[PRCo] Re: Russian___PCCs

[Fred Schneider]

As in Switzerland, Boris?   I should become a member of  
Berntourist.   I cannot think of a more user friendly country ...   
the term service industry means "service"  and in a minimum of four  
languages (German, French, English, Italian and in the more expensive  
hotels you can add a few more languages).   I doubt that you could go  
into any restaurant or store and not find some one who could serve  
you in English.   The 'official guide' to trains and post buses is  
about the size of the Manhattan phone book.   Trains do run late once  
in a while ... I do remember a 10 minute connection that became a 3  
minute dash.   But usually if the timetable reads 15:31, it will be  
moving at 15:31.

How about arriving in the Zurich Flughafen (airport) and finding a  
bahnhof (train station) in the basement with trains to destinations  
from Interlaken, Bern, Lusanne, Zurich, St. Gallen and Lindau and  
connections for all of Europe.  You can leave New York in the evening  
and be almost anywhere in Switzerland by train in time for lunch!

It is hard to put down a place where most people have an inbred  
understanding that you walk a block if needed to put a candy wrapper  
in a trash can, and that you turn off your engine while waiting at a  
long red light so as not to blow exhaust at the pedestrians, and  
where, like San Francisco, you can walk down a street in Bern or  
Zurich or Interlaken or countless other cities, turn a corner and see  
this marvelous vista of mountains or 500 year old buildings.

I'll sign off with walking out of a hotel in Zurich on a snowy  
evening in January several years ago.   Time was about 18:10 ---  
18:20.   People were going home from the work day.   The snow was  
muting the noises.  Yet there were thousands of people streaming  
toward the car stops and the train station.   And in the midst of it  
all a Fuchs-built late 1920s antique car, reconfigured as a dinner  
tram, rolled by with lamps glowing on each dinner table to pick up  
its group.

Boris has his home town ...  I have my favorite places too.


On Oct 26, 2005, at 11:15 AM, Boris Cefer wrote:

> And this is what makes also small countries nice.
>
> B
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 1:01 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Russian___PCCs
>
>
>
>>
>> I agree with Boris on this one.   There are thousands of those little
>> towns scattered across Europe.   We used to have them.   We don't any
>> more.
>>
>
>