Swiss expats on living abroad: the former businessman and the entrepreneurs
More Swiss people live abroad now than ever before. In this series, seven types of expatriates talk about the happiness they have found far from home. Part 5 and 6 of the series.
The former businessman
A cruise to Thailand, which colleagues encouraged him to join, was an eye-opener for Franz Juchli, 75, from Buchs in Zurich.
“Three weeks without a mobile phone, fax or email made me realise that there are more beautiful things in life than the office,” he says. Having worked hard all his life and earned a fortune from his tin-making and paint business, he dropped everything. Instead of continuing to work until he was 70, he sold his business, his house, his cars and his Harley-Davidson – all in one month – and emigrated.
It wasn’t hard for him to leave Switzerland eight years ago because he felt increasingly unhappy in his own country. He no longer wanted to get annoyed by politicians or be constantly stopped by the police in his car. For Juchli, Switzerland is a police state.
He moved to Pattaya, on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand. There, during the pandemic, he could relax in a house with a swimming pool and a view. He was constantly renovating and repairing it. But after a stroke in 2021, he decided to sell it. “Life can go by very quickly,” he says. “I just want to enjoy it.”
Since then, Juchli has been living in a guard-gated residential community, where he has several Swiss neighbours. He enjoys his retirement, meeting Swiss friends for coffee, dinner or a game of pool. “In Thailand I have found a lifestyle that is freer and more relaxed,” he says.
The entrepreneurs
Andrea and Rolf Bertschi have lived in France for a long time: in 2018 they moved with their two young children to a hotel in the Château de Montcaud in Provence and have been running it together ever since.
“The hotel business has allowed me to see other countries while earning money,” says Rolf, 52, who is originally from Aargau and has been working abroad for 20 years.
Andrea, 46, a psychologist from Basel, emigrated at the age of 31. “I was looking for excitement and saw it as a personal challenge to leave my well-ordered life behind and go it alone,” she says.
While she was teaching English in Bangkok, the Thai capital, the two became a couple. Together they moved to Hong Kong, southern China, Dubai and then France. “Some people think that life as an expat is an adventure every day,” Rolf says. But no matter where they go, a daily routine soon settles in. Since their children went to school, contact with the local population has come naturally. “But we are still foreigners,” he says.
With their children in school, the couple give more thought to the problems associated with living abroad. “As Swiss Abroad, we have the luxury of knowing that our home country and our families will welcome us back,” Andrea says.
This text was first published in SonntagsBlick and is reproduced here with permission.
Translated by Catherine Hickley
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