The end to the question about the true costs of living in Basel & the start to a new beginning …
Dear Auntie SAM: I’ve read a lot about how expensive it is to live in Basel. What is the cost of living there ?
For more than twenty years, regardless of where you Auntie’s rhinestoned soul should happened to have fallen, the one incomparable thing has always been Ohio’s starry sky. Its vastness is an ocean. Populated with seasonal starry stories of Greek goddesses & their warrior loves, every evening soothed raging hearts and inspired insatiable creative yens.
Perhaps its no coincidence that Ohio is the birthplace of aviation and has produced more astronauts than any other American state. Perhaps it is no coincidence Ohio created Me.
Our feet firmly rooted in Heartland soil, our eyes lift upwards & dream, “What’s beyond here ?” … “How far can I reach ?” … „Let’s see …“
The common joke among Ohioans who meet elsewhere is that Ohio is a great place … to be from. We grew up in safe communities, watched from afar by the previous generations who would later become our friends. Our first kisses were from people we had known since we started school. Our first heartbreaks; the same. Yet we got through them with the friends who had been with us since our first days in kindergarten – & who would continue to be with us for life.
When people first learned I’d be moving abroad, their eyes widened with amazement. Most said, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to live in Switzerland !” … “What a dream …”
Your Auntie, on the other hand, had never even wanted to visit Switzerland. Call me naive. All my little world understanding knew was that Swiss people had a very strict sense of time & place. And these qualities, Darling, would never inspire getting out of bed to cross a room. Let alone our world.
Tell me – liltingly – you live for sanguine days drifting in and out of sleep while a warm sun quells our savage hearts & a cool breeze caresses ample thighs … Tell me the microsecond difference between this or that moment keeps you cursing your decision to blink or flinch – as if there ever was a perfect time (that you missed) in lieu of the inopportune time … Tell me the music that makes your heart sing beats with the Rhine’s rushing rhythm … Tell me about how the seasons usher new taste sensations … Tell me there are secrets one can uncover in Basel that only lead to more mysteries; more joys … Dear Swiss Heart, Precious Keeper of All Mountain Cheeses 😉 Tell me … whisper brusquely into my ear almost anything except that there’s a strict sense of time & place to which we all must conform.
Because there isn’t.
And, yet, here: there is.
I met my first girl friend when I was four years old. Our mothers worked in a soup factory together. My father & her uncle had mutual friends. I held my first sleepover with her. We adopted a house mouse & found it in the morning stuck in her hair. More than a decade later, she drove me to school & we cruised in her blue Camero on weekends. She gave me my first perm. I showed her Mom that she could have given birth to a worse daughter. When my dad died, she & our friends came to his funeral. Then she hosted our friends & my cousin & myself at her house. I think we watched „Young Guns“ …
The month before I moved here, she organised my send-off party in NYC.
And last year, when things got tough for me, she reappeared as strong as ever with encouraging words. Which is all any adult really ever needs.
Packing my things this week, from my ex’s house to mine, I came across a book I once bought more than twenty years ago with her. She & I went to the mall with her sister – a woman I thought hated me. And, apparently did – until that day. We went to all the stores they wanted to see. We tried on trendy clothes. They bought outfits they enjoyed. Me ? I skirted the edges until I found a book I found fascinating.
My girl friend & her sister giggled to themselves & walked away.
I thought, “WTH ?!???” And, I recall, considered never speaking to either again. It’s not as if that was the first time your dear Auntie had been treated by them as if she was crazy or weird …
Later, my girl friend explained that her sister had always felt as if we had been making fun of her because she never understood how I made my friend laugh. My friend had arranged this trip to the mall to show her sister that: your dear Auntie – & those brave souls just like her – will always discover the weirdest thing to enjoy. Never at anyone’s expense. Just always oddly interpreting stars.
Which wasn’t the norm there … nor here.
Regardless of whichever universe you now think Switzerland is in, Darling, regardless of any fantasies you & the people who drool over your options consider … it’s the Heartland. Switzerland is Europe’s Heartland. A small, landlocked country full of villages – villagers – many with their own language no one outside that village will understand. And the bonds that people who were born here form put the bond my first girl friend & I have – as beautiful as it is – to shame.
There are many ways to count cost Darling. The most important assessment depends upon you. Your values. Your ability to handle risk.
The cost of living here ? High. You’ll pay with your pocketbook. You’ll pay with your family & career. You may pay with your heart. You will certainly pay by being misunderstood & shunned. Your Auntie was Queen of So-&-So long ago & today: „Basel’s Expat Expert“. But, regardless of how beloved you are & how kind villagers are – if you’re weird & you – Dear Auslander, will be by definition – you will be shunned.
The questions to ask, Excited Expat, are: Does moving here feed something more than your ego ? And, if so, are you strong enough to pay ?
Are you strong enough to walk alone … in Europe’s Heartland … on the moon … while villagers – people you love – laugh at you ?
4 – 3 – 2 – 1 …
XO
AS
___