riding on the bus with my sister(s)

what happens when mass transit breaks down in a city where the majority of the population doesn't drive? absolute chaos.

on saturday fire raged through the fridhemsplan station. the city was forced to close both this station and the stop at t-centralen, the city's central station, to protect the populate from the toxic fumes and smoke that clouded the tunnels beneath the city. my roommate shae, her visiting sister kaleigh, and i had decided to spend the day exploring the area down by the waterfront in slussen. we were on our way to fridhemsplan when they shut down the trains. the passengers began to stir and the conductor's voice crackled over the intercom. what we gathered from the behavior around us (obviously not from our grasp of swedish language), we had to get off. the transit system was going to send buses to västra skogen, the station we were now stranded at.


the first bus pulled in. hundreds of people rushed to all its doors. crammed full, the bus pulled away, and we were left to wait for the next one. i guess we weren't aggressive enough. the next bus pulled in. i got on, but shae and kaleigh couldn't. "ursäkta," i said to the men around me, "i have to get off." i squeezed out the side door and the bus pulled away.

we finally made it onto the third bus. just barely though. shae was the second to last person on. the bus smelled terrible and it was half and hour and another bus ride before we could breathe again. disgusting.