You're welcome, I suppose

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 smiling at me.

This was weird. The Swiss are not big on public smiling -- they see smiling for no reason as artificial. The drivers don't usually make friendly announcements, either. Just in case, I put on my best "harmless tourist" face and smiled, nodded, and hoped that I hadn't inadvertently broken some social custom. When we arrived at my stop, the bus driver made another similar announcement as I left.

I looked it up later, and I think the mystery word was "reinigen" (clean). I'm pretty sure that, despite all of my worry, I was publicly thanked twice for cleaning up the bus.

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