Journal of a Sabbatical

May 2, 2001

heat wave

Today's Reading: Urban Transportation by Zoltán Várnagy

Today was fairly uneventful except for the metro train catching on fire. It's brutally hot here this morning and I figured if I walked to Kalvin ter I'd be dripping with sweat long before I got there. Of course taking the tram, I was crammed in with about a zillion other overheated people raising the temperature inside the tram to who knows what -- all those 98.6 degree F bodies... So I was drenched in sweat when I got to the metro anyway.

As the train pulled out of the first stop after Kalvin ter I heard somebody shout penetratingly loud. The train stopped. A conductor in tight navy blue skirt and tight white blouse ran heavily in chunky heels along the platform toward the end of the train. Y'know I can see why so many Hungarian artists painted female tram conductors. There is nothing quite as, umm, stimulating, as a voluptuous tram/train conductor in uniform responding to an emergency.

Some people got off the train. Others stayed on. The conductor ran forward along the platform and then back again. I had no idea what was going on. Someone made a PA announcement in Hungarian. I have no idea what they said. More people got off after the announcement so maybe it was something to the effect of get off the train, but I remained clueless. An agitated woman started yelling at me in Hungarian as if I were behaving unbelievably stupidly, so I figured maybe I really had better get off the train.

Acrid smoke drifted from the back of the train mixing with the already hot thick metro station air. My eyes itched and my throat hurt. At least I finally figured out the train was on fire. The sexy conductor and some other woman with a cell phone did something or other about it and finally everybody was off the train and they managed to move it away from the platform. Hot, sticky, and itchy I waited for the next train. The rest of the trip to the Botanical Department was uneventful.

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