
Christmas & Spielautomaten AG
After four months of bouncing between subleases and navigating immigration offices, we finally landed just a few short blocks from our old apartment, our home for the next year. One of Nicole’s friends had gifted us a baby wagon in anticipation of Lou’s arrival and it earned its keep early. I tested its limits, hauling load after load through the neighborhood from our old apartment to our new one.
It was our first big sigh of relief, finally a place to land. No more immigration logistics or “what’s next” thoughts, (at least that’s what I thought.) And compared to the mold-infested units below ours, where black fungus climbed the walls like invasive weeds, our apartment felt like a win. Nicole’s mom was the first to get to work, patching up all the holes left by past tenants. I followed with a five-gallon tub of paint, ready to smother every last stain and musty memory in thick, white layers.
Routine set in quickly. Nicole set up an office space in what would eventually become Lou’s bedroom. I, on the other hand, found myself with too much time and too little direction. The weather turned cold and dark and for the first time and the idea of “settling in” began to really settle in.
Luckily, it was December, a most magical time to be in Bern. Despite the cold and the early sunsets, the city glows. Its cobbled streets, slick with a sheen of dampness, glisten and glow beneath strings of warm, golden lights that hang overhead. The crisp air bites at your nose, but it carries with it the cozy scent of roasted chestnuts and simmering spices. In little park and squares throughout the city, Christmas markets pop-up like enchanted villages straight out of a fairytale.
You wander through them, brushing shoulders with the thick crowds bundled in scarves and mittens, moving aside for kids with red cheeks running by and walk past people clinkin steaming mugs of Glühwein over barrel-turned-tables. Glühwein, the soul of any European Christmas market. It’s a mulled wine with a tradition that dates back centuries to the Roman Empire. It’s made when wine is heated, not boiled, (so as not to burn off the alcohol) and then infused with a comforting blend of cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves, orange peel, sugar or even a shot of rum or amaretto for those looking for a warm tummy. But it’s not just the flavor, (personally i wasn't the biggest fan), but rather the act of holding a hot steaming mug in your frozen fingers, standing beneath strings of lights, surrounded by the quiet chatter of people in knitted hats. And for me, during a time when I felt adrift, that charming energy and those markets helped hold me together for just a bit longer.
After the holidays, as the world settled in for the onslaught of another year. I once again struck out with landing a job, trying desperately not to take every rejection personally. I went into all the gyms in Bern, personally handing them my resume and not one of them even responded. I mean, sure im not the best trainer in the world, but damn not even a “lets see what you got?”
Fortunately, Nicole’s uncle threw me a lifeline. He owns a pinball and jukebox repair shop just outside Bern, Schwab Spielautomaten AG, a rare place where nostalgia still breathes and mechanical precision still reigns. His showroom, a slice of vintage Americana in the heart of Europe. Filled with rows of restored jukeboxes from the early 50’s and glowing neon pinball machines.
He offered me a few weeks of work helping expand his workshop. My job? Gut one of the storage rooms, paint it, and build out an insulated repair room from within his storage garage. Ivo, his head technician, would hurtle german instructions a million miles an hour at me and if i nodded my head with enough confidence, as if i understood anything he said, he’d leave me to be. I’d pop in an earbud and listen to podcasts from back home, my lone thread to the world I left behind and throw myself into the work. I was surprised how much better i felt having that small seemingly insignificant connection back to the states.
The project was therapy for me.
First i cleared out the filled to the gills, chaotic clutter, a flurry of random (most likely forgotten) parts, rogue wires, pieces of wood, slices of metal, hoards of sanders, saws and heat guns covered in thick layers of grime and dust. I tried my best to strategically disassemble that room, load it onto pallets with some sort of organizational system and wheel it outside. But as the pallets continued, i went with a more “fuck it” apporach since there was so much shit, i piled those pallets with mounds of chaos, thinking how annoying it is going to be for the person to poke through this and reorganize it. Once that was finally finished, i was given a huge pail of white paint and covered energy square inch of dust and spider web covered walls with layer after layer of paint.
some sick ass jumps while the paint dried
I then re-mounted shelving and as the last screw went in and i took a step back to admire my work, i watched one of the workers immediately reclaim the space with a glorious explosion of wires, soldering tools, and chaos. He did the bare minimum of what he needed in order work and got right to it. It struck a chord, reminding me of a time in my life when I would move into some room for a few months: throw a few blankets down for a bed, toss my clothes in one corner, a pile of books in another. No effort toward coziness or comfort, just the bare essentials. .
Then came the new room: framing, measuring, insulating, measuring, anchoring, measuring one more time . By the end, what had once been a disorganized overflow zone was now a clean, warm repair room. Every step was visible, tactile. Unlike my inner turmoil this was real work with a beginning, a middle, and an end, something my mind hadn’t had in months.
And when it ended, I felt the silence return. Louder than before. I’d built a room, but not a life.
The routine of showing up and making something real helped quiet the noise in my head. It gave me something to do besides spiral. For those few weeks, I could silence the constant hum of uncertainty that had been following me like a shadow since arriving in Switzerland.
But when the job ended, then returned the questions, doubts, and the weight of too much unstructured time. No walls to build, no tasks to finish. Just me, Father Time, the icy winds of winter and the thrum of a foreign world.