The Flag's a Plus

On Zürich buses, stops are announced automatically. Normally, the only time that the driver speaks is when there's a problem (like road construction) that will result in the bus being diverted. As someone whose Schweizerdeutsch is terrible, I have developed a certain dread whenever I hear an announcement. It means that something's about to go wrong, but I don't know what it is. Today, I got on the bus at a busy stop where most people were exiting, and someone had spilled a newspaper all over the floor on their way out. The bus was nearly empty and stopped while waiting until it was time to leave, so I set down my bag, picked up all of the newspaper, folded it into a bundle, and tucked the bundle into a spot where it wouldn't spill again. As I finished, I heard an announcement and looked up with my usual sense of dread. I only caught "Danke" and rein...something. I looked toward the front of the bus, and there was an old man standing next to the driver and sm...

Uetliberg is a small mountain near Zürich where you can find many hiking trails. You can also find the Schlittelweg (sled trail) -- a 3.1 km (about 2 miles) long sledding trail. Even better, there are train stops near both the top and bottom of the Schlittelweg, so you don't even have to walk up the hill again. Last weekend, Laura and I took a walk along Uetliberg that ended near the top of the Schlittelweg and we took the train down into the city. Swiss trains are usually immaculate. It's rare to see anything worse than an occasional discarded newspaper, or smell anything worse than a whiff of detergent or excessive perfume. The Uetliberg train, though, smelled awful. If you've ever shoveled a long driveway or gone skiing, or if you have children who like to play in the snow, you may remember the unique "wet dog and unwashed socks" funk that comes from peeling off a snow jacket after a few hours of hard exertion in the snow. That was the smell that we endured...

As far as I can tell, Swiss children are taught public manners from a very young age. It's not uncommon to pass elementary school students walking to school alone or in small groups (wearing their reflective vests, of course) and be greeted with a polite "Grüezi!" ("Hello!") as they pass. A few days ago, I was riding the train when another train pulled alongside. This is uncommon. Trains are normally staggered by a few minutes, but the other train was running late. These were electric trains in the city, so speed was tightly regulated, but as we'd go around corners, the inside train would pull ahead. The children on the train were very excited by the "race", and all ran to the windows on that side of the train. We pulled into one station at the same time. When it was time to leave, the other train's doors closed a few seconds earlier, and it started to pull away. The children on my train became absolutely frantic. They started stomping ...

I have too many blogs and social media accounts. I was trying to keep things separate, divided for appropriate audiences, but it's too much of a hassle to keep track of them all. So, I'm consolidating. More specifically, I'm consolidating here. Blogger supports labels for each post. You'll see that this post has the "announcement" label. If you only want to see posts about Switzerland, find one of those posts, and click on the switzerland label . If you only want to read about technology, click on that label. Etc. If you read this via an RSS feed or some sort of indirect method, and you don't want to read everything, you may need to adjust your feed.