In Which Buses May Explode

Oh my goodness, two posts in two days! Something must be wrong in the world.

Actually, there is something wrong in the world today (my world, anyway [ooh, that sounded really bratty]). I have something to write about other than, "I sat at a desk for eight hours today wracking my brain for things to say about Israel." Today, the Madrid public transportation system was a massive failure.

Every day, I take the metro to go to work. I walk ten minutes to the nearest train station, take a twenty-minute metro ride, and then walk another five minutes to get to my work. It's like opening an umbrella or blinking: simple, right? Everything is fine and dandy until the metro workers decide to strike, and not even offer basic metro services - at least while I'm awake. I admit that I inadvertently slept in this morning, but I thought the metro would be running at 9 am.

Not so.

Instead, I had to figure out how to use the bus system under the pressure of getting to work within a reasonable amount of time. Let me just say that I don't like buses. You can use the metro to get just about anywhere in Madrid. It might take you two line changes, but it's alright. You know exactly where you're going on the metro lines. There are maps everywhere. They stop at designated, well-advertised stations. It might not be very scenic, but at least you're not stuck in traffic all the time. It's difficult to find bus stations, and then know when to get off, and before you do anything you have to worry about the direction you're going, and you don't have little signs leaping out at you saying, "Look at me! I'll show you the right way! No worries! Follow me!"

At about 9:15, I called my house-mate Magi and woke her up. I was pretty frantic, asking how to get the bus to my work and how to pay for things and how to know which bus to take. She couldn't log onto the internet to check times and buses - perhaps because everyone else was logging on to check times and buses, or the computer people at the public transportation department were also on strike - but she couldn't really help me. I got on the bus that I had taken to go to Sol a few weekends ago, and then at the Parque del Retiro, I got off, wandered around for a while and asked a few people where the nearest bus 29 station was, and then eventually - finally - thankfully - made it to work. Two hours later than I normally arrive, but the important thing was that I arrived.

No thanks to the metro.

So many people were on the buses today. For as hot and crowded as the metro can be sometimes, it's even worse on a bus.

Coming home today, I saw one bus break down. I want to think it was because there were so many people on it. Water started spewing from the end of the bus (overheating much?). On a side-note, I thought the air and steam smelled faintly of waffles. Someone must have said that the bus was leaking, because all of a sudden there was a panic and some people left the bus. Watching people exit the bus was vaguely reminiscent of watching blood flow at a cellular level: you see all these little specks rushing by on certain paths, while bigger specks just sit there. The majority of people who left the bus in a panic were young teenage girls.

This is not what the bus looked like.

Well, at least I can say I learned how to use the bus system today.

Sorry for the poor quality of this post (lo siento!), but today was a rather long day, and I didn't feel like writing this up in a word document, maybe editing it, and then posting it here, which is what I usually do.