The following story happened two days ago and man, what an adventure it was.
I was heading back home from work, beer on hand, strolling through the streets of a midnight Lisbon. I thought the subway closed at 01:30AM, but boy was I wrong. It closed at 01:00, and I arrived at the station at 00:57.
Needless to say, I couldn’t make it in.
Well, I was given instructions to go to another part of the city, adjacent to the one I was in, and catch the nocturnal bus there. That’s a bummer, but it’s doable.
Halfway there I got asked if I wanted to buy drugs, I decline, say I’m a local, the usual stuff.
When I finally arrived at the station I went to see the bus schedule. It’s supposed to arrive at 01:30. Fine, I’ll just sit down listening to music and write poem or something.
The bus didn’t appear in time.
“Okay, it might be a little late. This is Portugal, so it’s normal…” I think.
02:00, still no sign of any bus.
By this time I’m almost done writing a poem and I’ve listened to half of Porcupine Tree’s DeadWing.
“Hey, is anyone waiting for [#1 bus]? I’m going to [this station]… The [#1 bus] stop is here, right?” chimed in a guy about my age.
“It is. I’m actually going there, too.” answered another guy, and a girl with glasses.
“I’ve been waiting for either [#1 bus] or [#2 bus]. They’re both late.” confirmed a girl with pink hair.
“No signs from either bus and I’m here since 01:15. I’m waiting for the [#2 bus]” I stated.
“Thank God I’m not alone on this. Why is the bus so late? This is my first time waiting for it, as I usually take the subway and it closed 15 minutes before the normal time without any notice whatsoever. I’m paying for an expensive monthly pass and these things still happen. I’m gonna file a complaint.”
I couldn’t blame him for wanting to file a complaint. A person wants to come home from work, is tired, and is still bound to find problems like these in the middle of the night? Bullshit.
We start looking at maps, schedules and talk about how dysfunctional is the public transport system in Portugal.
Eventually, a third girl joins us and asks if this is the right bus stop and if the bus is late. We explain everything to her and then we wait some more, with the first guy asking the other if he wants to call a taxi and pay halfsies.
And then our savior appeared.
“Hey! This is the wrong bus stop! You have to go all the way to the other side of this street. There is functional bus stop there!”
This man was also waiting for the same bus as me; he was already at the bus stop when I arrived. How did he learn this information? That’s a mystery that will remain unsolved.
We’re sceptical about that information. How did the man know that if there wasn’t any note glued to the bus stop? There wasn’t any notification in their website, either. Well, whatever, off we went to the right bus stop.
Once more we complained about the lack of updates on the bus’ schedule and location. Three of us, me included, were first timers on this nocturnal bus thing. We cracked a few jokes about it and chatted on our way there and slowly got to know each other.
The bus stop wasn’t exactly “on the other side of the street.” We had to walk all the way to the other side and then walk west to find the damn bus stop.
One of the girls even asked a police officer about why the bus stop we were initially at wasn’t functioning. “The roads were closed, not sure if there was an accident or there’s a construction going on there.” he answered.
Can you guess what we did after that? Yes, we complained about the lack of updates on the state of the bus station.
When we finally arrived at the right, functional, even-paired-with-seats bus station we chatted. At this point we even know each other names and professions.
Two of the gals are bakers and even exchanged contacts to talk more about the profession and try to hook up a job for one another; the other girl is a web designer (and she’s working on this really cool app for y’all writers and other content creators advertising out there); one of the guys is a receptionist at a hotel and I’m a barman. We did not get to know about what the other guy did.
Eventually the [#2 bus] came at 02:30 and three of us hopped right in. The bus was somewhat filled with people, surprise surprise.
Chatting our way through each stop, we eventually parted ways after trading contacts and left the bus with a wholesome story to tell.
This is the kind of adventure you’d see in a tale like The Wizard of Oz, don’t you think?
A Morbid Mind 