Overkill Here and There

Oh no, they’re done it again. Replaced the ticket machine at the

railway station for the second time in surely no more than a year. Of course the instructions will be different and even more confusing. Grumble, grumble. The original machine was perfect, in my opinion. One made one either/or choice after another until one got what one wanted. Now the frequently traveled routes are indicated directly on the initial page, which means that one has to search for any other wish, like the 6-trip tickets I want to buy. Hmmmm….surely they must be here? No, let’s try this “other offers” category. Ah yes, here we go. Mission accomplished, I smile at the man waiting for the machine, who is staring at it with incomprehension. “May I help you?” I inquire. “Oh yes, please”. Together we attempt to navigate along baffling pathways until his ticket finally pops out, both of us feeling that we have accomplished a difficult task.

To add to this exasperation is the fact that the old machines seem to disappear into machine heaven rather than being installed at the bus stops outside the city. The bus that is already delayed by the construction I moaned about a while ago is held up by the passengers without 6-trip tickets or yearly passes, as they negotiate with the driver for their single-trip tickets.

OK, in all fairness I must say that it’s wonderful not to have to stand in line at the train station and a great convenience to pull out the particular 6-trip ticket one needs that day. I have a choice of 12 of them, covering every possible route that I travel, each in two versions, one for a one-hour journey and one valid for 24 hours. The system consists of zones rather than routes and one can travel by train, tram, bus or ship. Easy peasy. Really, I should not fuss. Particularly when the public transport here in Zurich is so terrific.

Of course that makes me think of the States – what sort of everyday overkill can one experience there? How about the extreme concern with germs? One hardly dares cut up a chicken without wearing surgical gloves and mask and sterilizing the instruments afterwards with bleach. Washing hands before eating was right up there with wearing gloves to church in my childhood – cleanliness of the hands coming only second to Godliness. The daily shower is a must. Packaged hand wipes are as ubiquitous as paper handkerchiefs. I was shocked when we came to Switzerland to find tarts with a custard filling sitting about at room temperature waiting to be sold at the shop or eaten in friends’ kitchens. Surely we would all come down with food poisoning? No, everyone seems fine. The “suspicion that typhoid lurks in every corner”, as I once read, is alive and well in the States.

Of course now that CAFOs are a fact of American life and packaged salad is shipped from one end of the country to the other, there is reason to worry about food poisoning. The lack of hygiene in factory farms and meat-packing plants is closer to that portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” than we would like to think. Not typhoid, but E. coli do lurk in many corners.

I think I’ll take the confusing ticket machines instead.