January 9, 2007

Against a stream of penguins

So far I was able to avoid the favourite, or shall I say most hated subject of Dubliners: the traffic. Its bad, I knew that, I have seen it but so far I was lucky enough to avoid the it.

I started a new job this week and now instead of travelling from my little southern suburb even further south (not the most popular direction and therefore completely bearable plus also equipped with a new tram system); I now have to cross town and head North.
I still take the nice new modern tram, but now unfortunately into town, which proves to be the far more popular direction. In fact it’s so popular that instead of jumping right onto the tram and occupying a decent standing place I will need to let a good few trams go past before I get to squeeze myself into one of the most overcrowded cabins. Soon they will need to employ someone to push people into the trams. I guess I should travel to China before complaining to much.

After this free slimming treatment my journey continues in an exciting manner. Now I need to walk through town to catch the local train. Again everyone seems to prefer the opposite direction and I have to fight my way against a stream of penguin suited men and women in nice costumes and chunky trainers on the slimmest of all sidewalks. On my first day it was raining on top of that: imagine managing thousand of people walking your way with umbrellas and then of course you also need to avoid the occasional obstacle such as a beer delivery for some bar or a heap of trash.
It proves to be a challenge.

From then on its actually fairly easy, because I seem to take the local train into the unpopular direction, once I have managed to walk up the stairs against the stream of people leaving the train I get a fairly decent standing place.

Just when I left work I thought that surely now I would be heading into the right direction…little did I know.