Life in Progress
4
Germany, or Austria. For me, border checks were a banal
fact of life, and as the border was porous I had no fear
of customs officials – on the contrary, I was always very
excited to cross the border. It wasn’t an obstacle.
In fact, what I was interested in was cities and people.
I felt a very strong need to learn, to understand, so much
so that I would resist going to bed in order not to lose
precious minutes. I saw the city as a place where know-
ledge abounded – where you might learn and discover
new things – which was especially true of Konstanz, with
its bookshops and cinemas, and St Gallen, with its library.
Besides, I didn’t have brothers or sisters, and as an only
child I felt this urgent need to make connections, estab-
lish links, meet people.
My mother was a primary school teacher and my father
was an accountant in a building firm. We lived in a typical
Swiss middle-class apartment. My grandmothers were both
dead, but my mother’s father was still alive. He was very
old, in his eighties, and I always loved seeing him, because
he had travelled a great deal in his life. As a young man he
had suddenly headed off to Madeira, and no one received
any news of him for a whole year. He had the travelling
bug, and I had obviously inherited it. He had a stamp col-
lection, which I found very impressive; it was his archive,
so to speak. He had photo albums, which he would show
me, giving a running commentary; he was living proof
that it was possible to leave Switzerland, not just to grab a
coffee or buy the newspapers, but perhaps never to return.
Copyrighted Material
