Migrant from Croatia tells of her struggle to integrate

Ivanka Hürlimann, a 50-year-old immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, now lives in a big house in Morgarten and runs her own cosmetic studio. In her recently published autobiography, she tells of the struggle she had to integrate, not least because of the prejudice she experienced from locals in the Aegeri Valley.
 
In her book, Hürlimann (née Rukavina) talks of her happy, if somewhat deprived, childhood in Croatia, going on to mention how her family subsequently moved to Slovenia for economic reasons, and how, later on, she followed her sister and moved to Switzerland, to the Aegeri Valley, where she sensed she was not welcome. She subsequently met and married a Swiss man , but life was not entirely a bed of roses afterwards, as the family went on to experience a number of crises. What is evident in her book, however, is that, despite life’s setbacks, she has come through and has eventually found happiness.
 
Both in her book and in speaking with a journalist of the Zuger Zeitung, what comes through is how, despite doing her best to integrate into society, she was given the cold shoulder by locals, whom she regarded as backward-looking and xenophobic. Neither is she concerned that publication of this may cause offence; she wants to tell things as they were. She mentioned what a struggle she had in those early days, learning German after working hard in a restaurant all day. It is perhaps just as well that no real names have been used in this autobiography, “hence no one can sue me,” she said.
 
Returning to her youth, she mentioned how her lover committed suicide and that she attempted it too. She describes the horrors of the war in Croatia at the time, and of her subsequent failed marriage.  In no way does she want to gloss over anything. “It is all the truth, just as I experienced it,” she insists.
 
So far, she has had only positive feedback from the book, which she was prompted to write by a client of hers after hearing about her tribulations. 100 copies of the autobiography entitled “Under Foreign Stars, A Life of Love, Hurt and Family Secrets,” have been sold, and 100 more are on order. Not that Hürlimann will make her fortune from it; all, as she gets from the CHF 20 sales price is CHF 7.50.
 
Yet who is the real woman behind all this, living in this large house, as the journalist mentioned, full of kitsch items? He commented on her appearance, too, reminding him as it did of some star of the Eighties. It all made him wonder if there was something false about her. When she was asked about all this, she smiled and replied, “I often hear how people misjudge me, and how surprised they are when they get to know me. After all these years, I am immune to people having misconceptions about me.”
 
Hürlimann’s 101-page book is available from the Bücher Balmer bookshop in Zug, the Zugerland Shopping Centre in Steinhausen or directly from her on 079 452 22 12.