The Lives that Got Away

Do you dream about the other lives you could be living?

Jul 20, 2023

a body of water with mountains in the background

A few weeks ago, I woke in the quiet of a Zurich apartment, situated on a hill above the city centre, having slept deeply. I was staying with my cousins for the weekend, and attending a family reunion on my mother’s side; many of her relatives live in Zurich.

At a dining table, from where I could see Lake Zurich in the distance, we ate a breakfast of creamy Birchermüseli and sweet, juicy cherries. My cousins told me about the allotments, which tumbled down the hill, and how each apartment in their block has its own. I glanced round their calm living space, with its art books, parquet floor and simple, modernist timber furniture. A long-forgotten thought bubbled up: I wish I lived here.

When I was a child, we visited Switzerland at least once a year, spending time in Zurich, as well as the mountains. I fell in love with the Alps, draped in their pristine white winter cloaks, or strewn with wildflowers, their blue lakes reflecting high peaks, still snow-capped, even on an August afternoon. When I suggested to my parents that we move to Switzerland, they laughed and said, ‘No way. We like London.’

Back in London, I devoured the series of Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, and daydreamed about being one of the girls at this fictional school in the Alps, adventuring through pine forests and mountain passes, and drinking hot milky coffee in tiny high-up villages.

I never did move to Switzerland. But in my early twenties, I lived in Berlin. While Zurich, in contrast to Berlin’s louche, nonconformist vibe, is a more sedate, conventional city, both have a Central European flavour, which feels like a homecoming. These are cities where apartments are designed to be apartments, with sprawling corridors, off which rooms open, unlike many London ones (including my own), where a home is carved out of a floor of what was once someone’s house. And they’re cities with a slower heartbeat, where I almost always sleep better than at home. They boast lakes with beaches: Zurich gathered around the shores of its huge one, Berlin fringed by several smaller ones.

In Berlin, I fell in love with a Swiss architect, who’d studied in Zurich. We talked about spending the rest of our lives together. I always pictured our future taking place in Berlin or Zurich. In the end, I returned to England single. For a long time, I felt out of place being back. I missed not just my ex, but also living on Central European soil.

By my late twenties, I was swept up in the rush of London life, working crazy hours as an architect, or out with my friends, too busy to give much thought to living elsewhere. Then, out of the blue, serious illness struck. With months of unpleasant treatments prescribed, my home city – close to family and long-standing friends – was the only place I could conceive of being.

I took a break from work, and spent the summer lounging in parks, gazing up at the broad canopy of a horse chestnut tree instead of at my computer screen. I sat in cafes on weekday mornings, wandered round exhibitions or strolled through the city streets. And during this slow time of illness, I fell truly in love with London.

Later, I planted more roots in my home city, tethering me here more deeply: the almost daily yoga classes I attended at the gorgeous Triyoga studio, where after the Saturday morning one, a group of us would always go for breakfast; the writers’ group I became part of, where I gathered with a group of wonderful women at a long table in a converted warehouse overlooking the Thames, to workshop our prose or poems.

Yet, during that weekend in Zurich, the thought, I wish I lived here, arose several times. It was present on the Saturday evening, as I sat in the canopied candlelit garden of a riverside restaurant at dusk, a soft summer rain falling, surrounded by the laughter and chatter of family. It was there the following day, standing on the mezzanine in what was once the sculpture studio of my mum’s cousin, now a perfectly compact home for her grandson.

I love my life in London. But I still occasionally fantasise about the other ones I came close to living; ones which would’ve also suited me well. Suited, for example, the me who loves mountains and lakes, minimalist modern architecture, the grand old cafes of Mitteleuropa, and a slower pace of life. But there’s also the me who loves the buzz of a fast-paced multicultural city, Georgian terraces, afternoon tea and British irony.

These other lives hover around us, perhaps a reassuring reminder there’s not just one path we’re meant to take, and other possibilities exist, too. Perhaps, one day, some will come into concrete existence. Or perhaps they’ll remain just places we occasionally slip into, like the beautiful dress we borrow off a friend for one night, to attend a party. Places to be briefly savoured, before we return to the life that is fully ours for the taking, right here and now.

Love,

Annabel x

The Lives that Got Away

Do you dream about the other lives you could be living?

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