Driving the bus, and other joys of public transportation

Anyone who has ever lived in a city knows that proximity to public transportation is real estate gold. Fortunately, my residence hall is literally right next to a tube station and a bus stop. The tube is generally faster, but the bus is less expensive, and I kind of like it better because my new favorite thing to do is sit in the very front seat on the upper deck of the bus and pretend to drive:

I KNOW, RIGHT? So fun.

So yesterday I was waiting for a bus at Trafalgar Square. It’s a fairly busy area with a lot of buses, but I was the only one waiting at this particular stop for a few minutes until an older couple walked up to stand with me. Generally people stand in line, but it was just the three of us so we wound up in kind of a cluster. After a few more minutes the bus pulled up, and the woman turned to me and said, “Would you like to get on first? You were standing here before us.” 

Um, what? Get thee back with thy strange manners! (I did not say that to her. I actually let her and her husband get on first because they were older and I felt weird and didn’t know what to do, and also their oldness probably meant that they weren't going to climb the stairs and sit in my driving seat.) But I was not prepared for her level of politeness. Not that I expected rudeness, but there were only three of us so it didn't occur to me that I should expect them to let me get on first.

That tends to be a thing here, though. People queue at the bus stop, at elevators, and at restaurants that are not yet open for the day. Nearly everyone waits until the little man turns green before crossing the street. At the tube stations, they will stay behind the yellow line on the platform until the train stops. And if you get to the platform and there are tons of people already waiting, you stand behind the crowd that was already there and let them get on first. Then the train pulls away and your bunch steps forward and other people get behind you. It’s very civilized, as opposed to everyone trying to crowd onto the 1 at Penn Station like it’s the last helicopter out of Vietnam. But I’ve only been here for a week so maybe I just haven’t experienced real life yet.

Another difference that I’ve noticed, mostly in the tube stations, is the absence of garbage cans, and also, weirdly, the absence of garbage. In the subway stations in Manhattan, there are garbage cans like every five feet and also what looks to be the entire contents of those cans combined all over the tracks. I haven’t been able to figure out the math behind that one yet; so far it seems like No Garbage Cans = No Garbage, while Many Garbage Cans = All The Garbage. 

I asked one of the British girls in my department about the absence of garbage cans, and she said, “Oh, do you mean bins? Yeah, that’s because the IRA were putting bombs in them in the 80s and 90s, so we don’t have them anymore.” and I was like, “That makes total sense, and incidentally I am now afraid of garbage cans.” 

But I don't want to leave you with the idea of garbage can terrorism, so instead here's a picture that I took today of a random group of Steelers fans near Covent Garden:

Apparently the NFL had an exhibition game in London today: Steelers v Vikings. Although aside from these dudes I didn't really see any team loyalty. I saw some Patriots jerseys (ironic, no?), some Bears, two Eagles, a few Green Bays, some Saints, and one lonely Cowboy. An interesting spread, if I may say so.