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We almost missed our stop. I was with my beloved niece whom I had not seen for a long time. Train ride from Zurich to Thun B.E. there was not enough for everything, and so we continued our conversation in the mail bus, driving along the lakeshore. We sat right behind the driver, and we had an automatic stop display in front of our eyes. However, the bus stopped when we found the hotel on the other side of the street. We jumped up and grabbed our bags. But a barrier blocked the way to the door. “Sorry!” we shouted. But the driver pretended to be deaf.
I was confused – did not have to go to the front? Or was it exactly the opposite? “Home is the place where you know where to buy a bus ticket and where to sit,” a friend once explained to me. It immediately made sense to me and kept coming back to me. It was my measure of whether I had already settled in an unfamiliar place. Did I find my way? There was a time when I memorized the Paris metro network. In San Francisco, I can tell by the bell of the j train if I still have enough time to get to the corner stop. I am at home when I don’t have to think about these things.
Does this mean that I am no longer at home in Switzerland? Or just not on Lake Thun?
The mail bus puffed and twitched. This will continue soon. The other passenger took pity on me, pulled me by the hand to the back door and left with me. My niece followed her at the last moment, the doors closed behind her so close that her bag got stuck and she had to break free.
The woman looked at me sternly, “Don’t you know you have to come out from behind?”
I shook my head. As soon as I was in Switzerland, I did something wrong again! I’m used to it, but it still annoys me. It should have read on my face, because the woman has become a little friendlier. “Sometimes when he’s in a good mood, he opens the door,” she said. “But if so, then only for the natives, and not for people like you!”
natives. You don’t hear this word so often anymore, it has an unpleasant aftertaste. Perhaps she meant the locals. Not necessarily those who were born on the mail bus route, but who lives here. But how long do you have to be at home here to be considered local? Ten, twenty, one hundred years?
I remembered a seminar with an American yoga teacher. The man looked at us with increasing confusion during the obligatory round of introductions. Because we all explained so clearly where we came from and where we live now, and what’s the difference. Even if these places were not that far apart. At that time I tried to explain to him that although Switzerland is a small country, it is by no means homogeneous. That we not only have four languages, but our dialect changes from place to place, and that after a few kilometers you are perceived as a foreign cunt.
So it is quite possible that my Zurich wallet gave me away that being a foreigner has nothing to do with emigration. My niece had a more pragmatic explanation: the bus stops right in front of the hotel. Where people like me immediately feel at home.
Source: Blick
I am David Miller, a highly experienced news reporter and author for 24 Instant News. I specialize in opinion pieces and have written extensively on current events, politics, social issues, and more. My writing has been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC News. I strive to be fair-minded while also producing thought-provoking content that encourages readers to engage with the topics I discuss.
