Some songs are written. This one was found.

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In February 2025, I was recovering from surgery at Inselspital Bern. Part of the recovery was simple in theory and exhausting in practice: walk.

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So I walked.

 

Again and again through the long white hospital corridors, slowly teaching my body to trust itself. The days were measured in steps, tired muscles, fluorescent light and small victories that would have seemed insignificant anywhere else.

Along the way, I kept passing the same people. Patients, nurses, visitors. Each room seemed to contain a separate little universe.

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In the room next to mine was a relatively young German-speaking man. He could hardly move by himself and needed help breathing through a mask. Yet when his friends came to visit, something changed.

They would push him through the corridors in his wheelchair, talking and laughing, occasionally travelling at a speed that probably wasn't included in the official rehabilitation programme.

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For a few moments, the sterile hospital corridor became somewhere else.

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There was laughter. Voices. Squealing wheels. And life.

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Then one evening, everything was quiet.

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I walked past his room. The door was open. The lights were off. The room was empty.

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There were no voices, no laughter, no wheelchair racing through the corridor. Only a medical mask hanging from the door handle.

 

Someone had written a message across it: “Bin nach Panama, Tiger” (Gone to Panama, Tiger)

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I never learned exactly what had happened.

I never really knew him, and I never knew the story behind those words.

But the sentence stayed with me.

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Somewhere called Panama

“Panama” slowly became something more than a geographical place in my mind. It became somewhere beyond the corridor. Somewhere beyond machines, hospital rooms, pain and uncertainty.

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Maybe somewhere peaceful. Maybe somewhere absurdly beautiful. Maybe simply somewhere else.

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And perhaps that is what fascinated me most about those words. They managed to feel funny, tender, mysterious and devastating at exactly the same time.

 

That strange mixture eventually became Gone to Panama, Tiger.

The song is not an attempt to tell another person's story. I couldn't do that, because I never knew it. Instead, it is about the moment that remained with me.

 

About how complete strangers can briefly become part of our lives. About the traces people leave behind without ever knowing it. About hope appearing in unexpected forms.

 

And about those strange goodbyes that never really explain anything.

 

For everyone walking their own corridor

This song is dedicated with enormous gratitude to the doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and everyone at Inselspital Bern who cared for me during my recovery.

Hospital work is often described through medicine, technology and procedures. From the other side of the bed, however, you discover something equally important: patience, encouragement, humour and simple human kindness.

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Thank you for helping me walk those corridors until I could finally walk out of them.

 

And this song is also dedicated to every patient moving through their own corridor - literally or otherwise.

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Some are walking.

Some are being pushed.

Some are standing still for a while.

 

We are all trying, in our own way, to get somewhere.

 

Maybe Panama.