My Mum's First Kiss Was 64 Years Ago In Switzerland — We Went Back To Find It
Or...Postcards from a Midlife Elsewhere.
This is a Postcard from a Midlife Elsewhere, a journal of what it means to belong somewhere else…again and again. It’s about relocation, reinvention, and home through stories, snapshots, and reflections from a life lived across borders.
Every place has a doorway. Every midlife has a threshold.
I write about moments that mark the shift from who I was… to who I’m becoming.
Maybe you’ll recognize the terrain.
If you’re ready to turn your own moment into a map — start here.
I build Pocket Quests™ at Call for Heroines: story-based micro-adventures that help you rewrite your life in real time.
The grand hotel had been demolished, but we went anyway.
Not to see the hotel, exactly, but to find whatever was left of it. For over sixty years, my mum had carried a trip inside her, not just the sights but the sense that the world was wider and more magical than she'd known. We wanted to give her a glimpse of that world again—or at least stand beside her while we looked for it.
When my Mum was 13 years old, her school took her on the trip of a lifetime. I don’t know if they do this anymore in British schools, but even when I was a kid, we had extended trips planned by the school and chaperoned by the teachers (poor things, as if their jobs weren't stressful enough). When I was ten, we left our little town in Thornbury to tour similar countryside in Dorset. When my Mum was 13, she left the suburbs of East London for the first time for an adventure in Switzerland.
We’d heard stories about this trip since childhood, snatches of memories that had stayed with her. They came by bus and train. No flights for these kids, just a sense of growing anticipation as they wound through the Alps. It was the first time she saw mountains. A lake. Ten days of firsts, widening the world for a shy girl from East London.
This year, my parents made the long trip from South Carolina to visit us in Italy. I have always promised my Mum that if they made it to Borgo Val di Taro, which is in the North of Italy and only a few hours' drive to Switzerland, we would go back. To see what she remembered, but more likely to see what was still there.
My Mum is 77 years old now. Her school trip was 64 years ago. The trip cost 25 GBP, which is about 700 pounds or $950 in today’s money. In other words, it was a huge expense for my Mum’s working-class family of 7. They had opportunities to raise the money, but most came from the parents, and my Nan was so proud to have scraped together these funds along with the 5 pounds my Mum got for spending money.
The younger students (including my Mum) stayed in a cliffside hotel called Grand Hotel Axenstein in a tiny town called Morshach, perched on a cliff above the town of Brunnen. Back then, Morshach was nothing more than Axenstein, a fading grand hotel from the Belle Epoque era (the glamorous 20s) when Switzerland was a vibe for very wealthy people. By the time my Mum arrived in 1962, the hotel was on its last legs. It would be demolished in 1965 to make way for a contemporary Swiss Resort (You know how it goes - out with the old dame, in with the new.) But in my Mum's memories, that hotel was a palace. She remembers a grand and glamorous place with views stretching over the north end of the lake that would take their breath away. Even though they were crowded three students to one tiny attic room, and had to share the bathroom down the hall (we’ve since surmised they probably stayed in the staff quarters).
My Mum attended church, as required for Catholic students, in the tiny chapel in the village, but she was so overwhelmed by the incense and claustrophobia that she had to be hustled out and escorted back to the hotel.
Morshach also had a quaint cow-adjacent cafe with a jukebox. The kids would go there in the evenings to drink Cokes and dance. The juke box had only one record in English, which they played again and again. That record was “Hello, Mary Lou,” and the B-side was “Traveling Man.” A boy named John walked my Mum home from the café one night, and she had her first kiss on the steps of the hotel. She hated it. She spent the rest of the trip avoiding him—embarrassed, flustered, as only my shy, anxious Mum could be.
The only way to reach Morshach then was via a clunky, aging funicular railway. They took this train daily to access Brunnen, where the “senior” students were staying. From there, they boarded the boats and buses that would carry them away to further adventures, like visiting the Lucerne Lion and the covered bridge of Lucerne, or “enjoying” tobogganing on Mount Riggi (accessed via cable car, another first). Picture this: a horde of little girls in school skirts careening down a mountain, legs bare in the Alpine cold, wringing out their soaked socks for another go round. It’s a wonder they didn’t get frostbite!
For my Mum, this trip was a cascade of magical moments.
I snagged us a sweet lakefront hotel in Brunnen. Morschach was now a Swiss Resort and not much else, and Brunnen was now the place with the views. Although Brunnen had been a shopping town for the students back then (eager to spend the cash burning holes in their pockets), Mum didn’t remember it. Even the scenery, although glorious, looked different than the postcard picture Mum had in her mind. Mark and I went for a walk along the lakefront and discovered what we thought could possibly be the base of the old funicular, and after showing her, Mum agreed it was likely, but it didn’t spark a solid memory to hold on to.
I hovered like an anxious hummingbird, scanning Mum's face for any flicker of letdown, because I wanted more for her. I wanted her to light up at the view of an ice-cream shop she’d popped into, or recognize the trinket shop where she’d purchased the charm bracelet for her big sister.
She’d told me, not for the first time, about the charm bracelet with the cowbell. She hadn’t wanted to give it to her sister. Not really. Even at thirteen, I think she understood, somewhere deep down, that this trip was extraordinary, maybe even singular. A girl like her (working-class, East London, large family) didn’t just go to Switzerland. She gave the bracelet to her sister anyway, because that’s what good little sisters do, but part of her had wanted to keep it, to hold onto something real in case the memory slipped away. On our trip together, we searched for a replacement, hoping maybe one of the tourist shops still sold something like it. But we couldn’t find one.
Even now, though my Dad is proud to buy her diamonds, I think that little cowbell charm bracelet would have pleased her no end. Not for its value, but for its weight. Something physical to hold her memories in place.
Morschach was even more alien to her sepia-toned recollections from 62 years ago. It was a buzzing resort town, the hills smothered with block-like rentals instead of the classical Swiss chalets that had charmed her back then. Like an aging movie star who overdid the Botox, the town had smoothed away all its character, trading old-world charm for a sterile, wrinkle-free perfection that left no room for expression or soul.
The only possible real memory connection came on the tourist boat back from our visit to Lucerne. Mum recognized the mountain, the town name of Weggis, and most excitingly, the gondolas swinging precariously while shuttling tourists to the top of Mount Riggi, where she went to tempt frostbite while sliding down the mountain with her skirt flying.
Brunnen and its surroundings delivered the goods, and we had a wonderful time together. The drive was smooth with a smorgasbord of window views, from red-sailed sailboats, to diving locals, to dramatic waterfalls cascading from mighty peaks. The views from our rooms felt unreal, as if perfection had been painted on the glass, because surely a lake that still, broken only by the wake of a departing boat and cradled in a valley of towering giants, couldn’t belong to the real world. The hotel was charming (although sans air-conditioning), and our meals were pleasant (if not Italian).
But I was worried.
My Mum had come to relive her past, to immerse herself in these memories of girlhood she had cherished for so long. Would she be disappointed that she didn’t recognize a thing, that every aspect of ‘what had been’ was so changed by time?
Nope.
In a quiet moment in the back of the car returning from our road trip to Morschach, my Mum said,
“Now I’ve seen this all again, I am so happy for that 13-year-old girl who had this experience.”
She didn’t say anything else. And I didn’t ask her to.
That school trip was so important to my Mum because it showed her a different kind of world—a world with crystal clear lakes you could drink from, snow-peaked mountains you could slide down, funiculars, cable cars, and charming Swiss chalets. It showed her that there was a world beyond London and that it was bigger than she could have imagined.
My Mum wouldn’t leave England again until she was 34, when she crossed the ocean with a husband and four children in tow to emigrate to America. But she carried with her those memories of the mountains and the understanding that a new world could offer magical experiences. Maybe that carried her through the many demanding and challenging aspects of the immigrant experience.
By the end of this trip, I realized that my Mum wasn’t going back to a place; she was visiting the girl she used to be. She didn’t need the physical environment to be there. A place can still change you, even if all that’s left are the stories.
Maybe the point of revisiting those places from our memories isn’t to bring us back to what was. Maybe the point is to show us who we have become because of it.
On that boat ride back from Lucerne, my mum pointed out the gondola towers and said, “I think that’s where we went up. "
As I watched her watch the mountains, I thought, “She’s not remembering the view…
She’s remembering the girl.”
More Postcards from a Midlife Elsewhere…
A haunting and hopeful piece! A delicious read that evokes a need for journaling. Thank you for including the historic and current images—I would have lost a few hours trying to find the hotel.
I loved this is much! xo