One month in Switzerland, and we had already arrived at the first family birthday. The honors of the first Swiss celebration fell to my youngest son, so Younger chose the event of the day — sort of.
“I want to go to the Alps,” he declared without hesitation. The hesitation belonged to Husband and to me.
It’s late May; down in the city of Zurich, most days all you need is a light sweater. The Alps are still covered in snow — and, as a result of our minimization of material goods in our move, we have a small selection of clothing to don. As Southern California beach-dwellers, our winter attire leaves something quite a lot to be desired.
In addition, we have our two dogs to think about; we can’t leave them home all day, and they haven’t been on a long journey since the flight from Los Angeles to Zurich. (Should I tell you about the flight in the Leaving San Diego chapter? Leave a comment.)
We had to tell Younger about the problems his birthday wish posed on a practical level.
“If we can’t do that,” Younger said with poorly hidden discouragement, “maybe we can watch Friends all day.”
Husband and I retreated behind closed doors to discuss without an audience.
“We’ve got to make this happen for him.”
“But a trip to the Alps is hours and hours away, right? We can’t get into the Alps.”
As Zurich-region residents, we live in the Northern part of Switzerland, close to Germany. The Alps are in the Southern half, closer to Italy, though they do take up a gigantic portion of Switzerland. That’s the technical term recorded in all topographical literature.
While Switzerland is not a large country (especially to those of us who are accustomed to the size of the United States), it takes close to two hours to travel the nearly 150km from Zurich to the Alps. To be at the base. If we were to do that, we would not have time to get into the mountains themselves before needing to return for evening festivities.
We’d already booked the evening, having promised Younger a Thai dinner for his birthday that night. That promise had hung in the air for over a week. It wasn’t getting changed.
Husband worked his magic and found we could split the difference if we traveled to Mt. Origi, originally called Mt. Rigi, but renamed after footballer (soccer player) Divock Origi after he scored a brace (two goals) in Liverpool FC’s iconic comeback over Barcelona in May of 2019, including the sneak-attack corner kick from Alexander-Arnold.
With a peak at 1800 meters (or 5900 feet — over a mile for those of you who didn’t grow up with mathematicians for parents), Rigi would allow us to look out on the surrounding land which included three lakes, and, of course, the Swiss Alps to the South. We wouldn’t even have to hike up to the peak, though we could some other time — when we had the time — we could take the cogwheel train to the highest point. [Check out this map of routes which is also available in brochure form, in several languages, at the base.]
“Let’s do it,” I said. “And that Divock Origi thing? He’s Belgian! Why would a Swiss mountain be named after a Belgian playing for an English club?”
“Yeah, I know. Of course it’s not really called Divock Origi Mountain or Mt. Origi — except, perhaps, to Liverpool fans.”
“So, just us?”
“Yeah, just us.”
Actually, according to JungFrau Tours, Mt. Rigi’s name origin is disputed — though only Husband has placed a Belgian athlete in the mix. While some say Albrecht von Bonstetten, a Swiss humanist, named the mountain in the late 1400s, calling the mountain Regina, others say it’s more likely derived from local phrases for the grass and rocks that band around the mountain. Either way, Mt. Rigi is also referred to as Queen of the Mountains.
Our family of six was able to get tickets on the train from Zurich HB (the main train station) to the Arth-Goldau station. We decided we would take the dogs instead of leaving them home for a bit more time than we were comfortable only to come home, shower, and leave again for dinner. Duration: 45 minutes
Arth-Goldau StationMt. Rigi in the distance straight ahead; train platform and cog train visible approximate 50 yards ahead.
We boarded what was originally Europe’s first cog railway which fascinated Husband more than anyone else. We were almost all mesmerized by what appeared out the window on the ascent though. Only Older had his nose in a book and missed that opportunity. Out the window, we saw numerous hikers, plenty of cows (Younger and I won the Cow Game), and several hotels in which to stay.
Leaving town, heading for Mt. Rigi on the cog railway. Notice the open window, from which we would soon snap scenic shots.
After a total of 90 minutes of travel from Zurich, even the dogs were amazed and we arrived just below the peak.
The view on arrival of the Alps, Zugersee, and some of Rigi’s paths & visitors.
I am a collector of old books. Our move has rampaged my former library and even my antiquarian library was not left unscathed, but I could not give up a poor condition copy of a narrative by Samuel Clemens. Yes, Samuel Clemens. That is what the book declares. (I could prove this to you if the book were not, still, in my parents’ home inside a box until we are able to ship it.)
If you haven’t recognized that author, perhaps you’ll recognize the work. It’s a short book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Ever heard of it? Ever heard of him, Samuel Clemens? Give yourself a bit of wiggle there, most people know Clemens by his pen name, Mark Twain. That same author penned these words.
“THE Rigi-Kulm is an imposing Alpine mass, 6,000 feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circumference. The ascent is made by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer.” Thus begins chapter 28 of a book mentioned momentarily.
Mark Twain, American writer, essayist, humorist (are these necessarily distinct categories?) rather famously visited Rigi and wrote about it in his A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880. Twain speaks of steamboats and “locomotives” leaving smoke tracks. He notes fog and jodlers (yodelers) in his quest to see the sunrise from the summit of Rigi. We witnessed none of these, nor any of Twain’s foolish moments in ascent — neither did we experience them. Of course, we took the direct route to the top 150 years later.
Twain reports staying in the hotel at Rigi Kulm, which I was unaware of when I suggested to Husband that perhaps we return some year on an anniversary or some such celebration and stay atop the Rigi. Heck! Apparently, you can even travel in his footsteps if you are as big a nerd as I am.
Mt. Rigi Kulm is a popular place in Switzerland, and there were plenty of people there on a beautiful and relatively sunny Sunday in May. Sometimes, the people made the shot better, some times they did not — but there weren’t so many that a few shots couldn’t be found without any people at all.
I presume Twain saw something of this view, if somewhat colder and less verdant. In the years that have passed since his visit, there have been a few technological changes in the world. As a result, there is a communications station at Rigi Klum, visible from below.
RigiComms, as I’ve coined it, from the side of the mountain. And snow.
As the tower includes stairs, I hoped to climb to a lookout several stories above the mountain’s actual peak. I brought Younger along to make sure to catch this Birthday View. However, upon ascent, it became clear that fences limited the public to a rather low one story gain above the terrain, and the view there, not markedly different but for the addition of a huge block of metal.
A fence keeps the crowds safe(r) from the sharp decline down the mountain, and, in one spot on the northwest perimeter, a gate hides itself in the fence. We, of course went through this gate — and trekked a short ways to a drop-off, which could have been navigated around if we’d wanted. I suspect some people ascend/descend on this route.
The narrow path beyond the gate.
While we explored the mountain’s face, we were surprised to see quite a few hang gliders. Younger spoke repeatedly about wanting to participate in this, as though the repetition of his desire would convince his parents that, it being his birthday, they ought to put him in a sack in the sky and let him go. — They didn’t.
Lake Greifensee is within running distance, so, Husband and I ran there, found a spot to snap a few photos, and ran back before the Kids or Pups could miss us too much.
See = pronounced “zee;” German for “lake” Greifen = pronounced “Gry-phen;” German for “grab” Is this Grab Lake? As in, a direction for effective fishing?
“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
Those questions belong to one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes, and from one of his most famous poems, “Harlem,” though they are not nearly all the questions he poses in that poem. I taught the poem any chance I could over my nearly 15 year teaching career, including when we read A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, so I’m aware its meaning is not about moving to another country — at least, not in a literal sense. I’ve analyzed it with 7th-graders, 8th-graders, 10th-graders, and 11th-graders. It never fails to impact with its imagery or its meaning.
So when our departure to Switzerland was delayed, my mind associated the alliteration of delayed departure with dream deferred and noticed the several similarities. And what happened to our departure deferred?
Well, it didn’t dry up like a raisin in the sun. Nor did it fester like a sore and then run. It didn’t even stink like rotten meat! (Have I grossed you out enough to study the poem yet? It’s short and relatively simple — at face value. But. Don’t forget the title. In poetry, always come back to the title.)
Despite the fact that our visas had not come through in order for Husband to start his Swiss job April 1, nor for the family to depart in late-March as planned, we came to an agreement with the company that they would sponsor our rent from April 1 through to the departure date — now slated for late-April. With hope that the visas would soon come through, we planned a new start date for Husband’s position, May 1. A one month delay.
“Yeah, they better be fronting the bill for our rent — and any changes in the cost of our flights. We did exactly what they told us to do.” I confessed to Husband, revealing my letter of the law approach to the professional world — which I’m not always proud of.
Husband glossed over my subtle ire. “What do you think about spending that time in Europe? The time from April 1 to April 20th or so? I haven’t booked our new tickets to Zurich, so we could use that time to travel and get acclimated to a more European timezone. Maybe we could spend a week in Italy or Germany beforehand.”
“That sounds pretty awesome,” I said, “but will it mess with our visa process?”
“Okay, well, if that’s the case, what if we split the travel time.”
“What does that mean?”
“We could go to the East Coast to divide the flight into two. Go to Boston or something — “
“I love Boston!”
“I know. We could spend a few weeks there and then the travel time gets split. It’ll no longer be such a massive travel day or such a massive time change to adjust to.”
“I am all for that. I haven’t been to Boston in — gosh, twenty years.”
Back to Beantown — with its Charles River, Duck Tours, and Freedom Trail. I’d show my kids where I lived, a block from the original Cheers. And they’d want to see the show because they will have never heard of it before. It sounded great: a return to my college town, my country’s birthing pangs, then off to a European life. It’d be symbolically parallel and therefore poetic. I went to a new coast to start a new life that would lead to a new career when I was eighteen. Now that I’m (throat clear) not eighteen, I could do that much better: I’d go to a new continent to start a new life that will lead to a new career. Ahhhh, a symmetry that’s soothing.
Moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs, don’t know the history, don’t even know the system of government like you do your country of origin is not a soothing experience. Boston sounded good.
Tickets to Boston cost nearly as much as tickets to Zurich for the timeline needed to be out of our home before April 1 and in Switzerland before May 1. Without an income until Husband started his job, that seemed unwise. So, instead of returning to my college town, we returned to my first teaching town and lived a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean until we departed. Not a bad deal.
Given that I grew up in the adjacent town, the return to the stomping grounds of my educational upbringing (both as the recipient and deliverer of education) brought a stunning juxtaposition. Here, in Southern California, blocks from the beach, I knew every block. I knew which houses had been painted, where to get the best breakfasts, the shortcuts and secret parks, all without having to think about it. In Zurich — oy. How many miles — scratch that — kilometers to the ocean? What do they even eat for breakfast? Bratwurst? Isn’t that German? I don’t know what Swiss food is! Oh my goodness. I am going from completely comfortable and confident to, there’s no better way to say it, inept and idiotic. Or at least feeling that way.
No, no. Stop that. Think of it on a bigger level. As not just you, KZ, as a part of a unit. This was the place you met your family, where you met Husband (or so he says because I don’t remember it). We will launch from our starting place to a new start.
Given the means, the time, the flexibility, and the freedom, maybe that’s what happens to a dream deferred. It takes a turn and bursts onto a new tangent. The anger and the fear of the early days of deferral shadow every thought and decision early on, but that settles. We were lucky enough to have circumstances cleared relatively quickly. And a month is not that long to delay a departure, let alone to defer a dream. It’s nothing like a lifetime. Or many lifetimes.
What happened to our dream deferred? It combusted into a new starting line, in a new language, with the same old sound of the gun. It ran ’round, stepping in paces paved by the past and it built up speed to leap —
And, like most leaps into the unknown, we had a sense of where we were heading, but no idea where we were going; we knew our time of arrival, but had no idea when we’d set our feet on the ground.
We have since landed in Switzerland. The travel was both a nightmare and better than expected, the experience in customs, one I hope to forget. But we are in Zurich, living in our temporary apartment, looking for one of our own, and back in the Holy-Moly list of tasks that need completing — this time, from the other side of the world.
Once we are settled, we plan to go on semi-regular excursions — and tell you all about them. To keep track of where we go, visit the Travel Log section of this site, comment with where you think we ought to go or what you want us to tell you about when we’re there, and, of course, subscribe! .
One of the pups, having flown in the cabin with KZ, looking out the window as we landed in Zurich in April. The other pup had to travel in a crate below — but he’s okay now.
Many people love to camp. They grab their tent, their sleeping bag, flashlight, and frying pan and they’re off to enjoy the outdoors, take in the scents of nature 24hr/day.
Not me. Oh, I love the outdoors, but only for a select amount of time. No overnighting, thank you very much. After a dirty day in the elements, take me home to my shower and my bed, please and thank you. I’d put myself somewhere on the spectrum between glamping and Troop Beverly Hills. Luckily for me, camping in your own home is on that spectrum.
After the estate sale, we’d been left with our beds (which we’d put behind a locked door), two green floor-to-ceiling cabinets, and a wooden chair the dogs had gotten the better of. We saved some pots and kitchenware, notably the coffee machine, and were otherwise living out of suitcases as of the beginning of March.
Three weeks until departure. This, we could do.
Homework on the floor in empty rooms after the Estate Sale left us with very few pieces of furniture. Dinner was on the floor, too, until we discovered we still had a card table we could use. The boys used crates for chairs.
The idea of a minimalist life was urgently appealing. Who needs all this stuff? A towel, a bed, and a nightstand — that’s all I need. Oh, and a closet. And preferably a set of drawers, too. Hangers, of course. And, I mean, I don’t need a coffee machine, but the people who interact with me need me to have a coffee machine. And my books, of course. So somewhere to put my books. And all my kitchen gadgets so I can make my meals. A television, of course — because I don’t want to watch all the Liverpool and San Diego Wave matches on a phone. And, with that, I’ll need a comfy couch. With pillows.
Ah, the minimalist life.
We were enjoying this strange, new existence, looking down at the final days of school and U.S. residency when Husband received a request for a meeting with his new company.
“I wonder if they want to offer us more money for the move,” Husband said. He had a point. The move money they gave us was laughable. They had a requisite amount/limit for anyone moving inside the country and anyone moving outside of the country. Of course, they were accustomed to outside of the country being within the E.U., not the West Coast of the United States.
Deep breath; I digress.
“I wonder if they want to offer us more money for the move,” Husband said.
“Maybe,” I said, wanting to believe that could be true. I didn’t see why that would require a face-to-face meeting though. Send an email. We’re increasing the measly amount we offered to give you for your relocation four fold. Congratulations. See you in Switzerland. Easy peasy. No, this was going to be weightier. And it already made me sweat to carry the thought of that weight.
So Husband took another 6AM meeting, but this one didn’t require me, so he took it alone. Afterall, I had to get ready for work. He set his computer on a built-in shelf in our empty closet and met with the onboarding team.
I couldn’t hear too much from the bathroom. Just enough to be able to tell the person on the line with him was not a native English speaker. The accent was telling. And Husband’s tone of voice. (Husband’s tone of voice is almost always the same: light, jovial, soft, pleasant. I’ve only heard it go edgy when I poke his buttons for long enough, or when our kids do the same thing. Oh, and a bunch of times when he took meetings with Old Boss.)
Husband’s tone of voice quickly changed from friendly to tense. I emerged from the bathroom to hear him say, “…because we have our house rented out. As of April 1st, we have no place to live.”
And shortly thereafter, “We have booked our flights. We arrive March 24th. Our renters arrive April 1st.”
The bottom line: our visas did not go through quickly enough for the April 1st start date. The company hoped everything would work out to have Husband start May 1st instead.
We had planned to camp in our own home, with minimal gear, for three weeks. We had not planned to take our suitcases and book a campsite to sleep outdoors. Hopefully, we wouldn’t have to…
I’ve moved plenty of times. Within a city. Across a state. From West to East and East to West. From North to South and back again. I’ve lived all over the United States. Any time there’s a move, a massive to-do list materializes around closing up shop in the current venue and opening afresh in a different location. The list of what needs to happen seems to self-populate, then overpopulate.
Some of that stays true for an international move — the old standbys remain: find a place to live, pack, set a departure date. Some new ones pop up, though: what do I need to do to get a visa? is my passport up-to-date? do dogs need passports? how do I look for a job in a country in which I do not speak the languages? how do we get on House Hunters International? So, while many Americans were planning what to do for Superbowl Sunday, my husband and I were sitting down to plan out what we knew to plan out for an international relocation.
Backwards planning, here we go: Husband’s first day on the job is April 1. We want at least a few days to adjust to the time change (9 hours), so let’s plan on March 23rd-ish. Holy crap! Those plane tickets are expensive! Is it any cheaper if we make about 14 stops along the way? The dogs can’t make 14 stops along the way. Someone has to fly direct with them. I wonder how much stuff we can manage to fit in a suitcase to bring on a flight.
“Hey, by the way, what are we doing with all our stuff?”
“What do you mean what are we doing with all our stuff?”
“Do we ship it all to Switzerland?”
“That sounds like an insane cost. It’s expensive enough to move within the country, but, overseas would be nasty.”
“So what are we going to do with all our stuff?”
“Mmmm… sell it?”
“All of it?”
“Or most of it?”
“That sounds like some insane logistics. Who will be here taking photos, creating posts, scheduling people to check out our stuff or pick it up?”
“Mmmm… Well, I have to go to work every day,” I gave Husband a you-know-what-I-mean look, and he gave me an Ain’t-No-Way-I’m-Doing-All-This response, so I said, “I guess we better get started.”
“Let’s start with the bikes,” suggested Husband. “They take up so much space in the garage anyway, and I hate how crowded it gets in there.”
“Yeah, if you help me bring them out, I can handle the bike posts.”
I opened the garage door, stepped outside, and Husband and I started dragging bikes up the driveway. I took pictures of their frames, their handlebars, their wheels, etc.
“Are you going to post them on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or OfferUp or what?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Only I can’t access my Facebook account to use Facebook Marketplace.”
“Why not?”
I sighed heavily. “Ugh. New phone. Different computer. They don’t believe I’m me and I’ve no way to prove it anymore.”
“Well, just use mine.”
After three hours having the bikes up for sale, I decided this was not going to work. I could not stand the bombardment of emails asking if any of our eight bikes were still available or haggling for a cheaper price or suspiciously requesting that a distant relative pick up a bike after asking for Zelle or Venmo information. If a handful of bikes caused this much headache, what would it look like to sell almost everything we own?
Husband and I are thrifty shoppers. We do not disparage goods that belonged to someone else before we encounter them, and we welcome their story into our home. We have picked up numerous pieces of free furniture next to our neighbors’ mailboxes, and, if there’s a garage sale nearby, we head over with our vision piqued for a few key items. (I won’t tell you what they are because I’m not going to invite the competition.)
“Maybe we have a garage sale,” Husband thought out loud. “At least then all our stuff goes at once. Or several garage sales.”
“That’s probably wise,” I said.
Even as I voiced it, I thought it sounded exhausting. People are exhausting. Lack of structure is exhausting. A garage sale is both lots of people swarming in waves and hours and hours long right outside the door that leads to my very comfy bed — which I am not selling until I absolutely have to.
“I’m going to look into estate sales,” I said as the notion occurred to me. I would definitely pay someone to handle this mess for me.
So that’s what we did. I found the numbers for a couple of local companies, handed them off to Husband, and he did the rest. Set up appointments with them, selected one to use, set the dates, and we were on our way.
“Add it to the calendar!” Husband said. “The last week of February into the first week of March.”
“Why a whole week?” I asked.
“Because they do everything for us.”
“What do you mean everything?”
“Everything. They organize all our stuff and price it during the week so that on the weekend they are ready to have people shop. Then they run it like a store. They don’t even want us around.”
“That sounds awesome!” I declared.
“And get this?” he said. “The woman who will be in charge of our estate sale is named Richelle.”
I smiled. “Well, it’s meant to be.”
“Indeed. But anyway, we’ve got to be out of the house by the final week of February — and we have to have gone through everything in the house to know what we’re bringing to Switzerland and what we’re not so it can get sold. We need our suitcases so we can pack them and see what fits. We need some boxes to…uh… will your parents let us store some things?”
“You mean some stuff before we find a permanent apartment.”
Yes, in the meantime, Husband’s company committed to finding us a temporary apartment — three months on their dime. I mean, on their Swiss franc — because finding an apartment in Zurich is notoriously difficult. And what do we know about where to live in Zurich?
“Yeah. We’re bound to have some things we don’t need to travel with but will ultimately need while we live there.”
“Or want.” I thought of my antique books, my collection of Jane Eyre, the Ephesians study I’d written in college.
“Keepsake type stuff, too.”
“Yeah, they’d probably let us,” I told him. “I’ll ask my dad, buy suitcases for everyone since we only have one or two that remain usable, and figure out where we are going to stay during this estate sale while I still have work and the kids still have school.”
“And I’ll ask around to see if anyone will let us stay with them.”
“Great.”
“Speaking of school, we need to sit down and determine the boys’ last day.”
We met with Older Son’s high school counselor to gather information to make our decision and discovered that, because his school was on a trimester system, grades closed on March 7th on the day of his last final.
Perfect. March 7th would be his last day. And, since it turned out Younger Son’s grades closed on March 8th, we made that his last day and informed both schools of the plan.
“How about I finish before them?” I asked, thinking about how challenging it would be to live out of a suitcase at someone else’s home or in a hotel during the week of the estate sale, all while teaching a full time schedule.
“That’d be nice,” said Husband, “but I think I’ll have to punch some numbers and see what we can manage.”
GRRRRRR!!! Stupid logic! Can’t I just stop working now? I’m ready. Say the word. [see more about this mindset in the original post, The Preface] No? Sigh. Okay. Fine. Let math have its way. As always.
We ended up setting my last day a week after the boys’ left school: March 15th. The Ides of March. For an English teacher, it was fitting, but I’d rather have gone out on Pi Day. I didn’t want to be Caesar in this play! No et tu, Brute for me.
After weeks of revisions, the final [simplified — because I can’t even follow the madness of the full, complex, arrows-everywhere, to-do list post-its layered on top full version] schedule of events looked rather like this:
April 1: Husband’s first day on the job March 26: Everyone arrives in Zurich March 25: KZ departs from LA with the dogs on a direct flight to Zurich March 22: Husband and Boys depart from LA with stops to see relatives in different states along the way to Zurich March 18-22: Sell KZ’s car March 18: Leave San Diego, stay in LA March 16: Goodbye Gathering March 15: KZ’s last day teaching March 10-15: Sell Husband’s car March 7&8: Kids’ last day of school February 28 – March 3: Estate Sale (find a place to stay)
Sounds simple enough, right? Yes, that is the simple list. — Oh, what the heck. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the to-do items flying out from that simple list. Dog training — do they have to be crated or do they go in the cabin on the flight? Rent out house — company? utilities? etc. Fingerprints to FBI ASAP! (Visa) U.S. Phone Numbers/Cell Phone situation ALL Autopayments & Subscriptions — cancel USPS Forwarding Medical Records Donation receipts Electronic Waste Shipping Guitars
You can see how these would have all sorts of arrows associated with them. It was chaos. It’s John Nash’s office after he was sent to the psychiatric hospital, or at least the film version of it.
It felt a bit like that, too. Not to belittle mental illness, but, my goodness, we felt the paranoia of missing something vital that would set us back or keep us from moving altogether, as well as the schizophrenia of a voice popping up, albeit our own, adding items and deadlines to the already haywire list. Something was bound to go wrong. It was only a matter of time before we found out what…
I read Of Mice and Men as a high school freshman. Despite going on to be a Literature major, reading several more Steinbeck novels (some more than once), that first book remains the only Steinbeck I’ve enjoyed. Perhaps it’s the length of it, or the ubiquity of the references to Lennie and his strength, or just Lennie himself. I’m drawn to his innocence, his good intentions, and the complexity that with his sweetness and innocence, he’s often a threat. He embodies the notion that what we don’t know can hurt us.
We rejected the Zurich offer because Zurich had become a threat to us. To the education and the future of our children on the one hand, and to the death of a shared dream on the other. It looked to be a dead end.
Only this was a dream that wouldn’t quite die off. Through holiday travel and the ringing in of 2024, my husband continually brought up feelings of lament around the Zurich position.
“It’s really too bad…” he’d say. “I wish they’d been able to offer…” he’d say. “If only there were some other way,” he’d say.
And I’d sit torn between reflecting his lament back to him and encouraging him to move forward with his job search. Until he said, “I found another education consultant in Zurich.”
With intrigue and doubt, I responded, “Yes?”
“I want to have a consultation with her. The consultation is free. So, really, there’s no risk. We can see if she agrees with the other consultant, and, if she does, done deal. So long Zurich.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked, anxious about where the answer could lead.
“Well, if she thinks the kids could go to public school and still end up being able to attend university, I think I will contact HR at the company and see if I can have more time to think about it.”
I sat silently. Thinking. If several consultants note the impossibility, it could help him move on….
“What do you think?” Husband asked.
I shrugged my shoulders and raised my eyebrows in tandem with them, letting them all fall in unison. “Why not? The worst that can happen is they say no.” But, I thought to myself, I bet they wouldn’t. Not after all they’d invested in him.
Another 6:00 AM meeting with an education consultant later, Husband and I were convinced.
“It would not be easy,” said this second consultant. “You must have children who are really very unusual. They must work very hard. Even the Swiss children must work very hard. But to catch up and do gymnasium, this would be so difficult. I think, if you are very supportive of them, and you think they can do it, perhaps maybe they can.”
“Our kids are rather atypical,” we said. “They are bright and motivated, well-rounded and kind.”
“I want you to know,” I told her, “that when I say my children are unusual, I mean that in a very good way. And I do not say that just because I am their mother. I am a teacher. I see hundreds of students their age every year. I have taught my oldest son in my classroom, and teachers go out of their way to comment on how wonderful my youngest son is. But what is more, I did not give birth to them. They are not genetically mine. I do not see my children with the rose-colored glasses many mothers see their own children. Still, I can say they are exceptional.”
“If you are willing, then we will have to do some work. I will speak with the Zurich schools and see when it would be possible for them to take the gymnasium test. It will all be in German. So, in the meantime, you get a tutor for them. They must learn German. And some French, too, but German is the most important. I will also ask about them being given a trial year, so they can catch up their German even more — and maybe, by the end of that one year, they have to take a test again or something to prove they are in the right placement.”
“Intellectually,” we told her, “there’s no question. The challenge will be language acquisition.”
Yes. Okay then. Time to contact the company to request an extension, allowing us to consider more options. Since it was January by this time, schools in Zurich were back in session, and we could contact them directly, making the whole process a bit easier.
After Husband got a green-light on the extension to consider the job offer, he spoke with friends who had once lived in Zurich to get information about the education system, the culture, the workforce etc.. I spoke with my teacher-neighbor, who was raised in Switzerland. Everyone said, “My goodness! Even if they do not get into gymnasium, they can still be very well educated in the apprenticeship system and go to university if that’s the path they choose. It might take them longer, though.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, they can even intern in a programming position or something that would be very useful that they may not learn at gymnasium anyway.”
“Hmmmm….”
Husband, now done with his job from 2023, put extra time into figuring out more about the Swiss/Zurich education system. Then, when I got home from school, he and I went for a daily walk around the block to discuss the current status of what was or was not possible, what was discovered, and what tossed out — as well as draw some conclusions together. We called it the Zurich Tete-a-Tete on our shared calendar, or, more informally, our Zurich Talk Walk.
We hired the consultant, the second one. She requested I send her transcripts and information about what levels of math my sons had taken before we met with her again so that she could pass it onto those in charge in the city of Zurich, to show them how wonderful our children were.
I gathered the information and sent the document that day so that we could meet again as soon as possible.
When we did meet again, the consultant informed us, “Yes, it is good with Mrs. S. She will let the children have a trial year if they pass the test. But, she said they must be able to do B1 German.”
[Okay, time out. More about language. I took Spanish through 11th grade, opting out of AP Spanish my 12th grade year. I can get by in Spanish, and so I tell people I speak a little bit of Spanish. Which is true. But what does that mean when you hear it? Does it mean I can say hello, goodbye, thank you, and where is the bathroom? or does it mean I can write a letter and read a children’s book?or does it simply mean I’m not a native speaker but I am fluent? It depends entirely on the speaker because that person is calibrating their language ability for you. Then you have the same opportunity to interpret the phrase, regardless of how the speaker meant it. Did they mean they can say hello, goodbye, thank you, and where is the bathroom? or does it mean they can write a letter and read a children’s book? You see the problem. Being a teacher, seeing a large swath of society, I can tell you with confidence, those who are perfectionists will undermine their abilities, and those who are trying to impress will exaggerate them.
[It is not this way in Europe. There, they use the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), which offers actual tests and certification, to declare someone’s language level. There are beginner levels, A1-A2, intermediate levels, B1-B2, and advanced levels, C1-C2. Instead of telling you I speak a little Spanish, I can tell you, I test at the B1 and B2 depending on the test and the day. For the boys to attend gymnasium for a trial year, they were to go from no German in December to B1 German in spring. That’s rough. It’s the equivalent of being a bit behind where I am in my Spanish despite their having a few months whereas I had a few years — admittedly with many years of forgetting since.]
Husband and I discussed it in our Zurich Talk Walk. If the boys don’t meet the language requirement, they go to secondary school and get to try to get into gymnasium at the end of the year anyway. That’s fine. BUT — for Older Son, that may well mean repeating a grade. If we could get him on board with that, we could say yes.
As further proof of my atypical children, not only did Older Son say he’d be willing to repeat a grade, so did Younger Son!
Husband and I took our Zurich Talk Walk around the block and decided. Let’s do this. It’s too big. Too possible. Even with things that could go wrong, we could come back if necessary. It would be one heck of an adventure, no matter what. Otherwise, we would be left forever wondering what may have happened, what we may have achieved or experienced. And that was a regret we weren’t willing to live with.
The threat of Zurich had faded, and everything around it turned into potential and possibility. Even if it was a terrifying possibility, it was also a thrilling possibility. Any threats we’d seen before transfigured into pathways, different journeys, none of which lead to despair, darkness, or death.
If you know Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, you know it’s filled with death. Lennie often kills beings unintentionally. What you may not know is that the title wasn’t created by Steinbeck himself, nor was he the last to use it. The title comes from an 18th century poem by Robert Burns called “To a Mouse.” (You may read it if you have an affinity for Scottish poetry.) You are likely more familiar with Kurt Vonnegut, whether or not you’ve read his work, who, twenty or thirty years after Steinbeck’s novel, wrote, ” Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.'”
The narrative of George and Lennie is one of might-have-beens. The story of my family as ex-pats in Europe will transform from potential to actual. This blog invites you to witness the actualities with us.
“I’ve booked the flight to Zurich,” my husband said several weeks in advance of his interview for what I figured would be an onsite job offer.
The last time my husband left the country for business-related travel, he’d gone to Japan, Kobe’s helicopter crashed, and COVID locked the doors for a year. I don’t have positive associations with his international travel. But he’d not traveled to Switzerland.
November being holiday insanity time, adding international travel that had nothing to do with the holidays had the potential to throw us into an elfish spin. The plan required Husband to take a very short trip to Switzerland in order to return home from his Monday interview before Thanksgiving Thursday that same week. He’d spend a few hours at Heathrow before catching his flight to Zurich. Leave on November 18th, a Saturday, and return on the 21st, a Tuesday. All he needed to be prepared before taking off was a fitting wardrobe for an interview.
Switzerland Map by RailPass.com
After laying out a pair of royal blue Bonobos, a blue-accented white dress shirt, and his orange and blue tie (trust me, this works), I pulled out his sweater options. Average highs in Zurich in November range within the mid-40s. (November in San Diego: about 70.) I held a camel half-zip up to the outfit.
“Wear this sweater with a tie?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He looked at me. Incredulous.
I took this as a thrown glove. “Trying to find out if I’ll cave in and say ‘No’?” I tested his resolve for a duel. “Yeah, really.”
“No,” he said. “I just [insert vocal hedge and tennis match head rotations between the shirt with tie and the sweater] I don’t think I can wear that. I’ll feel weird about it.”
I picked up my proverbial glove, contemplating how much battle I wanted to pursue. The sweater worked. He’d look great in it. In other circumstances, I may have pushed him to wear it, but for a job interview, I wouldn’t dare. I’d already picked the combination I had because I knew he liked it and felt good in it. He may not be willing to do my 90 seconds of Power Pose in the bathroom beforehand, but I can dress him so that he’ll be confident.
“Okay,” I said. “But you don’t have a coat that goes with it.”
“I know. Are you okay with going shopping for one?”
For the record: I hate shopping. Hate it. But I can handle it and am willing to do it if I have a specific goal in mind.
“Sure,” I told him.
“Can we get, more like, a blazer than a coat coat?”
“I assume so. It depends on what’s in stock, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t carry something like that all the time.”
So the evening before the flight, his attire, including a new camel blazer — no elbow patches despite my nerdish affinity for them, was packed. I had no idea what time he planned to leave in the morning because I planned to be asleep through his early morning departure. At least the departure from our home.
On the morning of November 18th, Husband left while I slept. His alarm went off and I didn’t whine or anything. I just prayed for quiet and a return to sleep.
I believe in answered prayers. Here’s my evidence. I received a text from Husband that morning at 5:53am. “Somehow left my e-ink tablet at home. Sigh. I’ll be fine, but I had hoped to use it to brainstorm [prep work for the interview].” There’s no record of a response from me for two hours — so either, I ignored him or I slept through the message. Now I might take a good ten or fifteen minutes to respond to something I don’t want to when I’m not busy, but if I’m available, I’m not going to sit on an unanswered text.
This is our actual exchange via text that morning:
You may be able to tell something didn’t make it into this written exchange. And that something was the request that I deliver the tablet to Husband at the airport because his flight was delayed.
Before I could carry out my plans to grumble in an empty car about driving all the way to the airport when I hate the airport and crowds of people, and the general self-importance of everyone needing to get to their destination on time to make their lives operate or they’ll keel over like a dead rat, Husband called. His flight had been delayed further. With so much time until the new departure, he’d just come home and get it himself.
My angst averted. His turned up with an anxious simmer.
He was home when the flight was cancelled and began arranging new travel plans that could get him to Switzerland as soon as possible. Although he left that night, there was no way he’d make a Monday meeting with the new arrangement. The new schedule required that he stay overnight in London, not landing in Zurich until Tuesday.
After much toing and froing on his part, Husband had a new plan. Interview pushed to Tuesday. Keeping some elements from the old plan, he still thought it a good idea to rock the interview with a camel jacket instead of sweater and tie.
Both plans: ☑️☑️. He flew to London, stayed overnight, bought himself a scarf because it was even colder than expected, departed and landed in Zurich, interviewed for several hours on extreme jet lag, and then turned around and began heading back to the States. By golly, there was turkey to be consumed and thanks to be given; no time could be wasted.
Two items remained to be figured after Husband’s Switzerland trip: when would the offer come? and how much would it be? Zurich, afterall, is one of the most expensive cities in the world.
We are not wealthy relative to the area we live, but we live in a relatively wealthy area, and, looking into the cost of living in Zurich, I was floored to discover it would be more expensive than the Southern California metro area we called home. More than that, as of January 2024, Zurich was listed by Architectural Digest as the most expensive city in the world to live in.
Great. There goes any plan of total retirement from the working world.
In the days after the interview and after the Thanksgiving holiday, my husband and I, expecting an offer but also on vacation, passively researched life in Switzerland. We discovered the number of official languages. We decided our buddy Roger Federer (Rog, as we call him), would be happy to show us around. We looked into what we would need to bring in as a salary to live in Zurich, or if we could make it outside of Zurich, assuming Rog didn’t take us up on our offer to let him pay our living expenses. We crunched numbers considering if we sold our cars — factored in a lack of car insurance payments. Then what would we need?
And we dreamed. If we moved to Zurich, we could go see the areas both our families are from that aren’t too far away. Bern for him. Milan for me. Go back to Lake Keszthely, where I spent a summer teaching English. See Champions League matches because they aren’t on in the middle of the day while we’re at work or school. Go to Champions League matches. Speak German. See Liverpool play! Practice our French. Hike in the Alps! Each chocolate and pastries. Kayak on Lake Zurich. And, for me, perhaps, stop teaching.
The dreams began by the bucket load, pouring down upon us throughout the day and splashing over us when we talked at night or early in the morning. After a week of not hearing anything from the company, the steady downpour decreased to a light stream, only splashing over into dialogue every so often. After a couple of weeks, it turned into a trickle that sounded a lot like—
“Maybe it didn’t go as well as I thought it did.”
“Maybe. It’s so weird that they’d fly you all the way out there, though. I mean, unless you bombed it, I would have expected that you’d hear from them by now.”
“I know. Me, too. I really thought it went well.”
And doubts began filling our drained buckets.
Husband was checking his email every morning when he woke up, looking to receive something during the Swiss work day. Before coffee, before the covers were off, before he was vertical, he’d check his phone. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Morning after morning. So he stopped checking first thing.
The holidays hold a sharp turn between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Christmas was only about a week away. My classroom had the same old look to it, no special decor, no extra scent in the final week of school in December. On that weekday morning, like any good teacher, I was counting down the days to vacation and wishing a fast forward button would appear on my desk where my computer mouse sat, already tired from use with the morning bell yet to ring.
A ringing sounded. I checked the clock. Still before eight. It’s not the school bell. A vibration followed the ring, demanding my attention. Ah ha! My phone!
HUSBAND CALLING
Why is my husband calling me before eight in the morning?
A flash of a thought: “It could be Switzerland.” It appeared then fell into the darkness without a flicker.
“Oh, please don’t tell me one of our kids is sick again,” I thought, as we’d seemed to run through at least a week-long illness for each one. I didn’t want to cycle through it again, now that it seemed it’d run its course.
I took a deep breath to prepare myself and slid the green button on my phone screen. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey. Are you sitting?”
Oh, Good God. This is bad, bad, bad. “Yes….” I said and took a deep breath to handle whatever deluge followed.
“We got an offer from Switzerland.”
“Yesss!!!” I whisper-shouted into a room of 34 empty desks and clenched a fist as though I’d scored a goal in stoppage time to win the game.
“Not yet. We’ll chat after school. Just read me the acceptance sentence.”
Husband read it to me and said, “Okay, now this feels reel.”
Of course we wanted to go to Swtizerland. We’d begun to entertain its plausibility, but with the details to be able to figure out how realistic, how practical, plausible was, we felt thrilled and overwhelmed. How does someone make an informed decision about moving to a place where almost everything is unknown? And we were on a 10 day deadline. After the offer came through, we had until just after Christmas to weigh its viability. They expected an answer by December 29th.
Without kids, that answer is easy: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! With little kids, that answer is a deliberating yes; they’re acquiring language so fast at that age, the language barriers they have as they land in Switzerland due to their Americanness will dissolve by the time we get through customs. With tweens and teenagers, hmph. This will be complicated.
Kids, at all ages, are vicious. If we take our teenage boys to Switzerland, where they do not speak the language, kids will get made fun of — And, if we stay Stateside, they’ll get made fun of for different reasons because, well, kids are vicious. Sometimes cliches are true. However, being foreigners will certainly force some empathy on them, and humility for that matter. Of course, they’d also learn the language. Eventually. It may take longer than for a 7-year-old because their brains are more developed, because the language mastery a (reader/)teenager has over a child is alarming, but the adolescent brain is undergoing a major construction project. — Hmm, with construction already begun, it seems like a good time to make changes to the site plan, upgrade the appliances, perhaps. Instead of gas, electric. Instead of English, German.
If only it were so simple. The kids being the primary concern, Husband and I wanted to speak with someone at the schools they might attend — and discover the options of where they could go. Switzerland’s education system is not the same as the American. The first thing we researched was the option for the kids to attend school in English and discovered that opportunity translated to attending American schools in Zurich. Such institutions are private and therefore require a tuition. There are several options, each with its own rate. Assuming openings for our sons, they could continue an American-styled education. For approximately $40,000.
That bit of information narrowed things down a bit. Either the kids manage to attend the free public schools without major detriment to their learning or their educational prospects or we do not go to Switzerland.
The guiding question became: can the boys make their way either to university in Europe or back to the U.S. for college by going through the Swiss system of education?
What language are they even taught in?
For that, we got a relatively quick answer. Public school instruction in the Canton of Zurich (sort of like a county if not a state) is conducted in German, high German. —Oh yeah, remember all the language talk from the last post? We’re not done with it. Let’s revive the spirit language of Swiss German. The one Swiss kids grow up speaking but has no grammatical structure. Since you cannot use an unwritten language in formal academic instruction that includes reading, writing, and arithmetic, Swiss schools do not operate in Swiss German (at least not once the kids can write a sentence). That’ll have to be normal German.
Screeching halt here for my Marketing/PR buddies. Normal German? Making Swiss German…ab-normal? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. This cannot be. We will not call German normal and Swiss ab-normal. Swiss German is spirit; it is effervescent, formless, free. Abnormal is a far too negative term of such loftiness. We will call that German form of German “Hochdeutsch” and we will use Sweizerdeutsch.
[Note: The only verifiable fact in the paragraph above is that the German used in education is called Hochdeutsch, literal translation is “High German.” Don’t worry Marketing friends, I know, I know. What I do not know know is how that “Hoch” (high) part identifies this type of German as Standard German. I know this, too: standard is boring, dull, basic, sleepytime. I’ll take my VW with the upgrades, please, not just what comes standard.]
I’m sure I’ve lost you by now with my word nerdery and ability to get lost in the possibilities that haven’t any merit to them but sound kind of fun to me. Let me give it to you straight: If we go to Switzerland, the boys would need to learn German — and learn their other subjects through German. They would probably need Swiss German, too, for the playground. Oh, and Swiss students start taking French around 5th grade. They’ll need to learn that as well.
This was mounting up. Perhaps I could do one thing I’ve been avoiding since I stepped into motherhood.
What are the guidelines around homeschooling? Perhaps that could be our free and English way to learn. I am a talented teacher. I’d already taught Older Kid in my public school English class, and he’d survived it. More impressive: so had I. Maybe I’d just have to do all subjects with all kids all the time.
Ugh. That sounded exhausting.
Or maybe there was an Americans in Zurich homeschooling group that worked together on some days or in some subjects.
I did my research with scholarly depth and precision.
Oh, All-Knowing Google, tell me about homeschooling in Zurich.
Did you know that in the Canton of Zurich homeschooling must be done in the official language of the local schools? German. I did not. Did you know that homeschooling instruction can only be done by a parent without a teaching credential for one year? I did not. Did you know that needs to be a Swiss credential, not a Californian one? — Yeah, I bet you did.
Oy to the vey. Goodbye to that solution.
How about an online school? In the States? That we access in Switzerland? I mean, I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE the idea of online education for my children. I was a teacher during the pandemic. I knew that fiasco firsthand. But, instead of $80K/year, I’d at least look into it.
Briefly. Because that was another dead end. Time zones alone could provide issue. If the kids attended school in an American time zone, could they even connect with kids in Switzerland outside of school hours? Eek. Sounds like loneliness. Trouble ensues. No thank you.
As I spent time debriefing Husband on these things, he’d then debrief on his findings, trying to get questions answered by people in Switzerland. Couldn’t we talk to someone at an actual school?
Well, of course we could not. It was Christmastime! Schools were closed for the vacation, just like my school would be in two more days. I was waking up in those too dark hours of the alarm clock howl to see my husband sitting at a desk in our bedroom, making phone calls to try to connect with anyone who could tell us more about Swiss education.
Husband making early morning phone calls from US West Coast to Zurich
“Hallo. Sprechen Sie Englisch?” I’d hear him say from behind my coffee cup. or the cover held over my eyes. You know, depending on the day.
Every time he said it, “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” I heard Chris Rock’s voice respond as Marty the Zebra in Madagascar. “Yeah. I sprecken!”
Making these phone calls, Husband found us an educational specialist with whom to speak, someone who had worked in the school systems for a while, both public and private. We made an appointment for a free consultation on Tuesday morning at 6am. Rise and shine.
The night before said consultation, I’d cleaned up after participating in the Younger Kid’s soccer practice, and the husband and I were in agreement: we wanted our kids to learn more languages, experience other cultures, push out from their (and our) American boundaries. We would send them to public school. They could use the academic challenge, certainly. Even though we were a solid 90% certain on our decision, we decided to keep the appointment for no other reason than “Why not?”
Why not? Why not? Why? Not? That is a bad question.
Going into the discussion, we knew about the tracks in the Swiss system. The higher track, gymnasium, leading to university and the lower to an internship. In order to access the upper track, a student must pass a test. In what language? German, of course.
“Oh nein,” said Education Specialist. “Oh. This is really something very difficult. Very difficult. Even native speakers cannot make it into gymnasium. And to get to university, your kids must go to gymnasium. It is famous, you know, that Albert Einstein, he failed the test to get into the Zurich gymnasium,” the consultant informed us as we sat partly poker-faced and partly stun gunned by the words she spoke from the other side of the world to us.
[The Einstein story is not the whole truth, and, in being so, rather misleading — but it is the popular culture version, so it didn’t matter that the Einstein thing was only partially true — it was true enough to carry emotional weight.]
“Really,” she said, ” I am sorry to be sounding so negative. But it is really very difficult. Very small chance unless your kids go to the private schools. The international school system. Are you interested in doing that?”
Oh, nein is right. We couldn’t send the kids to private school. That would take a job I did not have, and the whole of its salary to do so. It sounded as though sending our kids to school in Zurich would mean they’d never get to go to universities, here in the States or elsewhere.
Armed with that information, we asked the company offering Husband the job if they would pay for the American schooling of our children.
In short, they said no.
And, in short, we then had to say no right back to them.
WAIT, WHAT??!!
I know. We said no. Which means of course there’s more to tell! Third leg is on the way.
Everything our family of four (and two dogs) possesses is now in my parents’ house — including us. Granted our belongings are no longer massive: approximately 25 small shipping boxes, 3 guitars, a typewriter, and 2 large suitcases per person. No furniture.
We are moving to Switzerland with stops along the way.
Stop 1: Still in Southern California, hours from the our home, I’m sitting in the house I grew up in. And now seems as good a time as any to look back on the last few months, breaking down how we ended up here. And how we will end up there. To do that, I’ll have to venture back in time a bit, and start somewhere near the trailhead for this journey.
My husband and I have talked about him leaving his job for years. He is a much nicer, much gentler, much more optimistic person than I am, so whenever I said, “It’s not gonna get better,” he’d say, “Well, they just said they would do…” (He’s a big believer in people — one of the reasons I love him — and also one of the reasons it took a while for him to leave his job.) And he’d go on working there for months and months, and we’d go through this cycle of discussion regularly.
Until he couldn’t take the stress or the angst anymore. Around the start of the school year, he told the company he was leaving at the end of the calendar year, 2023. The discussions between the two of us regarding his job shifted, necessarily, from the usual cycle we’d grown accustomed to to the unknown of the job market.
With a stable job as a teacher and a good school district for our sons, I wasn’t particularly keen to move. Still, I knew it was a real possibility that, as my husband applied to or networked for jobs that fit his particular set of (esteemed) skills, it may not be in the San Diego area. He’s a physicist. A chemical physicist. A physical chemist. It all means the same thing to me; which is to say, I don’t know what it means. (And, yes, I have no idea what he’s talking about when he tells me his tasks and shows me his graphs of what he’s working on; I just read his intonation to figure out if he’s excited or disappointed about what he’s discovering.)
“Maybe I can do something else,” he’d say, “in order to keep us here for sure. Then the boys could graduate here, at least.”
See? Sweet, gentle, giving man. Looking to make it easier for others.
“Like what?” I’d ask — though I don’t know why, because, no matter what he might be doing for a living, I’m not likely to understand a lick of it.
“I basically do a lot of data analysis now, I could probably do something in that field. I know…” or “I know a lot about ____,” and he’d continue with his list of people he knows in all sorts of fields who could help him find a job locally.
So he did everything: worked at the job he was leaving, looked for local jobs, and looked for jobs that could take us to, well, anywhere. He was speaking with companies in Paris, London, one somewhere in New Zealand, San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles, San Jose, and, of course, Zurich. It felt as though there were leads everywhere. So many, to me, that I set it on the shelf in my mind until something was more tangible. Meanwhile, he had to consider everything as imminent.
“There’s a company in Zurich,” he told me one morning, “doing direct air capture.”
This was before my morning coffee, so I did not know if Zurich was the neighboring town in San Diego or a Hawaiian island. Direct air capture sounded like logical words; I’d have to translate them later, after caffeine.
“Cool,” I said, probably with little enthusiasm.
“They have a few job openings I’m interested in. What do you think about Switzerland?”
Okay. Time to wake up, I thought. “Switzerland would be cool.”
“You know my family is Swiss? We’re from Bern.”
“Yeah, cool,” I said.
He applied to several positions at this company in Switzerland, and soon they requested an interview.
I confess, as long as I was going to a full-time job myself, working with the lovely young generation of middle schoolers I found myself with each morning, I didn’t have much headspace for his job hunt. I was excited and proud for all his leads and phone calls and even interviews, but I’d drop those thoughts for most of the day to be Teacher and then Mom. He could give you the more gripping version of this — alas, he’s busy doing consulting work these days, but we will get to that — much later.
For both of us, this job hunt felt long. Leads, leads, then nothing. Phone calls, phone calls, then quiet. It was early November when this company in Zurich, having already conducted several interviews online, told him they’d like to fly him out to have an onsite interview.
Now, if my husband is the big believer in the ability for everyone to change and things to go well, I am the bare-bones, just-the-facts, pragmatic bottom liner. So my train of thought was, “They’re willing to fly him from San Diego to Zurich? They’ll have to put him up in a hotel. That’s thousands of dollars. They are offering him the job.”
Time to learn German.
In fact, I was sitting in a traffic jam outside Lahaina on a family vacation when I figured, might as well capture this time for tutelage.
[Okay, my American friends. I know you speak English and, I don’t know, maybe a little Spanish or French you learned in high school, but you probably haven’t used it much since. So now I’m talking about European languages, yes, but I’m talking specifically about the tiny country of Switzerland, best known, I’d say, for their chocolate and their tennis star, Roger Federer. If you aren’t a tennis fan, that’s okay, and if you aren’t a Roger Federer fan, that’s really not okay, but I’m going to give you a chance to change that. Either way, you need to know that one of the most impressive things about elite tennis players in general is that they play in hours-long matches, sprinting from side to side, playing mind games with their opponents, for sometimes three or four hours before a winner is declared, and then, after all they’ve done, someone shoves a microphone in their face for an on-court interview in the language of the location. At the French Open? Speaking French. Wimbledon? That’s English. And most of these athletes are neither French, British, or American. So, take Roger Federer, an all-time great who has won every grand slam tournament there is. And, of course, he’s Swiss, but he’s gliding through these interviews in English just as he glides on the court. Same thing in French. And he’s also spoken in Italian and Mandarin in the post-match interviews, depending on where the match itself is located. Anyway, I digress. The point is I know English. I’m great at English. I know a little Spanish. I can get by with my high school Spanish. I do not know any other languages anywhere near proficient enough to survive a basic conversation, and we are talking about moving to Switzerland where the spoken language, Roger Federer’s first language, is Swiss German.]
Switzerland has four official languages, and none of them are the language Swiss children learn first. Although Swiss German is spoken, it has no grammar. It’s not really a written language. I like to think of it as the opposite of a language like Latin. In English, we call languages like Latin that are no longer spoken, a “dead language.” Swiss German isn’t dead; it’s spoken, but only spoken. I wouldn’t call it a “live language.” That seems like it would be a written and spoken language. So, not being a linguist as previously proven, I’m going to call Swiss German a “spirit language.” I think it fits. It’s not confined by grammar (aka structure, like a skeleton) so it can’t have a body. It’s not dead, it has no body, it must be spirit.
Again, I digress.
In Switzerland, the four official languages are German (thus where I began), French, Italian, and Romansh (which I’d never heard of in forty years of living). Swiss German is not an official language. Hmmm….
If my husband is going to be offered a job in Switzerland, I need to get on my language game to consider the offer seriously.
Why did I pick German to begin with? I don’t recall, though I can substantiate it with logic. I’m sure you can, too. Say “Zurich.” Really. Say it. Out loud. Whisper if you must. If you hadn’t any idea where this place was but knew it was a place where they were likely to speak German, French, Italian, or Romansh, which would you go with? German, of course. The “ch” at the end of the word chokes of guttural phlegm production. Must be German.
I open my language app I use for Spanish — since I am a teacher in the San Diego area. “Which one of these is coffee?” it asks. My choices: Milch, Kaffee, Brot.
I’m going to rock German, I think.
“Which one of these is milk?”
I’m already fluent.
“Du bist ein Dummkopf.”
Strange. I don’t know how to translate that.
So I’m sitting in a rental car in a Hawaiian traffic jam caused by I-don’t-know-what, learning German.
“I want to learn German!” I hear from the back seat. “Can I do that, too?” asks the younger of my two sons.
“Sure,” I say, thinking only about the fact that he seems exhilarated by the idea and that would make for a good distraction as we move the width of three palm trees per minute.
Then I realize I’m about as exhilarated internally as he is externally about the idea of learning another language and about the notion that we could be living abroad. I’ve always wanted to live abroad. I spent a summer in Hungary teaching English in preparation for a year in Budapest, which fell through at the last minute. And no, I don’t speak Hungarian. I am even, somewhere, on tape — yes, tape — as an eighteen-year-old at my high school Grad Night being asked about the Twenty Year Reunion twenty years in the future. (Now, when I hear this question being posed to a graduate of a few hours, my left eyebrow raises, but at the time, I took it in stride and said) “I won’t be at the reunion. I’ll be living in London.”
Which, of course, did not happen.
But my motivation for saying that was partly about living abroad — and partly about being a book editor, which, also, didn’t happen.
Arranging for an on-site interview in a country nine hours ahead of you is a bit challenging. 9:00 AM in Switzerland is midnight on the California coast. 5:00 PM there is 8:00 AM in San Diego. So, their work day overlaps with our early morning sleep schedule. Since our household gets up between 6am and 7am, we have about an hour or two each day to contact Switzerland live. Otherwise, all communication must be conducted at a snail’s pace via email, waiting through the night to receive a response — if they get to it in fewer than 24 hours.
Eventually, the interview was set for Monday November 20th. Thanksgiving week here in the States. Just another work week there in Zurich.
KZ sitting on the Hawaiian coast, not too far from Lahaina, Maui
No, of course, that’s not all! That’s the first leg. You thought I could tell this whole thing in one post??!
Don’t worry, Leg 2 is coming. We’re going to need at least a second leg so that I don’t fall over.
Teaching has always been one of those things I know I’m good at but don’t know if I enjoy. It’s a career that comes with a heavy burden, and the burden’s load has multiplied throughout my career. But this is not a why-I-left-teaching blog or post. This is a launchpad, the dock from which I depart. I taught for something like ten or fifteen years — believe me, you stop counting when you don’t want to know how long it’s actually been — but started talking about quitting when I student taught.
I guess you could say it took me a while to get here. And part of the reason why it took so long was that lingering question of “What else can I do?” if I’m not teaching. {Insert empty stare at a blank page. Add overwhelm and shut down.} I felt trapped. So, each day, I woke up at 5:30, got to work at 7:15, and did my job. Well. Until now.
Now I leave teaching, I leave my home, I leave my culture, and, to a certain extent, I leave my language. I suppose what I am saying is I am leaving my comfort zone, my safety net. Teaching was something safe to make sure I could earn a living. Without it, I feel weightless, floating without the help of gravity to hold me, unsure of which direction I might go, what wall I might bump into, and which direction that new momentum may take me.
Many people call that exciting.
I do not belong in the “many.”
So it is with these words that I declare the first step of my unmoored journey: we are moving to Switzerland.
KZ Rochelle 