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2 Stories for Yom Kippur: Unexpected Bus Magic

/ IlanaB / Leave a comment

I don’t know how it is where you are, but in Israel most buses have several places where seats face each other. I’m not sure if there is a special name for them. Quad-seats? There are usually two quad-seats in the front reserved for the elderly, and in the newer bus designs, there are several more in the back.

This past week I saw two episodes of Unexpected Magic. (To be honest, I wanted to write something optimistic. I mean, sheesh, are we going to have a government in Israel or a third election in a year? But I digress.)

On the Eve of Rosh Hashana

The #15 bus is crammed with people and their suitcases. Everyone needs to catch the last bus to wherever they’re going for the long holiday. After squeezing my way through the crowds, I find some breathing room at the back and a good place to stand. A few stops later, a seat opens up, and I’m all set.

At the next stop, a kid – 17-18 years old – gets on, and he looks rough. Not dirty exactly, but massively torn jeans, pierced nose, hair shaved on the sides of his head in a kind of messy, flat, dishwater blonde mohawk. He asks the older lady if he could sit by the window, but she points to her giant suitcase taking up two seats facing each other, plus her and another guy in the quad-seat. What could she do? He mumbles, “Why did you even put it there?” I can hear he has a slight Russian accent (maybe Ukrainian). I hope this isn’t the start of something unpleasant.

I see this kid take the suitcase – one-handed – from its perch on two seats, everyone shuffles around and the suitcase is now in the aisle. He takes his seat, pulls out the handle of the suitcase, and sticks his arm through it so it won’t roll away. Then he pulls out a pair of Chinese Medicine Balls and starts a calming clockwise rotation.

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I know what they are because I have a set too

The lady asks what they are and he answers that they are a tool to help him stop smoking.

“Oh, but you’re so young! It’s good that you’re stopping now.”

“Yeah, I have this great doctor and he recommended them. They help a lot.”

And the conversation continues from there for a good ten minutes until the end of the ride. He was quite respectful and she was genuinely curious.  It was the best way to ride into Rosh Hashana – the New Year.

And yes, he took her giant suitcase off the bus for her.

Morning Commute

The morning commute is filled with people ignoring each other by being deeply interested in their phones. This morning, there is a woman in the quad-seat at the back of the bus on her own. No one would sit next to her. She looks hostile, and at one point, she jumps out of her seat to open the window and use her newspaper to swat the seats in front of her.

At one stop, as the bus gets more crowded, a woman makes a move to sit in the nearly empty quad-seat, gives the woman sitting there one look, and moves to another seat.

Everyone gives the hostile woman and this quad-seat a wide berth. Mentally ill? Drugs? We don’t know and all we are interested in is our phones.

Then a Haredi lady gets on the bus trying to wrangle two kids (they look like twins about 3-4 years old), she has a baby in a carriage that needs to get strapped into the carriage area. And all this has to happen on a moving bus.

The only seats available are in the quad-seat.

She hasn’t seen all that happened before, so she directs her kids to the back-facing seats. And the woman everyone has avoided carefully picks up each kid and puts them into the seats. When the slightly stressed mother carrying her infant comes to join her kids, the woman moves to the window seat, shuts her eyes and leans hard into the window. But the Haredi mother thanks her, blesses her, and tells her what a big help she is. The poor woman, who is probably not well, has a hard time with this, but knows she did the right thing.

What I Learned

If you look, you’ll find beautiful things happening all around you. You just have to pay attention and celebrate the Unexpected Magic that presents itself to you.

Headlines are just click bait. What really matters is the everyday encounters that remind us the world is not all that bad.

And that is a great way to start the Jewish New Year! May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life!

Something to make me smile – Ethiopian Women Bus Drivers

/ IlanaB / 1 Comment

In some ways, Israel is quite progressive in gender equality. And in many other ways, Israel is still in the Dark Ages.

Bus driver was one of those jobs in Israel that was always done by a man. Ethnicity didn’t seem to matter, but it was always a man. I don’t know if it’s related, but bus drivers are notoriously aggressive drivers. I was once on a bus – a double-length bus with an accordion middle junction – on a two-lane street. The car ahead of this bus was annoying the driver and in spite of the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the bus somehow passed the car. There may have been some popping up on the curb and shouting back and forth, but I cannot really explain how it was physically possible for a double-length bus filled with people to maneuver in traffic like a two-seat roadster.

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A few years ago, I noticed that things were starting to change. I saw more Arab drivers, still men though. And then I saw a woman driver.  And then I noticed more women drivers, even Arab women drivers. Women drivers are still pretty rare to see, but I get very happy when I see them. Is our sexist country finally starting to change a little bit?

I have to say that I’m happiest when I see an Ethiopian woman driver.

When you examine the social strata of Israel, I think the group with the most obstacles facing them is Ethiopian women.

They face blatant racism. There are plenty of rabbis in the rabbanut (the religious authority in Israel) who do not accept Ethiopians as properly Jewish and require that they go through a formal, Orthodox conversion.

The Ethiopian struggle to come to Israel is awe-inspiring. Some were brought in emergency airlifts having never seen a plane before. Some walked the whole way facing hunger, thirst, natural dangers, and human dangers. They faced unimaginable odds and obstacles at every turn. And many thousands died along the way.

Some Ethiopians face a cultural gap – in some cases a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon. Can you imagine living in an African village, more or less self-sufficient in your community, and then you arrive in a place that is technologically a hundred years more advanced? Once you didn’t need to read and write, and then suddenly everyone is asking you to fill out a form in a foreign language?

It’s a sad fact that some older Ethiopian men haven’t adjusted to life in Israel very well. They come to Israel and because they don’t succeed in society, they feel emasculated. And their frustration gets taken out on their families, especially wives.

But then you see her, a petite Ethiopian woman – the steering wheel of the bus is nearly the entire length of her arm – and she’s maneuvering this monster vehicle in the crazy traffic of rush hour Jerusalem and dealing with impatient, hot, frustrated passengers.

Imagine a two-lane road with cars parked with two wheels on the sidewalk (yep, that’s legal parking) along both sides and both lanes are bumper-to-bumper. Now you have some idiot who parked their car badly and it’s sticking out in the street blocking part of the lane. You’re the bus driver who has to get this huge vehicle through an even smaller space than usual.

It just so happened that in the opposite lane was a bus from a bus-driving school with an instructor and a student driver. As our Ethiopian woman driver perfectly executed the right moves to get the bus through the narrow gap left to her without touching any other cars, she got cheers and fist pumps from the instructor and student in the other bus and a murmur of approval from the passengers who could see what was going on.

And in that moment, she was on top based on her own skill, her own merits, and her own grit in getting things done. It was a beautiful thing to see!

(And I was much more forgiving when she nearly missed my stop, which was right after this little drama.)

 

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/ IlanaB / 5 Comments

Since I moved to a new neighborhood, I’ve been taking the bus more often instead of walking. It’s unfortunately very convenient when I’m late, hot, tired, or feeling just plain lazy.

Sometimes I feel the crush of humanity and I regret getting on the bus, so I get off to walk because it’s just too crowded, uncomfortable, hot, and weird.

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Sometimes everyone has their own double seat and we can all comfortably ignore each other.

Sometimes it’s entertaining to just people-watch.

One guy was standing in the area reserved for wheelchairs. In Israel, you are more likely to see moms with their strollers using the space. A stroller was parked practically on his feet and he still didn’t move. Not until the mom very loudly said, “EXCUSE ME!” “Oh, sorry, sorry…I didn’t see you,” he muttered as he shuffled away focused on his phone.

Teenagers are plugged into their music (I’m guessing; they aren’t bobbing their heads or dancing to the beat of an unheard drummer).

Perfectly made-up Barbie-doll Russian women are softly talking business on their hands-free Bluetooth devices, covering their mouths so that you can’t hear them.

An Israeli man with a white knitted kippa covering his graying hair is shouting on his phone that there is no way, no how, no conceivable possibility that he would ever agree, and he’s willing to say that to whomever’s face any time, any day. “Mo-o-om, I’m telling you, you tell him I said so!”

Four religious Australian teens are talking about getting high (in English, as if no one else understands them).

There are moments when we are all in it together.

The bus driver slams on his brakes nearly rear-ending someone. All the passengers, many of us standing, are hanging on for dear life hoping not to fly through the windows. We all nervously laugh together and mumble our agreement when a few people voice their criticisms.

At the top of the hour, the bus driver turns up the radio really loudly so that everyone can hear the news.

One bus driver seemed to have forgotten the bus route. The first time he nearly took a wrong turn, he was startled in time when half the bus yelled, “DRIVER!” After most of the bus passengers yelled “DRIVER!” again to avoid the second wrong turn, he actually had to back up to take the correct turn. Cue the mumbling among ourselves about what the heck is wrong with this guy and we need to get off this crazy bus asap.

Once in a while, something nice happens.

My friend was visiting from Costa Rica and texted me that she was on the bus on the way to my house. My plan was to get home before her, so I flew out of the office to catch the next bus home.

As I clambered onto the bus to pay my fare, I looked down the center aisle to see if my friend was on this bus. I heard someone call my name and from among the sea of faces on the crowded bus, there she was!

We haven’t seen each other in 17 years, but we recognized each other immediately. And in that moment, it was as if no time had passed.

And to paraphrase Confucius: Is it not a pleasure to meet friends from afar, even if it’s on a bus?

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In transit 2 – The joys of Berlin’s public transportation system

/ IlanaB / 1 Comment

After five days in Berlin, I felt like a public transportation ninja, mistress of all trains, trams, and buses, conqueress of the Bahns. I didn’t need to follow my blue dot on Google Maps. I’m clever and experienced. I’m practically a Berliner!

Or not.

I went to Berlin to take an abdominal massage course and I can personally attest to the mental relaxation that this massage gives you. I had transported myself across the city for the past three days using various forms of transportation and felt like I had a handle on all of them. I could not have been more wrong, but I blame the mental relaxation of the massage course. On the plus side, I was so relaxed, I didn’t get upset or nervous.

I chatted with a new friend after class and was closer to the tram than the subway, so I decided I would go home by tram and bus today. It was a little rainy and already dark, but since I took the subway in the morning, I’d just add some tram-bus variety to spice things up a bit.

The tram came and I got off two stops later and realized that it was the subway that dropped me off in Alexanderplatz in two stops not the tram. Oh, well. I hopped on the next tram a few minutes later and went on to Alexanderplatz.

I looked around and didn’t see my bus stop. Hmm. Now it’s starting to rain. Well, since I’ve already made one mistake, maybe I’ll pull out my phone and look at Google Maps for a second. Ok. Walk two minutes. Here it is. Next M48 is in 13 minutes according to the real-time updated digital screen at the stop. Whatever. I’m in the bus shelter with all these other Berliners and I’ll read this article on my phone, just like them.

Several Bus 100s come by, quite a few 200s, one or two airport buses, a couple of M85s. What the heck! I check the digital screen. The M48s keep getting pushed down the list. I check my watch. It’s been a half an hour!! (To be fair it was an interesting article.) Fine. Now it’s not raining and I know that the subway station is nearby. I’ve already wasted 30 minutes on a bus that wasn’t coming.

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I get to the subway station and I think to myself, “I’ve been here before. I need the train on the left track.” It’s packed so I miss the first one. I get on the next one and take a seat and continue reading my article. A few minutes later it occurs to me that I should check the names of the stations as they go by. I turn my head and, just as the doors are closing, I see the name of the subway stop for my school.

I am an idiot.

I get off at the next stop, cross the platform to the train going the opposite direction, and commit to riding this train all the way to my stop. I confirm by checking the stops as we go along that I am finally going the right direction. I feel silly as we pass Alexanderplatz.

Then I realize that I haven’t checked my travel plan for getting to the restaurant where I’m meeting a friend for dinner. Ah, it’s a two-line subway trip. I see that the transfer station is an M-O-umlaut station. I look up and I see that we are at an M-O-umlaut station and I get off thinking that I could transfer here to get to the line that takes me closer to where I’m staying.

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Of course, it’s not this station. As if there is only one M-O-umlaut station in all of Berlin. Not only that, if my brain had actually been functional, I would have known that this transfer wouldn’t work, otherwise, I would have taken this route to the school in the first place. Why walk 10 minutes to another subway station in the freezing cold if this one would be more convenient?

I am an idiot, but I’m just about to start hysterically laughing because this trip home has now reached the level of the circus of the absurd, starring me. (In an alternate version of this story, this would be masterful spy craft. No one would be able to follow this circuitous route!)

I get on the next train and totally commit myself to staying on it till my stop and also to not missing it. I arrive and walk home.

Now I only have a half an hour to drop off my stuff and get ready to go out for another half-hour trip on the subway. I’ve learned my lesson now: Google Maps, carefully assure myself that my blue dot is following the path, and do not wander.

I go to my subway station. Good. The train is coming in four minutes. And right then an announcement: the train is delayed. Internal hysterical laughter. Of course the train is late!

Google Maps gives me an alternate route. Out to the street again and the M85 is on the way. I will not wait for the inconsistent and betraying M48! I make it to the subway and I’m on the way with no more problems.

On the way home after dinner, some young drunk people get on the train and serenade the crowd with The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” followed by A Flock of Seagull’s “And I Ran.” And that seemed like the perfect end to my transit adventures.

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Thank you for reading my blog and

joining me on this writing journey!