Takin' the Bus

So yesterday, I took the bus for the first time since returning to Calgary.  It brought back memories of taking the Vancouver city bus the day I returned from Mongolia – I had no idea what I was doing and felt really uncomfortable.  Questions like: Why isn’t this bus packed to capacity?  Where’s the ticket-taker who can’t speak my language?  Why is there an orderly line to get on and off?  What’s the deal with that yellow cord?  The only reason why I made it to where I was going was because I had a friend with me who was a veteran of the transit system.  This time I was saved by another person who just happened to be getting off at the same stop (I had no idea which stop it was).

I must say that I was impressed with the quality of the local buses here.  The only difference was that I wasn’t being pressed up against the window and nobody was trying to have a conversation with me in Hinglish.  In India, you usually just tell the ticket-taker where you’re going and he somehow makes sure you get there.  If worse comes to worse, you can just yell out, “BUSSSS!!!! (not to be confused with the English “bus”).  Here, you show the driver your transit pass, go sit down, and sit there in relative anonymity.  If you’re so lucky as to know when your stop is, it’s really easy by the looks of it.  Otherwise, you might just end up lost in south Calgary.