STÉPHANE HERZOG An autumn morning. Sunlight streams into Esther Janine Zehntner’s apartment. The view over Basel from her four-room, sixth-floor flat at the edge of the city’s Iselin district is wonderful. “Life is good. I have always lived alone without this necessarily having been my goal,” explains the former school teacher. Esther spent almost ten years with the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Africa. “A piece of my heart belongs to Africa,” she says, recounting the development work she did there. The 82-year-old goes for walks around Basel every day to keep fit. She enjoys walking along the Rhine and through Basel Zoo. She has a group of friends with whom she goes to the theatre, attends concerts and visits museums. Does she, like a growing number of other people in Switzerland, sometimes feel lonely? The country has an ageing population. Divorces are on the up. In the canton of Basel-Stadt, around a quarter of the population – 50,000 people – live alone. One-person households account for 47 per cent of all Basel households, which means that 53 per cent are multi-person households, equating to 150,000 people, Zehntner talks about the week that she spent with friends from the YWCA. Everyone there showed her Home alone in Basel One-person households account for 47 per cent of all households in Basel-Stadt – the Swiss average is 36 per cent. A quarter of the city canton’s population live alone. The Basel authorities have launched a strategy to combat loneliness and raise awareness of a tricky issue that affects both young and old photos of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “I don’t have any myself. Did I miss the boat in life? Who knows, but if there is a time when I could feel lonely, it’s then,” she says, smiling as she hears the noise that the three children in the apartment above are making. Huefyse Bar is the name of a restaurant situated on the ground floor of her apartment block. Single people, both men and women who live nearby, like to have a beer there. Some will go outside on the terrace for a smoke. One of the regulars at the bistro next door is working on his laptop. Esther sometimes eats with him. The socially minded pensioner has been living in Basel on the Rhine – a city of one-person households. Photo: Keystone Swiss Review / January 2025 / No.1 20 Report
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