more fun with buses (and other obstacles to getting home)

A few of you may remember from my travels in Buenos Aires my daily adventures with the bus. In order to get from my apartment in the center of the city to the hospital and lab on the seedy outskirts, I had to take good ol' Number 64. The thing about 64 is that it doesn't actually say 64 anywhere on the bus, and in fact it sometimes had another number on it, but was actually bus 64. How to identify it? As someone described it, "It will be the dirty one." And indeed it was. Another thing about it was that it didn't actually stop at all the stops, you had to flag it down, and if you were not aggressive enough, or perhaps the bus driver was behind schedule, you may be left waiting for the next 64, and hour and a half later. Then there was the smell on the bus, the dirt, and the fact that if you didn't know or say clearly the fare you needed to pay, you may get yelled at by the bus driver in a Spanish accent uninterpretable to me.



So imagine my delight upon learning that there is a bus here in Tbilisi that pretty much runs from the street next to our apartment directly to the Center for AIDS in a circle all day long. Convenient! Furthermore, it costs only 20 tetri (about 12 or 14 cents) as compared with about $2, which inevitably turns into $4 or 5 by virtue of the driver never having any change to give you, for a taxi each way. Cheap! I couldn't wait to get some more international public transportation experience. Fortunately Gabe and Julian needed to go in the same direction, so we could figure it out together. We observed, found the 85 bus, got on, and paid our coin on the way out. It was actually that straightforward. Brilliant! I thought.



Until, of course, I had to take it home alone. By that time, they had literally torn up the street in front of the bus stop in front of the center so that there was no way to get from the bus shelter to the road. So I had to figure out again where to pick it up. Once that was accomplished we were on our way- until at one of the stops, the driver of a bus behind us got out, came around, and started yelling at our bus driver. Ours got out and I was sure some punches would be thrown, but it seemed that after letting off some steam, they both got back in. But it happened again at the next stop, when our driver went after the other driver who was now behind us. Of course I had no idea what was going on, but after another few minutes of yelling, the both got back in and I got home safely.



But not home free yet... A charming characteristic of our apartment is that it has 3 locks on the door and it is almost impossible (for me) to open. There is a very specific motion you have to go through that involves turning the key and handle simultaneously while pulling the door our and pushing it in in one smooth motion. I had practiced it no less than 50 times with about a 4% success rate, but I had always been with others or they had been inside to let me in. Not this time. So I walked toward the apartment trying to psych myself up. I mounted the stairs, approaching the door as if it were my enemy and I would defeat it! I got it open on the third try. Success all around.



Oh yeah and the other part of my day was that I was actually at work between all this riding of buses and defeating of doors. It was interesting too.