A similar thing happened to me on Saturday. I was canoeing with my girlfriend on the river Thur. We found a nice secluded bank for a spot of lunch. About 15 minutes later a large Swiss family pulled up in their canoes and piled out onto the beach directly next to us. Normally I wouldn't have minded were it not for the fact that the beach we were on was tiny, there were a hundred of other similar spots to choose from on the river and they didn't even ask us if they were disturbing us.

Thinking back now I was seething at the time. I just didn't understand why they had to stop there when there was literally no one else on the river. We finished our lunch pretty sharpish after that and left. To add insult to injury, the family decided about 3 minutes after we left that they didn't like that spot afterall and got back in their canoes and paddled on.

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Seriously, the mother must have been soooo stressed and you have no idea how stressy it is to be a mother at a lake and stuff so you have no right to complain. At all.

I gave up the discussion in the "a mother with a baby cannot possibly dodge the train fare but must have forgot the ticket, so she should not be fined but applauded for having a baby" thread.

...somehow I got the feeling that swiss reach out for "closeness". I also find it disturbing in restaurants, cafes, public places, trams... they always come and sit right next to you even though there are plenty of empty spaces around.

If you want to repel better, you simply need to go with the fashion a bit more. "Nice guy" style is so 2010...

I don't see those two stories being in the same league at all...

Not the stories - the reactions. It is an EF knee yerk that whenever there is a mother with a baby involved... she gotta be right and there must be a logical explanation why the poor mother cannot be in the wrong. So instead of accepting the OPs description that the family was rude and unecessarily invaded her private space... there must be the best shadow just in front of her face or the beach MUST have been completely packed.

And that was the same with the last story - the woman MUST have an explanation and we draw bizarry theories that she grabbed the wrong bag/ lost the ticket/ had some medical problems/ was abducted by aliens instead of simply dodging the fare.

Last I checked, this is the Complaints Corner, or did I miss the memo about limiting the amount of complaints you can do?

Must be the heat.

I also spotted this herd instinct habit when I first came to Sunny Swiss (be it empty railway carriage, tram, restaurant, bar, park area, usw). Even my Rule 1 Infringement did it:

R1: "We'll sit here in the park."
WJ: "Why not over there, where there are no people?"
R1: "If it was worth sitting over there, there would be people sitting there."
WJ emits S I L E N T__S C R E A M

It always takes me straight back to the BT advert with Mrs Jones. It just sums up the mentality beautifully...

Haha, thanks for making me laugh.

Yes, several times.

Tom

Yeah, I wasn't sure because either people hadn't read it, or they had no problem with it. I've yet to deduce which of these is the case...

Mothers have a difficult time of it generally and I am sure your attitude would mellow significantly if you have to look after one 24/7.

The hygiene issue and even the proximity issue is a concern...however:
many, many postings are made in such an extreme fashion (presumably to make it sufficiently "outrageous") as to diminish the sympathy toward the original poster - in some cases to such an extent that you doubt the extreme nature of the details of the "in my face" experience.

The following postings by the OP do nothing to make me think this is a reasonable person.

AYB

Did the mum chase you around the lake waving the shitty nappy in your direction while the Benny hill sound track played in the back ground?

TBH I find people on the forum generally child unfriendly! So many thread where kids were bashed and seeing as useless space and air spoilers...

Not me, I love children!!!



Couldn't eat a whole one, though...

That's because we are all too aware of what they will metamorphose into:

TEENAGERS!

Tom

I assure you, I did not exaggerate. 20cm.

I am a reasonable person. I walked away. I could have screamed at her.

That is trully scary! Gosh, I hate teenagers....

Of course, most people on EF don't get the metric system, so maybe they thought you meant 200 meters!

Tom

I figured, when I saw your avatar

Doc.