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Signs in Switzerland
Sometimes we don’t all speak the same language so hand gestures and signs are necessary to be understood. Europe is a cultural melting pot especially with its borders dissolving. On the metro you can eavesdrop on ten different conversations in ten different languages, that is if you speak ten languages. Switzerland has four official languages, German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Spain has five!
The powers that be recently got together and decided that the signs inside Zurich public transportation were unacceptably lacking in humor, stereotypes, and surrealism. Much to my delight, they fixed all three problems at once, making tram rides a lot more entertaining.. Pictures are worth a thousand words. In all languages. Care to guess what the following diagrams are trying to tell us?
Before you go out and buy a sombrero and a hand saw to bring on your next trip to Zurich, It may help if I explain that in the German-speaking world, a red circle around something means "no". Yes, it would be clearer if they went a step further and put the slash that the rest of the world understands to mean something is forbidden, but then it wouldn't be nearly as fun to guess at the meanings of these things.
My thanks to my friend Julie who sent me these photos ahead of our road trip to Switzerland next week. She’s taking a poll on what the signs meanings on her blog, This non-American Life . Now where should I pack my hand saw?
