The Portuguese Transportation Curse Continues

3.14.07

The title of this post refers to what plagued me my entire two years in Portugal. If something could go wrong on public transport, you better believe I'd be in the middle of the situation. I'm starting to think, nothing's changed.

Twice a week, I leave language school and go to a town somewhere north of Paris to practice language with some friends. The first week I did this, I went from school NORTH on the Metro to a huge train station, and then caught the train that goes to my friends' town.

Sue-Wee thought it through and figured out that we could go SOUTH on the Metro just four stops and hop a northbound train at a much smaller train station and avoid all its headaches. That's what we've been doing ever since.

Except I thought it through, and figured that going south in order to go north is causing me to take a later train...perhaps if I could somehow go north on the Metro to a different station than the big one, I could catch an earlier train.

So that's what I decided to try to do yesterday. Go north on the Metro four stops, and catch the train at Notre Dame. I made it two stops when the Metro broke down, and I had to get off, change directions, go the two stops back (southbound) to where I'd started from and four additional stops (southbound) to get to the northbound train. Which I had to RUN to catch.

I jumped onto the train just as the doors shut, only to discover I was on a car in which someone had VOMITED all over the floor. Absolutely putrid.

I visited with my friends, spoke French for so long I thought my brain might explode, and finally decided to head back home around 6:15. From my friends' town, it's only about 35 minutes, because I don't have to take the train back into town. I normally catch a tram and then a bus.

While talking to my friend at the tram stop, we noticed that the tram wasn't moving. She said goodbye and left me there to figure out what was going on. It turns out a woman was having a seizure! (No words to describe how helpless I felt at that moment.) The ambulance came, and put her in a wheelchair (not a stretcher, mind you), and carried her away.

Everyone climbed onto the tram, only (1) to discover that the seizure lady's bladder had acted of its own accord during the seizure and (2) to be told by the conductor to exit the tram. And then he drove away.

And there I was, with the sun setting, in the GHETTO, tired, grumpy and bummed out for this poor lady who'd had a seizure. How do I get home? Ride the train all the way back into Paris? Walk all the way back to my friend's house and ask which bus to catch (and where) to get to my other bus? I stood there in a mild frustrated panic until another tram finally came.

I climbed onto that tram thinking that surely I'd had enough transportation mishaps this week to suffice for a lifetime, and nothing else would happen on the way home. Wrong again.

The tram conductor stopped the tram during the ride, climbed out AND WENT TO THE BUTCHER'S. I'm so not kidding.

He finally got back on, drove us away, and I got to the bus station. I have never in my life seen so many people at one bus station. A riot nearly broke out as people tried to push and shove their way onto the ONE bus that was supposed to serve all gazillion of us. As two men pushed me out of their way, and I exhaled an exasperated "arg", a woman said to me, "The giants get the priority." Grrr.

I finally got to chez moi two hours later...8:30pm. A 12+hour day.

And then this morning...I got all the way to the train station only to realize I'd forgotten my transportation pass. I walked home, got it, walked back, just to barely miss the train by a minute.