Lago di Lugano, Santa Margherita 1915
Lugano, Monte San Salvatore
Otto Baumberger Plakat, Lugano 1924
Postcards from Lugano, Switzerland
Switzerland
My New Book is Out!
The day has finally come. It feels like I have been working on this book forever.
But now, here it is!
I have set up some pages to go with the book. Lots of pictures and videos. Praise from readers. And info on where to get it. Also info on how to get a review copy. Click on Much More Info below or on Echoes of a Global Life in the menu above.
ECHOES OF A GLOBAL LIFE by Kathleen Gamble
A story of survival from Burma to Moscow and beyond. Memoir. Travel stories. Living in interesting times.
Echoes of a Global Life is part memoir, part travelogue, part history lesson. Kathleen lives in a world of constant change. Moving from city to city she says goodbye to one and starts to explore the next. Never two the same. She is a survivor. She keeps on going. Through trauma, including a plane crash, and other scary times, there is also humor. Kathleen was born in Asia and lived on five continents before she was eighteen. She takes you to Burma, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Russia. She weaves in parts of each country she carries with her. Her family lives through a coup in Burma, student rioting in Colombia, two coups in Nigeria, and political unrest in Russia. Sometimes things are fabulous. Sometimes they are not. She is a Third Culture Kid, rootless and restless. As an adult she lived in Moscow for nine years during the 1990’s where she witnessed history in the making and a terrifying exit. Life is never boring.
On to Patagonia
From Rapa Nui we made our way to Buenos Aires and a brief visit there.
Our first stop was to the memorial for the “Desaparecidos” or the “Missing”. During the dictatorship in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 they estimate over 30,000 people ‘disappeared’. We heard from a man in his 40’s whose mother was snatched off the street weeks after he was born. It was only recently through new processes that they were able to identify her remains. When his father discovered she was missing he immediately took the baby to her parent’s house and he fled. Eventually the boy and his father moved to Pategonia to get away from it all.
It was a long time before anybody was able to talk about what went on. Now there is a large memorial where names are listed on several walls like the Vietnam memorial. They list the name, the age when they disappeared, and if they were pregnant. Many children were taken away from their mothers and given to other people.
Our next stop was to the Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is next to one of the ports and was originally founded by a mixture of immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is a working class neighborhood that is very colorful and begging for tourists.
During the pandemic people brought stones to the main square in front of the National Palace in order to say goodbye to their loved ones who died.
We ended the day with a delicious steak dinner and lots of good Malbec wine.
Early the next morning it was back to the airport and on to Bariloche, the Lake District at the northern edge of Pategonia. It calls itself little Switzerland and has some good chocolate for sale.
Going “Home”
I just returned from a school reunion in Lugano, Switzerland. I went to boarding school there many years ago and this year about 65 of us gathered to retrace our steps and relive old times. Some people brought their spouses, some were from different classes so we didn’t know everybody going in but we made new friends and our family expanded.
We ate risotto, cannelloni, pizza, spaghetti, and ended the trip with a six course meal. We drank Prosseco and lots of good wine. The first night we were entertained by a local group of Italian men making traditional music. One of our friends put together a slide show of photos of all of us when we were in high school.
We spent a day in the Versazca river valley. Our buses had trouble making some of the hairpin curves up and down the mountain. We stopped in a small village and hiked to the river and some went to the falls. Our second stop was at the famous Roman bridge that everybody jumps off of. It was a tradition at school every year and we would cheer people on as they jumped. This time it was even more impressive to see the over 50 crowd jump into the icy cold water.
We took the funicular up Monte Bre and enjoyed the spectacular view. A group of us walked back down the mountain and were sore for days but they had a great story to take home with them.
On our last day we took a boat cruise to the nearby town of Marcote for dinner. It was raining on the boat but we had a live band and dancing and it was still beautiful.
That last night we gathered in our common room and I was sitting next to an old friend of mine. She said, “I hate good byes. We never put down any roots.” I knew exactly what she meant. I looked around the room at people I had known most of my life. I said, “ This is our home. These people are our home. We are a family”. And I started to cry. It was so hard to have to say good bye to the people who understood what it was to be a third culture kid, where no explanations were needed, where we could be ourselves with no compromise or pretending. Some people call us chameleons because we adapt and adjust to our surroundings but we are never truly comfortable and never feel completely relaxed except when we are together.
It was hard to leave Lugano, one of the most beautiful places on earth but the hardest part was saying good bye to each other.
Memories and Speeches
Lake Lugano
When I was sixteen I went off to boarding school in Switzerland. My parents were living in Nigeria. My roommate traveled from Tanzania. My best friend’s parents were living in Tokyo. Walking down the hall in my dorm there were people from Saudi Arabia, Germany and various US cities. In a couple of weeks I will be going back to stay in the new dorms of my old school for a big reunion. I will see several of my old dorm-mates. We will haunt the old stomping grounds reliving old memories and making new ones.
One of my tasks for this reunion is to write a speech. I am having trouble sitting myself down and focusing on this task. Do I draw on the memories of particular events from those days?
Duomo, Florence
The time Kelly saved my life at the Duomo in Florence. I didn’t know I had vertigo but turns out I did and he took my hand and guided me through it. The trip to Dachau and how quiet everybody was on the bus home. Leaning to drink warm beer at the HofBrauHaus in Munich. The other great thing about Munich was we saw our first McDonald’s in Europe and became “American” for a weekend. In Venice we got around on water buses and discovered a small disco. Plus a pigeon landed on my head in St Mark’s Square. Hiking up the side of a mountain just to lie in the grass and stare at the sky. Instigating “all school skip day” that stuck as a tradition.
Traveling through Greece having to hear about every single ruin by the side of the road and never getting to listen to rock and roll music. Taking a cruise through the Greek Islands and being bombarded by wet toilet paper rockets in the hallway outside the girl’s cabin. Listening to boring lectures about the mosaics of Ravenna and Giotto’s Chapel. Wishing there were horses in the square in Siena.
Palio Di Siena
Or do I talk about the overall experience of living with an exceptional group of people, teachers and students alike who influenced the rest of our lives.
We were taught to be independent, curious, adventurous, supportive and respectful. We were only 16 or 17 and we traveled the world on our own without thinking twice about it. We would seek out art and architecture wherever we went. We enjoyed each other’s company, had fun together and sometimes tolerated each other. We became a family.
And now many many years later, we are still family. We have a unifier that brings us all together. That time in Switzerland made us all different. We experienced something together that other people could never understand. It was our unique world and we came out of it as a unit. So when we meet each other now, even if we didn’t know each other then, we immediately have a connection. We have a common ground to work off of. In some cases it was a jumping off point to forge new relationships. Even now the family continues to grow.
Or do I just tell a story and thank everybody for coming. Of course all memories are subject to change and embellishment. I could probably make something up. But I won’t. I will keep it simple and short. Who wants to listen to a speech when you are sitting eating French food on one of the most beautiful lakes in the world?
On another note, I am going bi-coastal. My Baltimore Post Examiner blog, Eclectic Global Nomad has been picked up by the Los Angeles Post Examiner so you can find me in both.
Recycling
I spent a couple of weeks last summer visiting my brother who was living just outside Zurich, Switzerland. One of our activities was to take a trip to the recycling center. We gathered up all the (cloth) shopping bags we could find and loaded them with the glass, plastic, paper, and aluminum that had been collecting in the kitchen and headed out to the shopping center. At one end of the parking garage were large bins labeled for all the different types of items. We managed to get rid of everything although some of the pictures were a little confusing.
According to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs:
The Swiss are champion recyclers. In 2003, 47% of all urban waste was recycled – a new Swiss record. They recycled 70% of paper, 95% of glass, 71% of plastic bottles, 85-90% of aluminum cans and 75% of tin cans.
So recycling has become a Swiss way of life.
However, the really interesting thing we found were bags. Purses, messenger bags, tote bags, wallets, backpacks and even iPhone sleeves all made from recycled goods under the Freitag name. This is from the Freitag website:
In 1993 the Freitag brothers…developed a messenger bag using old truck tarpaulins, used bicycle tires and seatbelts in the living room of their shared apartment. The old tarps were washed in the bathtub, then cut between the sofa and the television and sewn into the first FREITAG messenger bags on Mom’s sewing machine. Even today, every bag is handmade and unique. Unbeknownst to them, the brothers’ creation released a wave of innovation in the world of bags, and the Individual Recycled Freewaybags from Zurich have been conquering the world ever since.
These bags are a common site all over Switzerland.
The main Freitag building is housed in recycled containers.
This is my purse. They are not cheap but they are very cool!
Happy Earth Day!!
Switzerland
Last summer I went to visit my brother who lives in Switzerland.
I have a soft spot for Switzerland. I went to boarding school at the American School in Switzerland in Lugano. It was an amazing time in a beautiful place. We traveled all over Europe, hiked up mountains, skied, figured out train schedules, learned to drink beer, and generally had a great education. In 2000, I went back to the school for the founding Director’s 90th birthday party.
Mrs Flemming (we always called her Mamma Flemming) started the school in 1956 with 12 children, three were her own. When I graduated in the 70’s there were 200 of us. And now there are several schools around the world and many more students.
The birthday party in 2000 was a lot of fun because some of my dear friends were there. Two old roommates and an old boyfriend. We hiked up to see Herman Hesse’s house. There was a lovely garden at the bottom of the steps where people would hang out and smoke cigarettes and make out. Now they have a small museum next door dedicated to him. We looked around for our old stomping grounds and found that the “hole in the wall” where Serafina served us wine and beer out of her own kitchen was now closed up. But the main restaurant in the small village of Montagnola was still there. We spent a pleasant afternoon sipping grappa that the owner had made himself. He even sold us several bottles.
Now I was back in Switzerland with my teenage son. Mamma Flemming died at the age of 98 and is buried in the cemetery just down the mountain from the school. The same cemetery where Herman Hesse can be found.
In the 11 years between this and my last visit, the place had changed dramatically. Lugano was still as beautiful as ever although much more built up and congested. The piazza was there full of tourists and the pizza was still good. The local department store where we had purchased my son his Action Man toy in 2000 was still there but had a new name and was under new ownership.
And I almost didn’t recognize the school. There were so many new buildings! It has become a formal school with students in uniforms and actual rules. When we went there it was very much a family atmosphere and we all were encouraged to strike out on our own and explore our surroundings. Now TASIS is all grown up.
While I was wandering around the campus, I ran into an old friend in the lobby of the main building. Angelo, the guy who owned the local sandwich shop was now working in the business office of the school. He pretended to remember me but I don’t know if he really did.