Rideau on a Snowy Day

I grew up in an apart­ment, down­town Nantes in France. Remem­ber: this is Europe. Down­towns aren’t crack mar­kets and drive-by-shooting places — down­towns are peace­ful places where every­one wants to live (unlike sub­urbs, which are usu­ally the bad dis­tricts), only dis­turbed by the tra­di­tional weekly demon­stra­tion. This is France. There are bound to be demonstrations.

I rarely took the bus since I walked every­where. Once again, remem­ber it’s France. You can still walk to places, there are such things as streets, pedes­trian streets and squares with foun­tains in the mid­dle (they usu­ally hap­pen to be demon­stra­tions gath­er­ing point). When I was really lazy, there were a tramway cross­ing the city. Two lines: North — South, East — West. A cou­ple of stops later, I was where I wanted to be. For free, of course, cause in France, you don’t pay for pub­lic trans­porta­tion. You sneak in and don’t pay the fare, like every­one else. Each user is respon­si­ble for punch­ing his ticket (bought ahead of time) in one of the three of four ticket-puncher machines in the bus/ tramway. You can enter or exit by any door and you cer­tainly don’t have to show the dri­ver you have a ticket to hop in.

Occa­sion­ally, a bunch of dark coats men wait at the next sta­tion: tick­ets col­lec­tors. Upon see­ing them, weird things would hap­pen: peo­ple of all age would run towards the near­est doors, some would pull washed out tick­ets out their bags and pock­ets and punch them quickly, some would dis­trib­ute extra-tickets around them and the con­sen­sus would be “putain!*”.

*I’m not gonna trans­late that. Ask your near­est French person.

I then moved to Canada. In the suburb.

My sub­urb isn’t the far far away sub­urb. We even have a super­mar­ket nearby, a con­ve­nience store and the ubiq­ui­tous Tim Hor­tons around the cor­ner. It only takes min­utes to drive down­town, where I work. But I don’t always drive. Like most office work­ers (let’s face it, even though I’m a teacher, I’m just like an office worker), I take the bus to work.

Any bus trip starts with the same ques­tion: do I have tick­ets? Cause if I don’t, if — God for­bids — I for­got to buy a sheet of five tick­ets for $9.50 at the con­ve­nience store, I’m fucked. I can just hope I have $3 on me, cause the bus dri­ver doesn’t give change. And by the way, he hates it when you put your change in a change box. He usu­ally also hate when you put your ticket in the same box. He likes monthly pass better.

I used to have a monthly pass. Till they raised the price to $73. I then made the deci­sion to walk every­where down­town and only take the bus from home to work, where the same trip by feet would take me sev­eral hours. The deci­sion was sup­posed to make me richer (from the money saved), health­ier (from the walk) and thin­ner (from the walk as well). So far, I achieved none since I seem to buy more tick­ets every week and I smoke when I walk. And I notice every choco­late shop/ bak­ery on my way. Yet, I stuck to my decision.

How­ever, I still have to take the bus in the morn­ing. So, assum­ing I have tick­ets, I walk a few meters (well, really, I walk for about 10 min­utes — but a 10 min­utes walk in Canada is said to be “meters” — dis­tance are huge, ya know) to the bus stop. There are two bus stops, one on each side of the road, a real road that it takes for­ever to cross, since the green light seem to favored cars rather than walk­ing humans. One bus stop has a shel­ter. Not mine, of course. So most morn­ing, you can find me freez­ing my ass by the exper­i­men­tal farm where the cold north wind blows non-stop.

• Les­son 1: buses are always late.
• Les­son 2: dur­ing rush hours, old­est and small­est buses will be used.
• Les­son 3: still on rush hours, there have to be a few women with strollers in the bus (inevitably park­ing the stroller right by the door).

Upon enter­ing the bus, I drop my ticket in the box and then beg for my trans­fer, which, as yesterday’s bus dri­ver pointed out nicely, “I have to ask instead of stand­ing here like an idiot” (sic.). The trans­fer, a small square of the cheap­est paper ever, will usu­ally end up in one of my pocket or worse, the bot­tom of my bag, since I’m too busy mak­ing my way to the back of the bus to care. Of course it will be a strug­gle to find it later when I’ll trans­fer to the Express bus (besides, remem­ber my bag?). “Move to the back, please!”.

I’m usu­ally a nice per­son but in the bus, I show no mercy. If you and your bag or your coat take two seats, be sure I’ll move it to be able to sit down. Did I also men­tion I wasn’t a morn­ing per­son? Any­way, I need a sit cause I want to read my book. And also because the trip can take any­thing from 20 min­utes to an hour, depend­ing on the traf­fic, on the weather and on the driver’s abil­ity to run through red lights.

Buses drive me crazy. They are fast and early and I end up wan­der­ing down­town wait­ing for my classes, or they’re late… very late, usu­ally when I have an impor­tant class fist thing in the morn­ing. But I have no con­trol over it, so I usu­ally bitch silently.

Or I observe my fel­low pas­sen­gers. In North Amer­ica, you don’t take the bus, unless you’re poor, a stu­dent, old, or a mother with young kids (hubby has the car, hasn’t it?). You don’t get to see to many exec­u­tives with Black­berry in hands there… they don’t take the bus. They drive to work. Cause hon­estly, tak­ing the bus isn’t the first choice here in Canada.

Wait­ing for the bus when it’s cold can be painful: just imag­ine stand­ing for 15 min. out­side when it’s minus 20C (reg­u­lar win­ter tem­per­a­ture here…). It’s almost dan­ger­ous, to the point that if the bus isn’t com­ing soon, most peo­ple would rather walk to the near­est sta­tion than stand in the cold. In the sum­mer, there’s no AC in most buses, and tem­per­a­ture can eas­ily reach 40C with the humidex. Dis­tances are huge and cities are quite spread out. While the Express buses which runs through down­town are really quick and effi­cient, sub­urbs buses routes are not con­ve­nient and can take for­ever to reach destination.

North Amer­i­can city plan­ning isn’t very pedestrian-friendly. I used to walk to the bus in the mid­dle of the win­ter, my hands frozen and my toes numbs, mouthing very very bad words as I was trip­ping on the ice and the snow piled-up on the side­walk. On the bus shel­ter was a big government-sponsored poster: “today, treat your­self to a 30 min­utes walk!”. I wish. I love walk­ing. But cars come first here… and us, walk­ing peo­ple, don’t have many options. Inex­is­tent side­walks, no small shops but huge shop­ping malls every­where, drive-through stuffs… Nope, we come last.

Mean­while, I have to run… I have a bus to take.

Related arti­cles:

1. Ottawa Zom­bie Walk
2. Orange Walk, Cross­ing to Belize
3. Walk­ing on Thin Ice
4. Woman Seek Doctor
5. Chat­ting Is Cultural