The Swiss Connection

Part three of a three-part series about the connection between nostalgia and homesickness.  If a friend abandoned you in a foreign country, how angry would you be? And how healthy is it to dwell on the past?

Part two of a three-part series about the connection between nostalgia and homesickness.  We "meet" a medical student who attended Basel University in the 17th century, and we try to retrace the steps of the Swiss mercenaries who inspired him.

Part one of a three-part series about the connection between nostalgia and homesickness.  For this we travel back in time to join two backpackers exploring Europe in the 1980s, and we find out how they’re connected to Swiss mercenaries hitting the road in the 17th century. 

In 2020, getting the kind of schooling you want for your kids sometimes meant moving halfway across the world, at the drop of a hat. Meet a Swiss woman in California who did just that.

When you first see her with her sleek bob and glossy fingernails, it’s kind of surprising to learn that Gabriela Martina was raised on a farm. But it’s memories of her rural upbringing that power some of her music.

Over a decade ago, she left her home in the Lucerne countryside to study jazz in the United States. Today, the vocalist and composer lives in Boston and teaches at her alma mater, the Berklee College of Music.

Martina tries to mix her Swiss yodelling roots with jazz, soul, RnB, gospel and blues. Her latest album, Homage to Grämlis, tells stories about the farm where she grew up with her parents, grandmother, two sisters and a brother. Many of the songs are about how they tended animals and the land. It’s bittersweet as the family recently had to give up the farm.