Rush hour

Ok, so I apologize in advance for yet another entry about the Metro, but I feel it is justified due to the large portion of my day devoted to being underground. On any given day I could be in the system for 2-3 hours, and when you consider that there are only 6 hours of daylight....well you get the point.

So rush hour. I'm sure that I've seen large crowds before, but this is different. For example, I've never seen a human jam of people waiting to get on the escalator, or to walk up the stairs. Nor have I been almost run over the amount of times that I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time....Fortunately the system is so efficient, traffic runs pretty smoothly.

I was thinking the other day about how life parallels in funny ways. I often think back to Reunion Island, and how different my time there was in comparison with Moscow. And yet, I was laughing when I saw something in the Metro. For each metro stop they usually have at least 4 escalators running during peak hours, so that everyone can get in and out. Sometimes, when there is a backup on one end, a policeman (called "militzia") will stop the flow of traffic for one escalator, which will then get stopped by and operator and run the opposite direction. Almost like opening another lane of traffic to get more people through, like they do on Reunion on the highway, so that more people going the proper direction will have more lanes to their disposition. It's pretty efficient, all things considered, although you really have to see it to believe it.

So as you can imagine, if there are backups trying to get onto escalators, the trains themselves during rush hour can be quite squished, or as my friend Valentina says, "we Russians call it morning sex." Let's try not to picture that image too much, especially depending on who you're squished next to. As my parents have always told me, in Japan they have "pushers," or hired people to shove people into trains so that they all fit. You would think that they would need the same system in Moscow, but the other day I discovered that Moscovites can be very clever, and can push themselves onto the train quite well. I even watched almost horrified but more impressed, as a man ran down the steps of the station and hurled himself into the train, jumping on top of the people, who crushed his fall just as the doors closed and the train took off. A professional crowd surfer in the making.

Fortunately this chaos is not all the time all day long. There is a lull in the afternoon, as I hop on to go to my favorite park to go jogging, further north on my line. And in the evening, right before the metro stops running at 1:30 in the morning, you have a peaceful lull, as us early party goers return home, while the rest of Moscow stays up late, waiting for a taxi ride home, or later, the 5:30 AM train. In those moments of silence, it's hard to imagine that the train could be any different.