{"id":4684,"date":"2019-04-29T07:27:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T05:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2019-06-17T07:35:37","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:35:37","slug":"the-peculiar-personalities-of-trams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4684","title":{"rendered":"The Peculiar Personalities of Trams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s one of those spring days which are warm or cold\ndepending upon whether or not you\u2019re standing in the sunlight or the shadows. I\nhave somehow managed to secure both, with my head in the bright sun and my butt\ncooling in the shade. My soon-to-be fellow passengers are mature, with the\naverage age, including me, some teenagers, and a woman with a gaggle of children,\nresting somewhere in the high 230s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the 1 tram approaches the mature passengers halt any\nconversations and edge towards what they know to be the spots where the doors\nwill open. The tram gets closer and the tension is palpable. Who will get the\nClass A seats by the door, the ones in the shade? Wrinkly elbows begin to wield\nand I let them go. Last week I was clipped by a suspiciously well-placed walker\nto the shin. In any event, I\u2019m still getting used to the personality of the\ntrams out here. And I don\u2019t want to overstep my bounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you spend time riding around on Prague\u2019s transportation\nsystem, you learn quickly enough that each tram has something of a personality.\nMore than the metros and far more than the buses (the recognized bores of the\ntransport world), trams have a feel, a personality, and these are fostered by\ntheir routes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The number 1 tram is sort of like an old man. It takes care\nof the residents from the oldest Panel\u00e1ks in Prague, and carries a conspicuously\ngeriatric clientage. It skirts the busy parts of the city, sneaking up across\nthe hump of Prague\u2019s back. It crosses two bridges which entail slowing its gait\ndown to a crawl. The rest of the trip he takes like an old guy who\u2019s in no\nrush. He chugs through squares, revs a little and sighs as he inches past the\nparks, almost taking them in. The drivers assigned to the route are mellow,\nslow, and steady. There are no aggressive dudes with the heavy bell fingers you\u2019ll\nexperience on the \u017di\u017ekov lines. They are there to soothe the mature hearts of\nits passengers. About a month a 1 tram driver with a heavy bell finger shocked\nand upset the riders; the disapproving looks were overwhelming. The oldest woman\nin Prague shouted at him as she got off the tram. And then so did her older sister.\nWe never saw him again. He\u2019s probably thronging his aggressive way through one\nof the Sm\u00edchov lines.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s taken me a while to get used to the 1 tram. Before moving\nto Pet\u0159iny, I spent more than a decade riding the river tram lines, the 3, 17, and\n21. These guys have been on the front line of river traffic for years. They get\nthe summer Podol\u00ed swimming pool traffic and the traffic to the center. They get\ntourists up and down the river, and bring them over to Letna and into the city\nto Masarykovo train station. They do a loop into gritty And\u011bl. In the winter\nthey get pounded with winds getting across the bridge and they have been there\nfor each of Madam Vltava\u2019s grumpy eruptions. By the time spring rolls around,\nthey are crusted and grimy, their numbers almost invisible. These guys have the\naggressive drivers.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the old giants of the Prague tram world, the\n9 and the 22. These are like the old guard lone bull elephants. The Tree Beards.\nThey have the hard routes right through the center. Their floors and stairs get\nbeat down by thousands of feet each day. They see the most traffic, detours,\nand delays. But yet they chug along with no complaint. When they rumble through\nthe center, people step aside, there\u2019s almost a moment of respectful silence. I\nmight even tip a cap occasionally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now you\u2019ve got the trams that have routes through shady,\nshifty, secret Vr\u0161ovice<\/a>. The 18, 14, and sometimes,\napparently, the 6 go through those grimy back neighborhoods and stalk those\nback streets. They deal with the morning drunks in Nusle, go beneath the luckless\nSuicide Bridge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And from those backroads comes the 7 onto the river. The 7.\nThe enigma. But only when it wants. Nowhere in Prague is there another tram\nthat is so off its proclaimed schedule. The 7 tram can be four minutes late or\nsix minutes early. Its driver will offer no apologies. The passengers looked\nspooked, changed, shellshocked. The whole feel is as if it\u2019s coming from\nsomewhere out of a Stephen King story.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the 1 tram pulls alongside an 11 on the way into Spojovac\u00ed.\nFor a moment we are looking directly into each other\u2019s windows. The feel is that\nof two eighteenth century warships about to engage in cannon battle. I lock\neyes with a young guy who has also looked up from his book. I assess. The 11\ntram is Hollywood, goes past the famous cemeteries into the popular area of\nVinohrady. It sees some havoc as it goes through IP Pavlova and heads into Vr\u0161ovice.\nThe man looking back at me is no doubt considering the qualifications of my 1\ntram. The stare off is relatively good natured, with a hint of mutual respect.\nWe nod and go back to our books. At least it wasn\u2019t a 12. Those guys are crazy.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one of those spring days which are warm or cold depending upon whether or not you\u2019re standing in the sunlight or the shadows. I have somehow managed to secure both, with my head in the bright sun and my butt cooling in the shade. My soon-to-be fellow passengers are mature, with the average age, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1dy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4685,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}