So riding Chicago's Blue Line down to the "Loop" this afternoon I was reminded I have this great love of public transportation. Truly. I can't sing its praises enough. It's cheap; it's easy enough to figure out; it's a wonderful way to see the city. It comes with timetables, more often than not, and maps. With colors.
Busses, trains, subways -- the phenomenon doesn't extend to aircraft, for some reason. Maybe because I hate airports and deplore their general inability to represent their city with more than a Chiles Restaurant and a Hudson News. (Try getting off a flight from Seattle to Atlanta and walking -- in Atlanta! -- right up to a "Seattle's Best Coffee" storefront.) I put up with aircraft for their ability to get me places fast. But if it runs on tracks, Oh my goodness...
The love affair is a collage of moments, from getting off a New York City subway and buying a skirt on the way to visit Fordham's Rose Hill campus, to reading The Brothers Karamazov by early morning light on the LINK intercity route between Wenatchee and Chelan, to eye contact with a stranger on the train out from Paris to Versailles, to a late evening run from Pike Place Public Market to the Sea-Tac airport, laden with used paperbacks from Lamplight Books.
So it was fun to run across this passage, recently, scrawled in my journal: "What I really need is to meet someone who (1) will get as excited at new cities as I do, and (2) will shyly suggest, almost right off, "Do you think...they have a train?"
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I loved riding the rails when I lived in Italy... took the train on weekends up into Germany through Swtzerland just for the ride; beautiful! Love the Metro in Rome the best... each stop is like a while different perspective of the city. I have stored vignettes in my mind that are sorted by the train stops.
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