riding on the metro

part of the deal in living in a major city in europe is the public transportation. and part of the gig with public transportation is just that...it's public. everyone uses it.

here in prague the normal system of subway trains, trams and buses shuts down at midnight, at which time the night system of buses and trams takes over. i've seen some gnarly things on night trams, including a major fight between a drunk guy and his equally intoxicated girlfriend. all i have to say about that is this: the foley artists (guys who do sound effects for TV and movies) make fist-to-flesh sound a lot cooler than it actually does; AND i do everything i can to avoid night trams.

so the really drunk folks--the ones who didn't quite make it to the last metro--use the night system to drag their butts home. and the ones who got an early start (say, 10am) grab the last metro.

praguers are notoriously private on public transportation. self-preservation from communist times, or so i hear. you can find the random person who makes eye-contact in a non-staring kind of way (the more pervasive, cold, dead-eyes kind of thing) but it's usually within the context of admiring a cooing baby or wiggly puppy. my own self-preservation comes in the form of my ipod and phone, which is conveniently equipped with a monopoly game i've gotten pretty good at (it's the british version: anyone else know the british boardwalk?).

then there are the drunks. i have pictures on my phone of men sprawled out on the pleather seats--the men who probably are awakened at the last stop by the train operator and forced to walk home or sleep it off on a bench outside the station. then there are the ones who are drunk enough to be obnoxious, but not so drunk they are already asleep. like tonight, for example.

a couple stops into my 25-minute journey home i noticed a man pacing the car. this is pretty unusual in itself, but this guy had the added charm of carrying a full bottle (unopened) of cheap czech rum, a cloth sack over his shoulder full of bottles of beer (probably full as well--i couldn't hear the clinks thanks to the aforementioned ipod), and various wildflowers draped over his person. my drunk alert became heightened immediately. i've seen plenty of drunks become unstable when the train brakes for a stop and go sailing into the unwelcome laps of those who just enjoyed a night at the opera. that was not going to be me. my section of the car was pretty full of people. mostly men. a single woman across from me and a well-dressed couple next to her. i allowed myself a grin as the drunk moved past me into another part of the car and noticed that one of the men across and down from me was sharing my amusement. i might be on alert but i can laugh at someone else's idiocy!

as i watched the drunk weave unsteadily away from me i witnessed another not-unheard-of sight. a young man seated two sections from me suddenly lurched forward and puked onto the floor (i couldn't see much of the actually event thanks to the woman seated in the section between us). immediately the women near him grimaced and got up with their male companions to stand near the next door down. but he wasn't done. nope. he puked at least twice more. once i heard the splash (must have been between songs) and so, finally, did the couple across from me. the woman hid her head in her man's shoulder for a few stops.

the wanderer stopped in front of the sickie and kindly offered him a swig of his rum, which the puker wisely waved off. he spent the rest of his ride looking a little green. i was thankful for a) sitting on the same side as him with b) the woman's lap in the way so i didn't have to see the puddle in front of him; i sometimes sense that i could become a sympathy puker.

and then the drunk made his way back down to my end. i stared at my phone as if my game was the most interesting thing on earth and hoped he wouldn't talk to me and force me to tell him off: foreign accents in czech just cause interest among the belligerent. he offered his now-open rum to the woman across from me, who did her best to ignore him. so he moved down to the couple, who likewise refused. he must have touched the dress coat on the man because his companion made a great show of brushing it off repeatedly. he then went to the other woman (oh yeah, then i noticed another one) next to the man with the dress coat. she turned down his offer, which prompted him to get down on his hands and knees before her. i couldn't quite see what he was doing but she tried valiantly to ignore him at this point and didn't quite succeed. somehow being on all fours didn't provide him the balance i would have expected, and he sprawled on the floor, his bottle nearly rolling away, when the train braked at the stop before mine. when the train started moving again he got to his feet and offered the rum to me on his way to the doorway, which i ignored intensely.

here's where things got really tricky. my stop is very popular and i realized we might all be exiting together--which means anything could happen. sure enough, the wanderer stayed in the doorway nearest me and the puker rose to his feet at the next door as the train slowed, slipping in his puddle as he did so. i shot out of the seat and waited for the doors to open, turning my back on both of them. as the doors opened i felt someone bump into my back. F---! i said loudly (ok, go ahead and judge me, but first consider what you would have said if you thought that the guy who just slid in his own vomit had crashed into you), which, as predicted, sparked curiosity. i saw that it was only the wandering drunk, who immediately repeated the word with mounting interest. i didn't wait around to see where he was going and sped up the steps, muttering to myself about the ridiculousness of this country all the way from the exit doors, across the street and to my door.

it feels so good to share this with you. i have not imbellished anything, either. why would i when the story is this good?

it made me reflect, though, on how everyone gets to witness everyone else's crap when you're all stuck on public together but maybe suffering through rather harmless drunks on the metro is better than the alternative. in the U.S. the wanderer would probably have crashed his car into a tree and the puker would have gotten it all over himself and the friend who was kind enough to drive him home if he didn't pass out on the floor and then choke on it. this way, the vomit puddle stayed on the floor of the metro and, even though it got tracked through the whole car thanks to the wanderer, a metro employee will hose it down, everyone will get home relatively safely--home being a term i use loosely enough to possibly mean the vestibule of one's apartment building, and tomorrow night they'll be back at it.