GF & I were traveling between Zürich and St. Gallen on a Friday evening. The train was quite full so there was plenty of luggage in the carriage. In the 4er seating was a young military guy sitting across from us. He was obviously heading home for the weekend.

5 minutes after leaving Zürich, he starts rummaging around underneath the seat, in the overhead, behind the seat. Then he leans over to my girlfriend and me and asked (in German):
"Umm...did you happen to see me with my rifle?"
"No...you were here before us."
"Oh shit! I left it on the last train!"

The people around couldn't help but laugh for 5 minutes while this poor guy was frantically asking his colleagues what he should do. After calling in vain the SBB in Zürich, he gave up, took out a Feldschlösschen and proceeded to drink.

Poor guy. But it was my most memorable SBB moment so far.

Left Boob Pimple Squeezing.

after my first week in Switzerland I carried my road bike with me on the train to Zurich without knowing the regulations. Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of people inspecting my ticket which I presented to them proudly. Got a fine of 80 francs from them. Was frustrating experience.
Fortunately I was charged only 40 francs, because the lady from the SBB hotline understood my situation and reduced the amount by half.
That raised my awareness.

100% my story as well - I was helping another person bring back the bike, and SBB reduced it.

The other week, some guy was snorting coke on the S-Bahn. I guess he just couldn't wait to get to a more secluded spot.

Saw it as well once. It was the night train after Helloween partying. The whole wagon was full of teenagers, most of them totally drunk. Some of them started to smoke and some snorted white powder getting more and more agressive.

LOL! Saw some guy doing coke coke....Did you have the mrs's compact mirror out again?

On a visit to Switzerland some years ago, I took the train from the Zurich airport to Lausanne. I wanted to call some friends to tell them what train I would be on so they could come and meet me. I asked the "controlleur" (actually a "controlleuse") if there was a public phone on the train. She said no, but handed me her cell phone and walked away, coming back on her next round to collect it.

I once saw a train 11 minutes late.

I stayed asleep in a small regional train. Sadly I was heading back to my recruit school (army) after the week-end.

No permission the next two weeks.....





I hope he has found his rifle before heading back to his barrack.....

..hey, can't a man powder his nose anymore?!

LOL too much "healthy glow"?

Well, just today in the newspaper it states that Swiss cities have some of the highest per capita use of cocaine...

Or maybe it's just milk powder.

Blasphemy!

I think he asked the controller and the controller gave him a special telephone number that he could call. Maybe there's a special hotline for missing rifles...!

Just remembered something that reoccurs frequently. I'm always offered food and alcohol on the train. e.g.

- Beer last month going to work at 7 AM. Bunch of uni students heading to the airport and needed to finish their beer so asked me to help them.
- Granola bars from a military guy that was heading home on a Friday afternoon.
- Salad from a young lady after work

Must be because I'm skinny...

This happened to me many many years ago.

I was coming back from Ticino and somewhere on the Gotthard line when two people sitting on the other side of the aisle started talking and they realised they were both jazz musicians and both had their instruments with them (I guess there must have been some festival on that they had both been at). So they took out their instruments and strated playing. Somehow more people also had instruments and soon there was an ad-hoc orchestra.

One of the very best trains is (of course) the Pau Casals, the night train from Zürich to Barcelona. Fun things happen there all the time.

Well, on one occasion I was in the bar car and there was a big group of young Swiss guys and they were in a good mood and singing songs and making jokes. Technically the bar doesn't close until 2am or something and it was a fair bit before that, but I guess the staff may close it earlier at their discretion. The barman obviously didn't understand much German and these guys didn't know any Spanish. And at some point the barman refused to serve them any more beers. So I pleaded on their behalf, and the barman said no, they're too drunk. So I explained to him that they weren't drunk and that they were just in a good mood. At first he wouldn't believe it but I pleaded and begged a bit more, and finally he gave in.

That made me the hero of the train. Not only did I not have to pay my own beer, but on the way back, I met with the same guys and I didn't pay for a single drink all night. And I drank a lot. We finally had to stop when the barman showed us his empty fridge and explained we'd drunk all the beer.

My sister was going back home from Zurich and we were staying there overnight, in the hurry of packing and getting ready I misplaces the printed train tickets and realized that only once we were already in the train which was beginning to move.
I went to the conductor, who happened to have an Italian last name and I talked to him in Italian and told him my story. He asked how much I had paid and I said the exact amount, he said not to worry but to print the tickets again when we were returning. So yes, we were not fined.
Very nice guy!

Two memories.....

My first visit to Switzerland seeing all the double decker trains. Coming from England with our rickety old claptrap trains of the time, this was impressive.

Second, I was in Davos on a snowboarding holiday and my gf joined me later from Zurich. She turned up in Davos for her snowboarding holiday having forgotten to bring her snowboard(!)... so she got a friend to bring it to Zurich HB and explained what happened... they happily put it on the train, and delivered it it to Davos for her.

Couldnt believe such a great service would exist... again coming from England, where our railway service is hardly the envy of the developed or probably even developing world.

Angela that is a heart warming story.

Do train toilets have toilet paper? What happens when it run out? I have never been inside a train toilet so not sure.

So I was standing near the entrance door of a semi empty train. Suddenly the toilet door opened slightly and a woman begged me to go and get few packets of nose tissue from her mum who was sitting in the middle part of the compartment. You can imagine how awkward the conversation was when I approached her mum. Her mum then went towards the toilet while I legged it.

3 years ago, I was on the IC from Basel to Geneva. In one of the tunnels in the french part of Switzerland we crashed into something. After a while there was a french and at some point finally an english and german explanation of what had happend: Sadly a cow had been inside the tiny tunnel.
We had to wait for approx. 30min for the conductor to check the train until we drove to the next station where the train was checked some more. Finally we could go on with the damaged and bloddy train and - made it PERFECTLY IN TIME to Geneva.
Swiss train scedules! Besides the cow and some majorly optical damage to the train no one has been severly hurt, which I also find quite impressive.