerland began. It might not be perfect; it can be infuriatingly pragmatic sometimes to the detriment of anything fun or spontaneous but it’s like a beautiful, innocent pedigree dog who’s been trained impeccably but every now and again it’ll chew up a pair of socks with a cheeky grin on its face. Since then, I’ve spent a total of nine summers, four New Year’s Eves and various trips to visit friends. I have fallen in and out of love in Switzerland. I’ve skied, snowboarded, fallen down and picked myself up again. I’ve jumped in lakes off highboards in the summer and bellyflopped a few times too. I’ve trekked up mountains in the summer only to have the breath knocked out of me by the view at the top (if you ever get a chance visit Lac Tanay). I’ve camped, stayed in fabulous hotels, been to festivals, danced by the lakeside at the Jazz festival and stayed to watch the sun come up over Lac Leman. I’ve made some of the best friends in Switzerland and captured some of my best memories there too.
And that’s why we fall in love with countries. They may not be where we come from but sometimes, while you’re there, you figure out where you want to go in life. In my experience this is most likely to happen when you pick yourself up out of your life at home and you take yourself off. It’s often a journey that you do by yourself and when I did it, I was young, naïve, a little bit lost and Switzerland took care of me. It opened it’s big, beautiful arms and said, “Come on in. Enjoy it…and have you tried this before? No? Well, here, hold my hand. I’ll show you how.”
