A
character in a movie I saw some years ago
pronounced that, "Everyone must belong." I have since forgotten
the details of the movie but often thought about his statement. What does it mean to
belong and what to or where are we supposed to belong?
I grew up in Ticino, the southernmost canton in Switzerland, on the Swiss-Italian border.
The language in Ticino is Italian, the food and the culture are also Italian and the place
has a Mediterranean air to it. My family, however, was from the German part of
Switzerland, on the northern side of the Alps. |
|
We
spoke Swiss German at home and ate Germanic dishes at our meals. Even as a young child, I
felt culturally ambiguous and unclear about who or what I was or belonged to. I
wasn't really a Swiss German, after all I spoke Italian, including the local dialect,
better than German and I was more familiar with the local culture than my parents'. On the
other hand I wasn't really a "Ticinese" (a person from Ticino) either. For one,
I clearly had the wrong kind of name and furthermore I ate "funny" things, at
least in the eyes of some of my friends. |
