Subways…!! You gotta hate ’em…!!

My dislike for the world’s subway systems, continues to grow….

Ever since I hopped on a train to take a 30 minute ride to a friend’s house south of Paris, and ended up spending three hours on a high speed Inter City Express, and a cold night on a platform in Antwerp, Belgium, trains and I have tried to steer clear of each other…!! With the possible exception of the London Underground, I try and avoid travel by train as if my life depended on it…!!

I needed to get a Chilean Sim card for my phone, and after unpacking my bags, went to see Mariana in her small reception cubicle to ask where I could obtain one…

“No problemo, ” she replied in her accented English, “You take the subway to here…” she went on, opening a street map of Santiago and making a large cross on an area some distance from the hotel…

“Wait a minute…!! Subway…?? Surely there must be a place close by I can walk to…!! Or take a taxi to…??” I replied with a slight tremor in my voice…

“Taxi is too expensive, subway is much cheaper…!! I’ll even give you my subway card…!!” she exclaimed, fishing about in her handbag and passing a blue card over to me when she found it…

“You walk three blocks, get on the subway, go one stop, then change trains here, and go three stops and then get off…!! The Emtel phone shop is just outside the station entrance…” she said, making more crosses on the map before handing it to me…

“You mean there’s also a change of trains involved…?? You gotta be kidding….!! If I’m not back by tomorrow afternoon, send the cops to look for me, will you…” I said, clutching the map to my chest while having visions of ending up somewhere in Peru…

Getting to the Emtel offices was easier enough, only because I asked an elderly guy at the station which train I should get on, and he instructed me to follow him, as he was going the same way…!! Bonus…!!

When I left the station, I carefully scanned my surroundings, determined not to the let the Train Gods mess with me this time…

The Sim card was quickly sorted, and I marched confidently back into the station, went down to the correct platform, hopped on the next available train, and starting counting backwards…. I had to go three stops to get off to retrace my steps, then catch another train and go one stop… Easy peasy…!!

Three stops later, I got off the train and found myself on a platform that I did not recognize…!! I finally found someone who could speak English (a scarce commodity in these parts it would seem…!!), unfolded my map and stabbed a trembling finger at the place I was supposed to be at…

“Are we here now…??” I asked…

The guy squinted at the map, and then unfolded it even further….

“No Senhor, we are here…!! You have gone in the opposite direction to where you wanted to go…!! Now you must go down to that platform, and count six stations and then get off…!!”

I smiled thinly at him…, “Six stations and then get off, huh…?? That platform over there…??”

“Yes Senhor..!!”

I hurried down to the platform just as a train was pulling in… There was no time to ask anybody if this was the right train, which I sorely wanted to do… The train was jam-packed with late afternoon commuters, and I could not get close enough to read the route maps on the walls… All the announcements were in Spanish, and the only part I could understand was the “keep clear of the doors” one…

I counted six underground stations and then jumped off the train… And that is how I came to be TWELVE stations from where I was supposed to be…!! Fortunately, I was only one stop from the end of the line, so I could not have made much more of a blunder… There would not be a short and unplanned trip to Peru after all…!!

I crossed the platform got onto the next train and twelve stops later I was back at the station I needed to change trains at, and decided that I would not be taking any more unscheduled trips in the wrong direction… I struggled to find anybody who could speak English, to give me a confident answer to my inquiries… Finally, I saw a policeman loitering with intent near a large column, and hurried over to ask for his help…

“Por favor, Senhor…” I began, using three of the ten Spanish words I knew… “I need to get here…!!” I pointed to the station closest to my hotel, with what must have been a pleading look on my face…

“Me hablo no Eenglees….!!” was his initial reply…

“Don’t make me hurt someone…!!” was mine…

I think he understood my response well enough, because he took me by the elbow and marched me over to waiting train, then in a loud voice, seemed to give instructions to everybody in earshot, all the while jerking a thumb in my general direction… I figured by the looks of sympathy on the faces around me, that he had said something like “This idiot is lost…!! See that he gets off at the next station, before he causes an international incident…!!”

By the time the doors opened at the station where I had begun my journey, half a dozen people were practically pushing me out of the train…!! With cries of “You go…, go now…!!” and “Thees wun, Senhor…!!” ringing in my ears, I smiled broadly at my guides, and made my way up the escalators and into the sunlight…

The fact that I then had no idea where I was, was neither here nor there… I was mercifully free of trains, and that was all that counted right then…!! It took me another half hour to get back to the hotel, having had to stop and ask a number of people to check where I was…

Mariana greeted my sweating form with a wide smile, and asked, “How was your trip…?? You were gone a long time…!!”

“Yes…. The far side of the city is lovely this time of year…!!” was all I could think of saying in reply…

I handed her the subway card, and instructed her never to allow me the use of it again…!!

From now on, it was strictly taxis for me…!! Damn trains…!!

“Gi-Gi, I miss you…!! I hope you’re learning some Spanish in that bloody crate…!!”

©GBWT 2011