What Switzerland taught me about culture

Every year, as 1 August approaches, a particular atmosphere becomes noticeable in Switzerland. Flags appear on balconies, towns and villages prepare their celebrations, families plan lunches together, and in the evening the sky above the lake turns into a stage for fireworks. It is the day when Switzerland celebrates its existence and the values it was built on.

On those days friends often ask me what it is like to live between two countries. After more than thirty years in Switzerland the answer is no longer simple. In time you come to understand that home is not only the place where you were born. Home also becomes the place where you work, where you create, where you raise your children, where you build friendships and where you slowly begin to understand the way a society breathes.

When I first came to Switzerland, I was not thinking about culture. Honestly, I had far more pressing questions. How do I learn the language? How do I find my place? How do I understand rules that nobody explains and yet everybody somehow knows? Like most people who move to a new country, I was focused on everyday life. Only much later did I start noticing the things that are not written in any guide for newcomers.

One of them was the relationship people here have with culture.

And I do not mean only the great museums, opera houses or theatres Switzerland is known for. What fascinated me far more was the way culture enters everyday life here quite naturally. It is not reserved for special occasions, nor is it something planned months in advance. People drop in on a concert after work, go to an exhibition at the weekend, take their children to the theatre from an early age, and in summer whole cities live through festivals on squares, in parks or by the lake.

At first that seemed unusual to me. I come from a place where going to the theatre is often experienced as an event. You dress up a little, you organise the company, perhaps you go out for dinner before the performance. It is an outing unlike the others. Here, though, I met people for whom going to a performance was as natural as going to the shop or taking a walk through town. Nobody made a big occasion out of it. And that was exactly its beauty.

Over time I began to understand that culture is not something a society funds because it looks good in the statistics. It exists because it connects people. When we sit in an audience together, it is entirely unimportant what we do for a living, how much we earn or where we come from. For an hour or two we become one and the same audience. We laugh in the same places, we fall silent in the same moments and we applaud the people on stage together. At a time when so much is said about the differences between people, culture keeps reminding us of what we have in common.

I think that is precisely why, more than thirty years ago, I wanted us to have a gathering place of our own too. When HELSE came into being I was not, honestly, thinking about building a cultural institution. I wanted our people to have the chance to watch a play in their mother tongue, to hear a concert by the artists they grew up with, or to watch together a film that is already being talked about back home. Today, looking back, I realise we were doing much more than that.

We were building a community.

Switzerland taught me another important thing. Culture does not have to choose between the local and the international. Here it is completely natural that in the same week you go to a play by a Swiss author, listen to a concert by an African band or watch a film from Bosnia and Herzegovina. People are curious and open to what comes from other cultures. That encouraged us to think more broadly through HELSE as well. We did not want to be a place of nostalgia, but a place of encounter. A place where culture from our region becomes part of the cultural life of Switzerland.

Perhaps that is exactly why summer is my favourite season. Literaturfestival Zürich, Theater Spektakel, open-air cinemas, concerts in the parks… Every one of those events reminds me how important it is that culture is available to everyone. Not only to those who go to the theatre regularly, but also to families who happen to stop by, to tourists who buy a ticket out of curiosity, or to children who will see a performance for the first time and perhaps fall in love with art on that very day.

I often think about what our city would look like if we erased all those meeting places from it. No theatres, no libraries, no festivals, no cinemas, no concerts and no museums. It would perhaps still be a well-ordered city, but it certainly would not be the same. Culture does not solve all the problems of a society, but it makes it warmer, more open and more humane.

That is why every 1 August, while Switzerland celebrates its birthday, I think about how grateful I am to live in a country that does not see culture as a cost, but as an investment in people. That is perhaps the most valuable lesson I have learned here, and one of the few I would like to carry with me wherever life may take me.

— Evica