A PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION STORY

Although I touched on this subject before, I want to come back to it, because I've learned an important lesson...

Román and I don't have a car in Buenos Aires, so we use buses, trains, and the subway.  Although I like that I can get around without driving, the system here often tests my composure.

Today, I had a Spanish lesson, and Román tagged along so that we could have lunch together after. To get my professor's apartment, you have to take a bus for twenty-five minutes, walk for ten minutes, take the subway for fifteen minutes, and then walk for ten more minutes. As we were getting on the bus to begin the first part of the commute, I jumped on and Roman was behind me. As he was climbing on, the bus driver started to drive away. It happens everyday that drivers start to go with people hanging out the door. We believe that the drivers are on some sort of time schedule that values speed over safety, so they take off without people on the bus and speed through the streets nearly, and sometimes actually, hitting pedestrians.

So anyway, here's a summary...
Román hops along with the bus, hanging on, halfway in and halfway out.  He yells at the driver saying that he could have been killed, and I scream WTF! and then switch to my limited Spanish and try to form some sort of reprimand, but it comes out "No había espacio!"  What I mean by this is that there wasn't enough space for Román to get completely on the bus and the driver should have waited.

As I said before, this has happened to us many times, and in every case, the bus driver didn't care.  Not one of them said, "I'm sorry."  They all just screamed at us saying that we were hijos de puta and that we could go to hell.

Moving on to the subway...
All I can report for the subway today was that it was unreasonably crowded for the time that we were on it.  Yesterday, however, was a different story.  Román and I went to lunch yesterday and took the subway back.  Yesterday wasn't a very hot day at all.  It was probably in the upper 60s or lower 70s, but the subway was like a humid sauna.  We reached one of the stops on the route and an announcement said that the line was experiencing delays. Awesome.  Román and I at least had seats and our books to keep us distracted while we waited.  The car was extremely crowded though, and it was hot.  All of the sudden, while we were waiting, there was a commotion next to us.  A woman had just fainted.  People were calling for doctors, and there was a lot of drama. The woman recovered, but the train was going to be delayed another hour or so, so we got off to take a bus the rest of the way home.

Today, on our way home, we waited thirty minutes for a bus that is supposed to come every ten minutes, so we left to walk to the subway and try a different route home.  We were able to ride one stop, when the driver made everyone get off the train, because the line was experiencing delays. So, we hiked it over to another bus and were finally able to make it back to our neighborhood.

Public transportation here is loud, dirty, unreliable, and a little dangerous.  The point of this story, however, is that I should not let it affect me.  It can be just as frustrating sitting in rush-hour traffic for an hour, as it is dealing with crowds and public transit.  I've come to realize that it's not about the situation itself; it's about how I handle the situation.  Well, actually I've always known this, it's just that my public transportation experiences have helped me to put it into practice.  Regardless of how crazy my commute is, I can control my happiness, my gratitude, and many other things...like my blood pressure...by adjusting my attitude.  So, here's to the fact that I can even take a bus or a subway to get to where I need to go, and that I can afford it (unlike many less fortunate people)!  :-)