Berlin metro fights phone noise, but in Liepāja's tram we have different problems

Mysterious posters have appeared in Berlin's metro that quite directly urge people to turn off their phone sounds. In German it says: 'Dude, are you stupid? Turn off your phone sound,' and in Russian even more emotionally: 'Come on, show some respect, you moron!'

In Liepāja, of course, we don't have such problems. In our tram, a phone ring is the least of our worries. There you should worry about whether the car will even make it to Karosta, or if it'll just stop somewhere near Liepāja railway station, where the conductor will try to explain that 'technical problems, but the next one will be in twenty minutes.'

'I think Berlin's metro should learn from our tram,' says Liepāja resident Jānis, who has been waiting for three weeks for regular service to resume. 'There people complain about phone sounds, but our phones don't even ring — there's no signal inside the wagon!'

Interestingly, Berlin's transport company denies connection to the posters, even though they were placed with all official markings. In Riga such a thing would never happen — there they don't have the courage to do something like that because they're afraid some ministry might not understand the humor. But in Liepāja we would solve such a problem simply — put up a poster: 'Please speak more quietly about the weather, because everyone else also knows it's raining today.'

Three days later all the posters were removed, but in Liepāja such a pace would be too fast for us. Any poster replacement takes us at least a month, and it still has to be coordinated with three different committees.