*It's been a while since I updated you on my weirdly amazing life- I took a little hiatus for the summer, so I hope you're ready to read more of my stories, complaints, thankings, and general thoughts.*
Being an only child, it's sometimes very easy to forget that my parents had a life before they had me. And I especially forget that it was a beautiful, fun, amazing life. They have great memories that I wish I could have been in every time they tell me the story again. I was born in 2000, but in this story, I technically was present since my mom was pregnant with me at the time.
It was circa 1998-1999, and my parents had just been married in March 1998 in an Indian temple (a love story we'll save for later). My dad, at the time, had finished his PhD and post-doctorate in Chemistry at Bharathidasan University and was ready to do a second post-doctorate. Of course, he wanted to leave his homeland and explore the world out there with his new life partner.
He decided to move to Neuchâtel, Switzerland to do his post-doc at The University of Neuchâtel. This town is essentially the French-speaking capital of this part of Switzerland and dates back to the medieval times, as does any town in Europe...anyways.
My parents moved to Switzerland (from now on referred to as Swiss because Switzerland is a long word and I'm a lazy college student and it's summer) and had probably the best time of their life. They like to tell me stories of how they spent their days, traveling to and from Lucerne; my mom would make homemade potato chips and they'd go for long strolls in the evenings or make a day trip out to walk on the Lucerne wooden flower-lined footbridge. My mom would go to the petty shop at the corner of their apartment complex to buy cigarettes for my dad. They would take the number 9 bus to travel to the central area or to the grocery shop (called Migros). They walked by the nearby lakes close to a thousand times. They were a young couple, having the best time, exploring Swiss, at a time when it wasn't super expensive to make a livelihood there, and at a time when they didn't have to worry about me (yet). Quick tangent- we visited Swiss this summer (article to come later) and my mom even showed me the restroom when she took a pregnancy test and found out she was doomed to have me. The restroom was by the train station. Love you, mom. Moving on...
I thought I'd take this chance during my first article back from Summer 2019 to share a parents-Swiss life story that makes me die inside (with laughter and incredulity) every time I hear it. Picture this. It's a fairly sunny day, my mom's in the kitchen, being a traditional wife making homemade potato chips (wow stereotype much), and enjoying the breeze through her apartment window. Insert picture here (2019, not 1998, so slightly renovated apartment exterior).
The parentals at their Neuchâtel apartment complex.Instagram
My parents lived on the second floor, and back then, they all had fairly open and accessible balconies- not like the ones you see in this picture.
Another quick tangent- my parents had a friend named Roland and he was about 20 years old at the time they were staying in Swiss. He was kinda their younger tour-guide, but he lived around the area and hung out in the apartment complex a lot playing volleyball with his friends. So this volleyball would frequent land on one of the first floor balcony roofs. Since it was slightly difficult to hoist yourself up onto the roof from the ground floor, Roland would go up to my parent's floor and jump down one level to the first floor balcony roof to grab the ball and toss it back to his friends. He did this a lot.
Enough to the point that my dad started to notice. He noticed how easy Roland made it seem to jump between floors. "Easy."
So anyways, my mom's making potato chips or Indian food (I'm not sure which one it is, she changes the dish every time she tells me the story). And she notices some ridiculously gorgeous roses growing outside her kitchen window, below the second floor of course. Here's some examples of only what I can imagine those roses looked like.
RosesInstagram
RosesInstagram
RoseInstagram
Remember when my dad watched Roland a lot, doing his gymnastic-esque jumps from only the second floor to the first floor?
Yeah, my dad thought he could recreate that. Of course, my dad had good intentions in mind- he wanted to get his wife that rose, the rose that she pointed out was so beautiful. And he thought the best way to get it was to jump, just like Roland, down from the second floor. Only, here's the thing.
My dad miscalculated his jump, and he thought the roses were on the first floor...they were not. They were on the ground floor, right above a nice bedrock of pebbles and sharper stones. So my dad took the jump from the kitchen window.
When my mother finally realized her husband was missing from the kitchen, my dad was lying on the nice bedrock, with an even nicer awkwardly bent foot. His foot had hit one of the sharper stones at just the right angle, making him the lucky patient with a broken heel bone.
Since they were in Swiss, they didn't have their own car, so I believe my mom took my dad to the hospital on the number 9 bus. And he stayed there overnight for a few days while she would go home and cook him delectable dishes and mutton bone soup. My dad swears by that mutton bone soup and says it honestly helped his bone heal faster than any modern medicine...I slightly doubt that.
But yeah, that was my dad's attempt at being a gymnast, a rock climber, a rappeler, and whatever other sport requires you to make jumps higher than one story down.
My mom and Roland were the ones who had to drag my dad around after that as they took the unavoidable touristy trips to Paris and southern Italy. They wheeled my dad around in a wheelchair and probably laughed as he limped around on crutches. I wish I had a picture of that. In Paris, I think my dad was just wheeled around. In Italy, my dad started to get tired of all the travel and threw an absolute tantrum at an authentic pizza restaurant.
It was run by an old lady, obviously the kind who's had the recipe for the perfect pizza in her family for decades and is the only who can shape dough like no one else can. But my dad, a true Indian, had never had pizza before, and refused to eat any kind of pizza she made because it was too tart (from the cheese and marinara sauce). I do believe he calmed down after a couple glasses of wine though. But he rejected the pizza and probably emotionally scarred that woman for life. Good times. Til this day, my dad will only eat pizza if its the absolutely last resort meal option, or if neither him or my mom want to cook.
But yeah, I guess you could say my dad fell for my mom both literally and figuratively. Couple goals, huh?
Here are some more pics they took while in Swiss this summer, as well as a 20 year challenge pic- how cute!
Mom & Dad cir. 1998Instagram
Mom & Dad cir 2019...same room, same clothes as aboveInstagram
Wow water...I should be a freelance photographer. Just me and my iPhone 8 plusInstagram
Rhine FallsInstagram
Glacier 3000Instagram
Mount Pilatus (Dragon)Instagram
