Side Door Strategy
Building a Life Overseas with No Time, No Plan, and a Baby on the Way
We had originally planned to spend just two months in Switzerland before letting the wind take us elsewhere and so I entered the European Union on a tourist visa that was only valid for 90 days. But somewhere between deciding to come and arriving, everything changed: we found out Nicole was pregnant. After we decided to have the baby in Switzerland, we felt the pressure of the now ticking clock. We had with two choices:
Option one was to leave Europe before my visa expired and try to reenter with a long-term visa. On paper, it sounded straightforward—but in reality, it was anything but. It would have meant flying back to the U.S., starting the visa process from scratch, and navigating layers of bureaucracy. I’d need to schedule an appointment at a U.S. embassy, in either New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and gather financial records, submit forms, wait for approval, and hope that the paperwork went through. And that’s if everything went smoothly.
During those undetermined months of waiting, we’d be in limbo. We could go back home to Wisconsin, live with my parents again, and try to pick up temporary work, but Tomahawk is small and without many options. Since Nicole was pregnant, that introduced a whole new layer of complications, we’d need to navigating the U.S. healthcare system, trying to secure temporary insurance, finding a provider who would take her as a new patient so she could keep up with her prenatal checkups and doing it all without any real stability or guarantee of how long we’d even be there. It would’ve meant finding a place to live, lining up care, and building a temporary life just to keep everything moving forward, all while constantly checking my inbox for visa updates and praying we wouldn’t run out of time or money.
If we would have done that, this is what a realistic idea of what it would have looked like: How to Stay in Switzerland Long-Term.
OR be like a hippie and enter through the side door:
Nicole was the MVP without a doubt—handling everything except the handful of things I had to do myself, which she still guided me through step by step “Matt, sign here… initial there…”. The only parts she didn't do were the ones that required me to show up in person, like getting fingerprinted or making appearances at the U.S. Embassy. Having already been through the U.S. immigration process herself, she knew the system inside and out. She had the experience, the persistence, and the steady hand to navigate it all without missing a beat.
I, on the other hand, just tried to be a well-trained dog, go where I was told, when I was told, and do what I was told to do. That was my job: follow Nicole’s lead. She handled all the logistical nightmares with grace and efficiency, from filling out endless forms, coordinating appointments and obtaining health insurance.
Then there was also the fact that our current apartment was just a temporary refugee. So on top of all the immigration logistics, we had to find and set up another short term sublease. Which meant more emails, text messages, phone calls and viewings. Yet, like a champ, Nicole found one, where chance would have it, happened to be available as soon as our current one ended, meaning we could breathe a little easier knowing we had until the end of October before we would have to move again.
All the while, lurking in the background, was this constant state of uncertainty, a quiet pressure that never really let up. We were living in limbo, never fully sure if I’d even be allowed to stay in the country. Every plan we made had an asterisk next to it, a silent if attached to it.