Sanitarpolizei, pt 2

So my train pulls into the the Zurich airport train station at 7 in the morning or some similarly ungodlily early time for someone of that age, and I stagger out, rather sweaty for having slept on Naugahyde all the long summer night with no sheets. So I look for a place to change.

A bathroom. I find one in the glimmering underground mall at the airport, so bedazzling to my young Europhile eyes. And it's a clean bathroom, you can bet, cuz its Switzerland and you know very well that they're got a middle-aged woman in a severe white nurse-like uniform collecting 50 centimes (ca. 33 c) and directing you to a stall of her choice.

So I squeeze into this exemplary toilet space, plunk down my bag and -- figuring that having paid so much money I needn't rush -- open my bag and start changing my clothes to get ready for a long transcontinental flight. I get my pants changed alright, am pulling on my shirt, when there's a knock on the stall. I ignore it. Another, accompanied by a muffled voice like the adult voice from Peanuts. Ignore. Finally, I see that the lock on the stall is being opened from outside. I'm getting mad, begin to curse. The door opens and this guy leans in with the left lapel of his clinical white smock, where there's a patch which reads: "Sanitarpolizei." He pushes the door open and I put my shirt on and push my bag out of the cell, by now cursing and livid. The Swiss stare.

What the hell was this cleanliness cop doing? At 7 am, was he so driven by a need to attest to the efficacy of the woman's stewardship that the had to check out literally every stall? Did he think I was a junky, shooting up in there? Who knows. In any case, there's only one word for it: Switzerland.