Hilarious Signs Inside Zurich’s Street Trams That Made Me Laugh

The City’s Transportation Has More Personality Than You’d Expect

One of my favorite parts of traveling isn’t always the famous landmarks. Sometimes it’s the little things that catch you completely by surprise. On a Zurich street tram, I found a series of official signs that had me laughing the entire ride—and years later, they still make me smile.

One of the joys of traveling is reading the signs in a different city or country, and I often find hilarious ones.

And of those, the funniest are the ones in public places put there by officials, rather than, say, a bar or restaurant. That is because these official signs catch me off guard; after all, you expect governments to be rather boring in their approach to things so when I see a funny one I can’t stop laughing.

A particular favorite example is on the street trams in Zurich, Switzerland. Now some people think the Swiss are a boring people but these are definite examples that proves that stereotype to be all wrong. Most transit systems communicate rules with dull stick figures and endless warnings. Zurich somehow turned them into little works of accidental comedy.

Each are stick drawings, like something a schoolchild might draw, which makes them even more hilarious, because they are showing you things you can’t do on the tram, which means they are to be taken seriously. But how can you take something like this seriously!?

They have red circles around them but no line through the circle. Below is an explanation – in Swiss, of course, which I can’t read – tho I could make out one word: “verboten,”

Oh, and by the way, I think these signs are great.

One has a guy in a seat with a huge cloud of smoke in his head and another passenger seated behind him.

Another one has a guy playing a guitar.

One I cannot begin to understand shows a guy taking a saw to a seat. Is this really a problem on trams? In New York City, perhaps, but surely not in Zurich!

My favorite is the one showing a  guy with his pockets pulled out, which reminds me of that old joke us boys told girls as teenagers: “ever kiss a rabbit between the ears!?”

I would love for someone from Zurich transportation to comment here to explain these signs, the reason behind posting them and also the reaction to them. My travel partner, a fellow travel writer Selina, laughed the whole 15-minute trip we took on the tram when we saw them.

Well done Zurich transportation!

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The Nightlife Blogger is the bar columnist for PubClub.com, is an award-winning journalist and expert who has covered destinations, events and bars for more than two decades.