In 2018, my mother and I were watching Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities<\/em> while I curled her hair. I knew she had attended Southern University, an HBCU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But as the memories bubbled up, she mentioned how she\u2019d spent the summer after her freshman year in Switzerland<\/a>.<\/p>\n I paused with the curling iron in my hand. How in the world had my mother, a young Black woman and the eldest of four, raised by two parents who had never finished high school in a segregated town in southwestern Louisiana, spent a summer in Europe<\/a> in the 1960s?<\/p>\n In the 1960’s, the writers’ mother spent a formative summer in Switzerland.<\/p>\n <\/span>Getty<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cWe traveled around Switzerland for two months and the trip changed the course of my life,\u201d my mom said, nostalgia in her voice. It was part of a program called The Experiment in International Living program<\/a>, she explained, and through the support of an encouraging professor, donations organized via the university newspaper, and a car wash that she hosted with fellow students, my mother raised the $1,500 needed to participate and she was off to Switzerland at the age of 19.<\/p>\n The writer and her mother<\/p>\n <\/span>Shayla Martin<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n She hadn\u2019t been back since. Naturally, I looked at her in that moment and vowed to return together. We could retrace her steps; we could revisit the places that had silently loomed so large over the years that followed. Nearly seven years after that conversation, we made it happen.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.cntraveler.com\/photos\/69cee317a1b298f0c3a7a876\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/%2520Switzerland-IMG_4154-credit%2520Shayla%2520Martin.jpg\"\/)
<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.cntraveler.com\/photos\/69ceebe8a1b298f0c3a7a8f9\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/Mount%2520Pilatus%2520in%2520Lucerne-GettyImages-1728591899.jpg\"\/)
<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n