Alphorns, Clean Needles, and Fireworks

It’s August 1st — the Swiss National Holiday — and we’re in the capital city of Bern. The lakeside park is packed with beautiful people. I follow the steady stream of bathers hiking up the river to jump in and float down — the city’s wet, urban paseo.

Even with thousands in bathing suits and under a glorious sunshine, the Swiss are subdued. The most enthusiastic expression is the happy shudder I make as I plunge into the fast-flowing river. It’s a wonderfully free float until you near the post positioned so bathers can rescue themselves from the swift current and get out. I don’t know what would happen if someone missed the post — but you paddle like mad to grab it. This was great fun for TV.

Later, in the town, the sun is low. A Turkish girl and Swiss girl drink wine out of bottle under a flower-filled fountain featuring a medieval maiden pouring water from a jug. Trolley tracks, glinting in the sun, shoot like a bottle rocket up the cobbled lane.

A listless guy sits in a shipping container converted into a bike depot. The city has sponsored a free loaner bike program to both cut car traffic and create work for the hard-to-employ.

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A threesome lies on the grass in shade of the national parliament building, passing a joint. No one cares. The new big Starbucks has a code for the toilet downstairs: 1122. Opening the door, I step into a very blue space. Blue lights make it impossible for junkies to find their veins. The last public WC I was in had a garbage box with a lid labeled “syringes.”

Down the street, I study the layered ads and labels on the coin-op dispenser. I see it was a cigarette machine, converted to a condom machine, and finally converted again to become a syringe dispenser — offering heroin addicts cheap and clean needles.

Just next to the Museum of Fine Arts, a heroin-maintenance center has a yard filled with people fighting their addictions. A steady stream of people step up to a window to get their needles. Filming that was really tricky…but extremely rewarding to bring home to the USA — a “harm-reduction” approach to drug policy. For more on this and other issues related to the European drug policy — and how it differs from ours — read this article I wrote recently for a talk I gave at an ACLU convention.

We tend to see Switzerland as so efficient and impossibly successful. But they have the same problems other countries do. Just like they opted out of the EU, and just like each of their states or “cantons” is fiercely independent, they deal with their problems their way…openly and creatively.

The city center is traffic-free except for taxis and quiet trams flying flags. The streets are filled with people, mostly young. It’s quiet enough to hear the splash of the fountains. As darkness settles, the town’s artful floodlighting becomes evident. The noise of firecrackers grows. Leaving my hotel without my camera, I knew something fun would appear. Sure enough, I came upon an open-air performance by a jazz band whose lead instrument was a long alphorn. Very cool. It would have been a fine photo bridging tradition with the present. Later I joined what seemed like half the city on the big bridge to watch the fireworks show. It was just like a Fourth of July show back home — with the same oohs and aahs for the best explosions. But the pyrotechnics were underwhelming. They’ve been celebrating the First of August since 1291…being a bit jaded would be understandable.