What Nobody Tells You About Starting Over

Everyone tells you about the big moments of moving abroad. The flight. The first day at university. The culture shock. What nobody tells you about are the small ones, the moments that catch you off guard at 3 PM on a Tuesday.

The Grocery Store Problem

My first week in Switzerland, I spent forty-five minutes in a Migros trying to find yoghurt. Not because the store was large (it was), but because every label was in German, and I’d suddenly forgotten every word I’d studied on Duolingo. I stood in the dairy aisle holding two containers, trying to determine which one was plain yoghurt and which was quark, whatever that is.

A woman next to me must have noticed the confusion on my face. She pointed to the one in my left hand and said something in Swiss German that I absolutely did not understand, but her smile was universal. I bought the one she pointed to. It was quark. I still don’t know what quark is supposed to taste like versus what it actually tastes like, but I ate it.

This is what adaptation feels like: small humiliations mixed with unexpected kindness.

The Silence of Sundays

Nobody prepared me for Swiss Sundays. In Turkey, Sundays are alive, markets open, neighbours visiting, the smell of fresh simit from the bakery down the street. In Switzerland, Sunday is sacred in a different way. Everything closes. The streets go quiet. The stillness has a weight to it.

My first Swiss Sunday, I walked through my neighbourhood thinking something was wrong. Where was everyone? Had I missed a holiday? Was there a national emergency? No. It was just Sunday. The Swiss take their rest seriously, and I was still calibrated to a different rhythm.

I’ve come to appreciate it now. There’s something honest about a culture that says: today, we stop. But those first few Sundays were lonely in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

Finding Home in Unexpected Places

The moment I knew I’d be okay happened in a bakery near the university. I walked in for coffee and saw it — a round, sesame-covered bread that looked almost exactly like simit. My simit. My heart actually ached.

I pointed at it, and the baker said it was called “Türkisches Brot.” Turkish bread. Someone, at some point, had brought this recipe here, and it had stayed. A small bridge between my old world and my new one, sitting right there in a glass case.

I bought two. Ate one immediately on the street, which I think is frowned upon in Switzerland but I didn’t care. Texted my best friend back home a photo with the caption: “They have simit here. I’m going to survive.”

The Language of In-Between

There’s a specific kind of tiredness that comes from thinking in one language and living in another. By evening, my brain feels like it’s been running two operating systems all day. I dream in Turkish but set my alarms in German. I count in Turkish but read my schedule in English. My text messages are a patchwork of three languages that would make any linguist weep.

But here’s what I’ve learned: fluency isn’t the goal. Connection is. My German is imperfect, my Swiss German is nonexistent, but I can smile at the woman in Migros, thank the baker in his language, and ask my classmates to speak slowly. That’s enough for now.