A young doctor manages what most Ukrainians in Switzerland have trouble doing: finding a job.
The Ukrainian Nataliia Stupka flees the war to live with her sister in Switzerland – within a few months she learns to speak German fluently.
The night before Nataliia Stupka escapes, she sleeps in the bathtub. She had done this the previous nights. It is the safest place in the apartment: bathroom, a small closed room, no window. The explosions can still be heard. Sometimes the bathtub shakes.
She leaves the apartment door open in case things suddenly have to happen quickly. There is a backpack in the hallway. Diplomas, underwear, family pictures. She doesn’t want to carry more on the escape, which she has decided to do with a heavy heart and which will take her to Switzerland – to her sister.
In the morning, Stupka puts on jeans that at first glance look ordinary. Blue, skinny, a few desired holes. Inside it reveals its value: warm lining. The day of the escape: March 6, 2022, eleven days after the Russian attack, a Sunday. Temperatures in Kiev barely rise above freezing. Thousands of people are waiting at the train station to be evacuated by train towards Poland.
631 days later, it is the end of November 2023, addiction clinic in Ellikon an der Thur, canton of Zurich. It will snow soon. Stupka, 28 years old, is wearing the lined jeans again. She is sitting on an office chair, there is chocolate on the desk, houseplants are growing on the shelf. And a sign on the door to the office reads: Nataliia Stupka, assistant doctor.
Stupka did it. She has arrived in Switzerland and has succeeded where many fail: 66,000 people from Ukraine currently have S protection status in Switzerland. Only 20 percent of them were able to find work. Stupka says she owes the job to a dedicated social worker, an employee of the Swiss Evangelical Churches Aid Organization (Heks), her sister, her brother-in-law, her brother-in-law’s mother, and her employer.
But above all she owes it to her perseverance.
Clothes with a history: Stupka wore the lined jeans on the run. The sweater was one of the first things she bought with her salary as an assistant doctor in Switzerland.
Fifteen cats and a dream
Nataliia Stupka grows up in a village near Donetsk. A farm with cows, chickens, pigs and fifteen cats. The mother is an English teacher, the father is a mechanic in one of the region’s countless coal-fired power plants.
One day his father cuts off part of his fingertip while chopping wood. The mother faints. Stupka, 8 years old, disinfects the wound, applies a pressure bandage, and the wound heals. From then on she had a dream: she wanted to become a doctor.
And there is room for their dreams. The family has enough to live on – like many in the region. Donetsk is considered one of the most beautiful cities in Ukraine; its residents benefited from heavy industry at the time.
In 2012, Europe is looking at Donetsk. Spain and Portugal are playing in the newly built football stadium for a place in the European Championship final.
In 2013, Stupka began studying medicine.
In 2014 the Donbass war comes. Russian-backed separatists occupy parts of the region. Shootings, explosions, roadblocks. Parts of the European Championship stadium collapse, and so do Stupka’s dreams. University operations are interrupted.
She can continue studying later. In 2020 she moves to Kiev to do an internship in internal medicine at a hospital – and she realizes that her diploma is worth nothing there. Western Ukrainians view the war-torn region with skepticism and doubt the quality of training. Stupka has to take a number of exams again – including the state exam.
Then comes February 24, 2022. War again. Now Kyiv is surrounded. Sleeping in the bathtub. Packing backpack. Let’s go. Alone to my sister, who has lived in Switzerland for five years, married to a Swiss man.
Stupka stands on the crowded train from Kiev to Lviv for seven hours. She arrives at midnight. She has to wait twelve hours in front of the train station. Temperatures drop below zero degrees. Stupka is warm because the other refugees are standing so close around her. They talk to each other. Nobody talks about the war, she talks to a doctor about surgical techniques.
At midday a bus takes them to the Polish border, where a friend is waiting for Stupka. He came from Bratislava, almost a ten-hour drive. They drive together to his apartment in the Slovakian capital. Stupka showers and sleeps – for the first time in two days.
At the train station in Bratislava she wants to buy a train ticket to Zurich. The woman at the counter says: “Are you from Ukraine? Just get on, you don’t need a ticket. Have a safe trip and good luck.”
Nine hours and five minutes. Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck. The sister is waiting in Zurich, she is four years older and lives in a single-family house in Rorbas. Stupka, who has been on the run for three days, says: “I thought every minute that I wouldn’t make it. But I did it.”
Today Stupka says: “I can’t remember much. It’s like a nightmare that you want to forget.”
In Rorbas she wakes up the next morning in a strange bed, homesick and worried. She writes to her professor in Ukraine. Is training to become a doctor now lost?
The professor can’t help her. Stupka is plagued by professional insecurity, as is his financial dependence on his sister and her family. She wants to go home. The nurse intervenes. And convinces her to stay. So Stupka learns German every day. A social worker organizes courses.
A supervisor from the Heks relief organization helps her: take German exams, register with the professional commission, and have her diplomas recognized. Then the call comes from the supervisor: There is a position available as an assistant doctor in an addiction clinic in Ellikon. Would you like to apply, Ms. Stupka?
Stupka goes to the interview. The superiors say it would be important for her to have C1 in German, the second highest of six exam levels. A day later, Stupka takes the test. She consists.
In April 2023, a year after the escape, she puts a name tag on her sweater: Nataliia Stupka, assistant doctor. New everyday work routine: admission interviews, rounds, treatments, therapy plans. At the same time, she writes pages of tables with terms she doesn’t understand, phrases in Swiss German, medical terms.
“The work means the world to me,” says Stupka. “And I love my team.” But the homesickness remains. Even now, with a job and my own apartment, 2.5 rooms, in Winterthur.
After a little more than a year in Switzerland, she found a job as an assistant doctor.
After work the family comes. Every day video call with the sister in Switzerland and the parents who stayed in Ukraine. Sometimes she shows off a sweater she bought or a new houseplant. Sometimes the connection breaks down. She hardly ever reaches her grandparents; they live in Russian-occupied territory in the south of Ukraine, right on the border. The telephone network is cut off and the internet connection is unstable.
She recently found out from her mother: her grandfather died. “I should have been sad,” says Stupka, “but I was angry.” His mother was unable to say goodbye to him; the borders to the occupied regions in the south are closed.
A man with blue eyes
Going back to Ukraine is currently not an option for Stupka. Because the borders are closed, she wouldn’t be able to visit her parents and grandmother at all – only as far as Kiev. In January it will be two years since she last hugged her parents. They send photos of the first snow in Donetsk. Of homemade cakes.
A lot of things are missing in Switzerland – not just family and friends. The folkloric pop music that is played in all shops in Ukraine. The Tworog, a grainy cream cheese. And roasted sunflower seeds as a snack.
Then Stupka says: “But actually I’m not missing anything.” The sister is there, the brother-in-law, his family, a Ukrainian friend, work colleagues. “And who knows,” she says, “maybe I’ll fall in love here too.” He should be intelligent, funny, warm. And have blue eyes. Every now and then Stupka uses a dating app and meets someone for dinner – although she is shy. Stupka says Ukrainians are generally more introverted than the Swiss. Then she laughs: “And they have more winter shoes than sneakers. With the Swiss it’s the other way around.”
On November 1st, the Federal Council extended the S protection status for refugees from Ukraine until March 4th, 2025.
Stupka recently bought a pair of hiking boots. She wants to go hiking in the spring.
Stupka says about her job at the Forel Clinic in Ellikon an der Thur: “The work means the world to me.”
2024-01-07 02:40:33
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