Swiss expats on living abroad: the children and the travel companion

Ada (11) and Ruben (13) live with their parents and older brother in Cambridge (UK). Sonntagsblick

More Swiss people live abroad now than ever before. In this series, seven types of expatriates talk about the happiness they have found far from home. Part 3 and 4 of the series.

The children

Ada, 11, and her brother Ruben, 13, have few memories of their daily life in Basel. For the past eight years they have been living with their parents in Cambridge, in the south of England. “In the early days here we watched a lot of Peppa Pig to learn the language,” Ada recalls. Learning English was easy and they soon made new friends in their new homeland. “I played football whenever I could,” says Ruben. “That’s how I met James at school, and I’m still friends with him now. He was very nice to me from the beginning.”

As foreigners, they don’t stand out from the crowd in this university town. Many children at school come from different cultures and countries, they say.

Several times a year, they return to Switzerland with their family and look forward to seeing their grandparents, relatives and friends, but also to drinking Rivella and eating chocolate and paprika chips.

Both Ada and Ruben plan to move to another country as adults. But for now, they want to stay in their adopted country. “We’ve made so many good relationships here, I’d find it hard to leave now,” says Ruben. Ada adds: “It would still be cool to live in Switzerland again.”

Helen Freiermuth (65) lives with her husband in Çeşme (Turkey). Sonntagsblick

The travel companion

Helen Freiermuth, 65, gave up the path she had carved for herself in politics for her husband’s career. “That’s the only thing I missed when we emigrated in 1995,” she says.

Initially the couple planned only five years in Shanghai. But it didn’t stop at that. Her husband, a manager at a German company, was transferred to the United States, then to Canada and back to China. The Zurich couple’s two daughters were with them for the first years abroad. Now they have gone their own ways. Since her husband retired ten years ago, Freiermuth has lived with him in Çeşme, near Izmir in Turkey, on the Aegean Sea.

She has taken on the administration involved in each new move, made contacts, learnt Chinese, learnt Turkish and got engaged in charity work. “I have always been active. This has definitely been even more the case abroad. Otherwise you lose yourself,” she says. She has also found her way back into politics: Freiermuth is the Turkey delegate on the Council of the Swiss Abroad and chairs the Radical-Liberal Party’s international branch.

“When you move to other cultures, your view of your own country changes,” she says. “You get the impression that people in Switzerland don’t realise how lucky they are.” Freiermuth loves being confronted with new situations and having new experiences. In Çeşme, the couple are now part of the local community and entertain friends from Turkey and abroad. “We no longer travel around the world; the world comes to us,” she says.

This text was first published in SonntagsBlick and is reproduced here with permission.

Translated by Catherine Hickley