I’ve never been to Singapore so can’t comment first
hand on its legendary cleanliness but even if true it’s just an overgrown city
so how hard can it be? Especially when
you’re allowed to whip people to achieve the goal. Switzerland manages its spotlessness without
the threat of caning because it’s cultural.
With the exception of cigarette butts, people don’t litter. And they clean up after their dogs too. But being free of trash is just the
beginning. You’ve heard the term,
“squeaky clean”? Here, this refers to
the floors in parking garages where your tires literally squeak when driving in
them. There’s a lovely area near our
home where people go to stroll in the countryside. These paths crisscross between the fields of
pumpkins, corn, rapeseed and other crops.
On a regular basis a Gemeinde worker cruises up and down them driving a
small street sweeper to clean up the agricultural detritus that’s landed
there. Wouldn’t want to step in horse
manure out there amongst the cows, would you?
This attention to Sauberkeit extends even to road kill. In the US, these carcasses often remain on
the road past the point of being picked clean by scavengers to when the
elements have reduced them to a pile of dried out, bleached bones. Never happen here. I wonder if these poor animals are always
even yet fully dead before being removed.
There is one three day period each year, however, when the Swiss litter
gloriously, at least here in Basel. It’s
Fasnacht, the Basel equivalent of Carnival or Mardi Gras. I think it’s because there is so much
confetti strewn around that if you drop trash on the street it just sinks into
this strata of Räppli, disappearing from view.
It doesn’t matter though because at the end of the three days, the
clean-up elves come out and miraculously vacuum the city clean so that by Thursday
morning it’s as though Fasnacht never happened.
You have more confetti stuck in the cuffs of your pants or hiding in the
pockets of your coat than there is remaining on the streets of Basel.
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