SwissWatching

We’ve complained about ads in Switzerland before and posted a clip of Jon Stewart mocking them, so we were pleasantly surprised when we recently came across some hilarious and original ads for the Swiss Federal Railways. (Ads for Switzerland are another matter—we’ve seen some good ones, including the Swiss Mountain Cleaners, which you may remember, and more recently, “We do whatever it takes to make your holiday perfect.”) Just like the Swiss Federal Railways’ official names, which appear on trains in German, French, and Italian (respectively SBB, CFF, FFS—read more on Wikipedia), the ads feature three characters: Sergio, Benoît, and Beat. Sergio sounds Italian, Benoît sounds French, so I guess Beat is a Swiss-German name?

In fact, it is! As their website says: “Sergio from Ticino, French-Swiss Benoît and German-Swiss Beat are the three friendly faces of the new SBB leisure time campaign.” And according to Wikipedia: Beat is pronounced BEH-awe-t. It derives from the Latin beatusmaximus. It is not popular in the rest of the German-speaking world. It is popular in Switzerland because of Beatus of Lungern, the Apostle of Switzerland. I’m not sure if Sergio or Benoît have similarly specific Swiss-French or Ticinese connotations.

Anyway, we’ve been seeing billboards featuring this trio and Jackie saw a video online of them playing in the snow, advertising the railways’ winter deals. The concept is that the three are testing out different deals offered by the train company, and the ads feature them in a variety of settings, including train travel on your birthday with the “Happy Birthday travelpass”:

The first video is now gone, it seems, which is too bad (when I finish this post I’m going to use their comment form to ask them to put it back online.) But another video featuring them in a museum is online. watch it here:

There’s a form setup so you can be alerted by text message when a new ad becomes available. Jackie signed me up, so I’ll be sure to let you know.

Hinei rakevet, shmistovevet, al galgalim al galgalim al galgalim toot toot! (Here is a train that goes around on wheels on wheels on wheels toot toot!)

That is my favorite (hah! not!) song from Camp Harlam song sessions (see 6:45 pm…and while I am no Rachel, I did have 4 Rachels in a bunk of 14 girls one summer).  I think of this song often these days because I spend an awful lot of my time on trains—at least 6 hours total per week, not including buses, trams, sidewalks, train stations, and the other trappings of a frequent commute.  Ah, the SBB-CFF-FFS.

Many people have heard me complain about my commute, but not on the blog.  In general, I find it impossible to work on the trains.  What with frequent stops, overcrowding, lack of tables, 4-seats-to-a-pod seating style, young male soldiers hanging about in uniform, cell phone and otherwise loud chatter, ipod headphones blaring, and various munching, it is incredibly difficult to focus and find a comfortable position for reading academic articles.  Yet, if I don’t use that time in a productive way, I tend to just feel guilty about it.  I envy those without commutes, but I also envy commuters who can relax to a newspaper/ipod/novel and don’t have to balance their lunchboxes on top of heavy backpacks on top of their legs on top of their coats.  Swiss public transport is excellent as compared with other poor systems, but there is still plenty of room for improvement, particularly on the Geneva-Lausanne line, which is infamous for its delays and overcrowding.

I was inspired to write this post today because on my way to class this afternoon, I observed a man struggling with the train ride as much as I often do.  The problem? The door at the end of the car wasn’t closing automatically, so every time someone walked between cars or the train stopped to let on/off passengers, the door would be left open, and it would be noisy and cold.  This man, sitting a few pods away from the door, kept standing up to close it, immediately after which, someone would enter anew and leave it open.  Finally, he gave up and moved to another car.  I completely sympathized.  I myself have moved cars because of non-functioning automatic doors, and I have agonized over if it is incredibly rude to change seats when someone sits down next to me with their ipod headphones acting like boomboxes more than headphones.  However, I did not share this frustration with the man today, as I had my earplugs with me, so I popped them in, and all was quieter with the world.

While I haven’t gotten anywhere close to conquering my commute, there are some things I have learned which can make it a bit better.  So for those of you out there who face similar commutes of your own or who think it might be amusing to read what ridiculous things I think about every time I get on a train, here are some tips for dealing with a commute on the SBB: Continue Reading »