II’m Zia. And this is my blog.
Forty-eight, born in the Canton of Bern, currently marooned in the bureaucratic limbo of the Canton of Solothurn.
Swiss, officially. But at this point my passport is the Swissest thing about me.
I’m the second of two kids, born into a family that clawed its way into the lower middle class in the early ’80s—a place where cheese rarely comes in threes and the hope for “more” usually dies at the budget line.
My father grew up in a working-class brood in Biel—born in Cité Marie, a neighborhood the poor themselves called “not so great.” No heating, no hot water, but plenty of reality. An apprenticeship? Out of reach. So: factory work to exhaustion—for a monthly wage that barely covered the next month. The reward after 35 years? A watch and a damp handshake.
My mother’s from the Seeland. Her parents were part of agriculture’s exploited underclass—my grandfather was a Verdingkind (read: free labor with a sleeping spot), my grandmother a maid who at least managed a home-economics apprenticeship—basically the bachelor’s degree in housewifery.
That all four of their children got vocational training was a tiny social miracle. Especially for my mum: polio at nine, nine years in hospital, countless surgeries, a spine like an anatomy model. She did her commercial apprenticeship—of course—at the hospital. And because she felt too moral to take disability benefits, she also worked half-days. Welcome to the fringes of the middle class—always three bills away from ruin.
Money was the soundtrack of my childhood. It took me years to grasp how hard my parents paddled just to keep us afloat. “Hard-working people,” as they say. As if that’s a medal. And what did they get? No property. No savings. Just worn-out bodies and, for the 35-year work anniversary, a sad little sausage from the butcher.
This background matters because it was my starting line. And it doesn’t matter, because it no longer defines who I am.
Because: I’m done letting other people stamp me.
Stigma has run through my life like a red thread of sandpaper.
I spent years trying to fit into Swiss society, dutifully ticking every box, bending and folding until I almost tore. The harder I tried, the more labels piled on. I don’t fit here. And—hand on heart—I don’t even want to anymore.
I’m not a “good Swiss.” Everything held up here as a virtue—punch clocks, tax piety, cleanliness polished to compulsion—gives me hives.
I refuse to spend any more of my life maximizing some company’s profits or propping up broken systems. The capitalism practiced here is cannibalism with pretty wrapping—and I’ve lost my taste for people-meat.
Yes, Switzerland has its pretty sides. But if you’re broke, it’s not a homeland; it’s a high-security wing with an alpine view.
And many of its inhabitants—sorry not sorry—are snobs with world-class denial skills.
So I’m pulling the plug.
My “migration lite” adventure starts—at the earliest—in autumn 2025.
Since April I’m officially “work-shy”—by choice, for the first time in years—and (surprise!) I feel pretty good about it.
Waiting is still a challenge. So I write. To clear my head. To document my own path. To let some steam out. And because, in my mind, my suitcase is already packed—with sunscreen, longing, and a small leftover scoop of hope—for a life in Tunisia, maybe Sousse, maybe somewhere I can breathe again.
Stick around if you want to see how this unfolds.
Or read along if you, too, sometimes feel like an alien who crash-landed in Switzerland by mistake.