Talk at Monte Verita: Belonging and remaining a stranger – Observations of a non-native in Ticino
Talk
Friday, 3 June 2022, 7:30 pm
Monte Verità Congress and Cultural Centre, Ascona
Introduction to the topic
“For more than twenty-five years I have lived in Switzerland and always on the border. In Basel
a few hundred metres to France and Germany, but for the last fifteen years we have been separated by the
the only thing that has separated us from Italy for the past fifteen years is the river that runs past our house. The bridge over it is a border post.
Since then I have often been asked why I live in this area of all places. After all
I had also lived in Berlin, London, Dubai and Hong Kong at the same time. Nevertheless, I am now even at home in this
in this Mal cantone village. Why? Probably everyone (and every woman) knows,
who have at some point decided to pull up stakes in the country of their birth and move elsewhere, knows
and moved elsewhere, this state of limbo between belonging and being a stranger, which is perhaps the
the basic mood of every emigration. Those who voluntarily (or not) turn their backs on their original home
often renounces certainties that he or she did not even know existed before leaving.
knew about before leaving. For example, the unshakeable conviction of being there because one has always been there.
Even if one later acquires a new right to live somewhere far away, this conviction is quickly lost.
quickly lost. One becomes accustomed to a new realisation: the circumstance of not being a native.
“Belonging and remaining a stranger – Observations of a non-native in Ticino”.
