Every morning I wake up and mentally pump myself up for another day of pushing two kids around the city in a stroller. In the beginning I was doing a lot of walking and pushing up and down the hilly winding streets of Lausanne. After my back and feet began screaming at me every night I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to master the public transportation system. As of now, I've hardly mastered it, but we can definitely get around, and my feet thank me every night!
The long and short of it is, that Lausanne has an amazing public transportation system composed of a metro and tons of CLEAN trolley buses, and this town is hilly so it's nice to pop onto a bus to get where you want to go!
The buses are all stroller/wheelchair accessible and people are very nice and do their best to make room for strollers and elderly people. Almost daily I see the young giving their seats to older people or mothers with small children.
The people here are so respectful and kind. When I ride with the kids I'm nearly always flying solo, so I have a general rule that they both stay in the stroller if it's a short ride. This makes our bus exit much faster, it can get a little dicey if people are out of the stroller.. If the ride is on the longer side and the bus isn't crowded the kids LOVE to sit in the seats and look out, and I love to see the city through their eyes, so many diggers.
The buses are also great because I usually get a chance to practice my French while riding. Our stroller is a double with one seat on top of the other, and people always double take when they see us. It's so funny, people will usually look at the small child in front and smile at her adorableness, then look down below and start cracking up at the giant child crammed into the bottom of the stroller. This always leads to questions (in french) for me. Usually I can answer with large smiles and many hand gestures, and sometimes if I'm lucky the inquisitor will bust out in perfect English. The kids usually make up for my poor French by smiling and flirting with whoever we're speaking to. Win win, the bus rides go by fast when the kids are entertained.
I have a great little app for my phone that tells the exact time the bus will arrive at any stop, and the Swiss do not mess around with timing. The buses are always on time and if I miss my preferred bus, another one is always close behind.
The Swiss think of everything! A few weeks ago I met a friend at the pool for an afternoon swim, and as the kids and I were waiting at the bus stop people just kept coming, the pool had just closed and everyone was busing home. I have to say, I was nervous… it was around dinner time and we had already eaten all our snacks… I thought for sure we'd have to wait for the second or third bus to come along. I was wrong! Up rolled a giant two carriage EMPTY bus and everyone got on with no problem, there were seats for everyone. Like I said, the Swiss think of everything.
*The above "tiniest map in the world" is from here-
http://arpc167.epfl.ch/alice/WP_UEE/?author=10
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