I left work early to go home to run an errand. There was an old lady waiting at the EPFL Parc Scientifique bus stop, with a huge suitcase in tow. When the bus came to a stop, I helped her with her suitcase and went to find a seat. About 5 minutes into the ride, the lady – who was sitting about halfway back in the bus – starts yelling at the bus driver that she doesn’t have a ticket and wants to buy one. The driver asks the lady to come forward because she can’t hear her properly. That’s when things went downhill :) The old gal turned into a proper crazy old lady. Haven’t seen the level of crazy in a looking time! She started talking about herself in the 3rd person, calling herself a whore, a thief and an idiot, ranting about disgusting dirty races who keep threatening her. She said that her ticket should cost 3.50 CHF, because she just made up the price because she can’t read or count. When the bus driver told her her ticket would only cost 2 francs, she told her to keep the money and the ticket, because some dirty immigrant was probably going to steal it from her. She’s was now ranting about how the Swiss are intelligent enough, so go UDC(*) and fuck all the strangers and their money for the EPFL. Apparently things were much better in Suisse Romande in the old days, even if you couldn’t read or write. I should take the mid-day bus more often.
As to the washing my hands thing – I noticed that she was wearing a plastic bag on her hand and was using that to lug her suitcase around… For all I know, there could have been a dismembered body in there.
(*) The UDC are the right-wing nutjobs that managed to win the anti-EU referendum that has all of the sane, senior politicians in damage-control mode.