Dostoevsky's trip to Europe in 1867 was forced. Together with his wife, he went abroad to escape creditors, planning to stay for three months. However, due to a lack of funds for the return journey, they remained abroad for four years. The writer compared this time to four years spent in hard labor. The newlyweds visited Vilnius, Dresden, Baden-Baden, Basel, and finally arrived in Swiss Geneva.

"As soon as I moved to Geneva, the seizures began, and what seizures! Just like in Petersburg. Every 10 days a seizure, and then I can't recover for five days. I am a lost man! The climate in Geneva is terrible, and we have already had four days of a storm, such that it happens in Petersburg only once a year. And the cold, awful!"

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter to Apollon Maikov

At first, they rented a small apartment at the corner of Berthelier and Guillaume-Tell streets, and before the birth, they moved to a more spacious place at Mont-Blanc 16. A memorial plaque is now installed on this house.

It should be noted that the people of Geneva responded to Dostoevsky's dislike with indifference. He lived in the city for a year and wrote many unflattering things about Swiss society, which is why the city council only allowed his name to be immortalized in 1949.

"How sad and gloomy it is here. What self-satisfied braggarts there are! It is a special foolishness to be content with everything. Everything here is disgusting, rotten, everything is expensive. Everything here is drunken! There are more rowdies and loud drunks here than even in London," he wrote to A.N. Maikov on October 9, 1867, from Geneva.

The only thing that amazed Dostoevsky in Switzerland was nature. He wrote: "Geneva on Lake Geneva. The lake is amazing, the shores are picturesque... and you won't see anything like it even in your dreams." He also found solace in the fact that he could focus on his work. In Geneva, he wrote "The Gambler" and began working on the novel "The Idiot." In 1871, Dostoevsky returned to Russia.