On the 7.17 am train to Geneva. One guy drumming, with actual drumsticks. Person next to me blasting what sounds like B-movie soundtracks on her cheap leaky imaClone earphones. Guy across from me picking his nose with eerie determination. Good morning Switzerland!

I just came back from Paris...and I've never witnessed anybody putting their feet on the chair nor playing music from the phone in the metro there. The is a serious lack of respect here it seems.

Good one..

Its vastly improved in the last few years, peple used to openly smoke copious amounts of weed on trains.

Well, it happened to me in NL too, I hate it when people think that if they want to listen to music everyone else should listen too. It happened to me in the train from Rotterdam to Paris (two non EU people although might be irrelevant) and it happened at least once a month in the bus in Leiden, but if I said could you please lower the volume people would apologize and do so. Here, I was in the train from Dietikon to Basel and there was this girl listening to loud music through her headphones, she was not from around here, I ask to please lower the volume and the b***h looks as if I have offended her and goes on and lowers the voume a bit, then the Swiss people sitting next to her with whom she had been chatting asked what had happened and she explained and they turned to look at me, like how dare I interrupt the girl from going deaf so I give them by best *so you have a problem with me* face...really...

OP, are you by any chance Canadian ? I've noticed that many Canadians have a 'holier than thou' attitude and feel that all culturies in the world should be Canadian...

amen. on the train to montreux yesterday some guy hacked and coughed for a good 10 minutes (i mean like tuberculosis kind of thing) before spitting up into a napkin. there were a ton of people who seemed to think their backpacks deserved a seat more than the line of people standing in the aisles and you're right about the earphones- and why is it the music always sucks?
ug. so glad i go in late on wednesdays when the train is empty...

and my poor hubby takes that train to geneva everyday...(no fun) at least my montreux commute is fast and beautiful...

Weren't we all appalled already, just the other day?

appalling things happen everyday on the morning commute...

O.M.F.G.

I am appalled at how often people here are appalled.
Apparently I have now lost the ability to judge when people are being serious in their posts as well. Here I thought the OP was a cheeky response to the German/Swiss thing, but now I am not sure.

Argh. I am off to hit myself in the face with something blunt and heavy. I will try not to do it on the train where it might cause an inconvenient scene. Good morning to all.

i'm in the morning train fribourg-geneva, 1st class packed. Here is what I see and hear: - a swiss german shouting in his phone orders to his poor employee about some crap powerpoint files - a romand making his appointments over the phone - 3 french canadians (apparently from Fribourg hockey team) speaking in french-canadian that I almost don't understand. - 3 border-guards (garde frontiere) with their dog sitting in 1st class section but on my right, I see the beautiful fribourg alps landscape as we are crossing the Gruyère region under a clear blue sky and shinning sun, ...God is that wonderful!

I remember being on the London underground in the middle of the day and there was a guy clipping his toe nails!! Nice. Perhaps the guy picking his nose was hungry. you never know

that's it. it makes it all worth it.
and for what it's worth, i've seen much worse (now that i really think about it) commuting in nyc. but i guess with some time here, i've become swissified to minor disturbances...

I take comfort in the landscape here all the time as well.
It is beautiful, hopefully one day it will make me stop noticing everything bad going on alongside it.

I travel on the Moscow Metro quite often and asked my partner why many Russian men have a long fingernail on the little finger of their left hand. Apparently.....you guessed it......they grow it long especially to make it easier to pick their nose.

Apart from the funny element of that....the serious point is that if people honestly find something to complain about in these small things.....try living somewhere where girls can't walk the streets after dark for fear of being beaten or worse by the police, where you are stuck into Metros like a sardine tin, where it is -25C outside, where you need to think twice about using your IPhone on the train in case somebody steals it, where girls have had their fingers broken to have a diamond ring removed.

Try that for a month and then see how "appalled" you feel about Swiss transport and life here.

I'm jealous if your life is so perfect that this is all you have to complain about because 99.999999% of the planet would like to live life in your shoes today.

Sad, but true.

In that case I think we were quite appalled..

This thread should be in fail of the day.

Fixed that for ya

Clearly a "creative" Swiss-Romand thing... you'd never get such behaviour in the German part. Far too inhibited...

<ducks for cover>