I like the way the Swiss don't seem to bother always with the second, the third or even the fourth of their languages in their country. Here in Lausanne's new Metro; the M2, you have your instructions quite clearly in French and then... English. Simple, neat, and they acknowledge that most people do speak English as a second or a third language. That should not be enough to allow the Britons to go about their business without bothering to learn another language.
These people are just taking the M2 for FUN!! Saturday and the new M2 is up and running up the hill into town and beyond and at each stop there is a musical event of some sort to inaugurate the new service...a folk group with costumes I could not identify but with most of them playing a variation of the bagpipe. Wonderful sounds of lowly laments.
And there at the Metro stop Riponne - M. Béjart, in the square outside the Musée des Beaux-Arts was an enormous stage onto which Amadou and Mariam were led - and off they went; a free concert to inaugurate a new Metro system...Brilliant. London might do as well for the Olympics in 2012
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