a polite but inane voice over the PA has already welcomed everyone on board and announced the destination: laufen. the doors start to beep and as they slide shut, he manages to sneak in, relieved. he has a moustache and wears glasses, he's not very tall. 'grüezi mitenand', he says to the people already in the carriage, who look at him a little bemused: surely the midnight train on christmas eve is not one to inspect tickets on? this is a suburban line, after all, where they only do spot-checks, occasionally.
he's carrying his little machine and what looks like a present he's been given, three miniature bottles of wine. he sits down and catches his breath. he takes from his uniform his badge and puts it in his breast pocket. the bemused passengers defrown, one manages a smile: he's off duty, on his way home.
his phone rings. he connects it to his headset and answers. 'paul! [not the real name, obviously] how are you? - no i'm fine thank you. yes, no really: i'm fine. well... there was a little altercation. - yes. - well, there were four of them, they had tickets for zones one to three, so we said to them: you can't stay on this train now, you have to get off, or buy another ticket. - it was all right, there were two of us, so it wasn't too bad: they got quite ...verbally robust, you could call it, but by the time we got to olten, we managed to convince them that they really needed a ticket, but they got off instead. so that's why we ended up with a three minute delay there. - no, no, i'm fine: thank you. i appreciate your call though, these things do shake one up a little. i hope they didn't wake you up on my account? - oh, i'm glad to hear that. - well. merry christmas to you too, goodnight!' and finally, he relaxes.
we've been to our sister's, my mum & dad and i, we sang carols, we exchanged gifts, we had dinner, it was lovely. ours is the next stop, we get off the train and step out into the snow. by now it's christmas. it's going to be a very white one. and what i'm thinking is this: everybody knows that the british railways are absolutely dreadful and the swiss railways are astonishingly brilliant. but today we've experienced a whole range of reasons why:
it's been snowing all day across the country. granted, not very hard, yet, nowhere near as hard as had been predicted, yet, but still. none of our trains, and none of our busses, on a three hour journey there, and a three hour journey back, is delayed by as much as a whisker. on the long-distance double-decker train, the little trolley, which comes through three times during the trip, carries green tea and a proper espresso machine. the ticket inspector on the mainline train back (he's so tall he almost has to walk bent double, but not quite, so as not to bump his head against the ceiling) laughs and jokes with us: 'of course the one day travel card is valid until the last train of the day, whatever time that is past midnight.' my dad wants to be sure: 'so if your colleague tries to charge us a penalty fare, we tell him that mr...' he cranes his neck and glances up at the tall young man to read his name - 'don't you worry', the young man says, 'if he doesn't know this, then he won't be a ticket inspector, haha...'
as it happens, the ticket inspector on the suburban midnight train towards laufen is off duty. but he still takes enough pride in his job to greet his fellow passengers on boarding the train. his line manager is also off duty, he might already have been in bed, though that, as it turns out, wasn't the case in this instance. he is concerned enough about his member of staff to phone him within minutes of what he knows to be his clock-off time. just to make sure. he's able to do so, because somebody else in the organisation has cared enough about their member of staff to inform him, even though he's off duty, that there has been a verbal assault. and did anybody lose their calm or call the police and threaten an arrest or issue penalties or invoke, in some random way, health & safety? clearly not. they used their common sense, and reasoned until reason prevailed. which appears to have been in olten. the cost to the system: a three minute delay. which was taken seriously enough to be logged, of course...
today is christmas. it's still snowing. the swiss trains will be running mostly on time, barring any drunken incidents, one imagines. our not very tall ticket inspector with the moustache, he'll be feeling perfectly fine. it's all been sorted. our very tall ticket inspector without the moustache will be just dandy too, he so much enjoys his job, it's hard to see how he wouldn't. and the four bores who got on a train without a valid ticket last night will probably be nursing their hangover and thinking: 'we were being real bores last night, maybe we don't need to do that again very soon.' harm done: virtually nil. order: virtually perfect. that's why the swiss railways are bliss. is there no way we can ask them to run ours for us?...
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