Rachel's Random Reads: Guest Post - Living the Dream in… Switzerland by Linda Huber - Bookish World Cup

Thursday, 12 July 2018

Guest Post - Living the Dream in… Switzerland by Linda Huber - Bookish World Cup - Switzerland

The Santis

Several decades ago, I was a young physiotherapist, working in a big Glasgow hospital. And I had a dream. I wanted to spend a year working somewhere in Europe, travel around a bit, maybe even become proficient in another language. The Physiotherapy journal always had job ads in the back… should I apply for one in France? Germany? No, Switzerland was bang in the middle of Europe, I’d try there first. So I did, and one foggy January night I left Glasgow Central Station, en route for snowy Switzerland.

Long story short, I’m still here. Why? Quite simply, it’s the best place ever. I love Scotland, but Switzerland has become home. Mountain scenery, beautiful lakes, fresh air, stability – there’s nothing not to like. Okay, we don’t have an ocean anywhere nearby. Although the lake just metres from my balcony is gorgeous, it’s not quite the same. But that’s a small price to pay for everything else.

Bernese Oberland

Over the years I’ve been to all the typical tourist places – the Matterhorn, Zermatt, St Moritz, Lucerne, the Bernese Oberland, as well as Salzburg, Vienna, Milan – I could go on and on. As a child I devoured the Chalet School books, and I’ve often felt I was taking part in one of the excursions the schoolgirls used to love!

Lake Constance

It hasn’t all been plain sailing. We lost my husband at a young age, and my boys and I had to pull together. Home nowadays is a little town in the top right-hand corner of Switzerland, on the banks of lovely Lake Constance. On a clear day, I can see across the lake to Germany, and another window shows the mountains in Austria, snowy in the distance. You don’t get much more Central Europe than that. I feel very privileged.

In spite of all this, up until this year, none of my books have been set in my adopted country. People kept asking, ‘Why don’t you set one in Switzerland?’, but somehow, psychological suspense came more easily to me when my characters were roaming around in the UK. Then I had an idea – I’d write a couple of novellas, short feel-good pieces of fiction set right here on Lake Constance.

Rhine Falls

In the first, A Lake in Switzerland, my characters Stacy and Emily visit not only the lakeside resorts, but also the Rhine Falls and the summit of our local mountain, the Säntis. (In between times, they try to sort out their problems, with varying degrees of success…)

Lake Lugano

In A Spa in Switzerland, they take a fateful weekend trip to Lake Lugano, in the Italian-speaking part in the south.

I’m having huge fun with my novellas, and I have all my memories of trips to these places to help me. It’s making me want to visit them all again… And if anyone reading this has a dream – go for it. It could change your life!

Just how pretty does Switzerland sound. You are incredibly lucky to be living in Switzerland and thank you so much for this post.

Linda Huber bio

Linda grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, but went to work in Switzerland for a year aged twenty-two, and has lived there ever since. Her day jobs have included working as a physiotherapist in hospitals and schools for handicapped children, and teaching English in a medieval castle. Not to mention several years being a full-time mum to two boys and a rescue dog.

Linda’s writing career began in the nineties, and since then she’s had over fifty short stories and articles published, as well as seven psychological suspense novels. Her latest project is a series of feel-good novellas written under her pen name, Melinda Huber.

After spending large chunks of the current decade moving house, she has now settled in a beautiful flat on the banks of Lake Constance in north-east Switzerland, where she’s working on another suspense novel.