Public transportation can serve as a perfect place
for ethnographic observations, of course not in a strictly scientific way, but
it still can reveal some interesting behavioural patterns in a society. In
Hungary, it is a common and favoured way of maintaining or initiating a
conversation by complaining about something, – and public transportation is an
ultimate subject of public discontent. However, besides of our negative sentiment
and our love of complaining as Hungarians, the problem of transportation does
not only lie in the poor condition of the vehicles or the underdeveloped system
of ticket inspectors but also in the attitudes of people while commuting.
In
Hungary, similarly to other countries, the most frustrating, uncomfortable, crowded
and annoying times of travelling by means of public transportation are the rush
hours of the morning on weekdays. However, some people find this time of the
day the most appropriate time for doing the shopping. According to my experiences
and observations, which I gained mostly during my high school years, pensioners
tend to do their daily shopping in the morning rush hours.
The
bus that I had to take to get to my high school also touched upon three other
schools and a marketplace. Besides being a relatively infrequent route, it was
a small kind of bus. However, these hardly negligible factors did not divert
the elderly from taking this forty-minute route to a marketplace during the
most crowded hours of the day, and in the heaviest traffic. An important
observation that I made at that time, and I usually face with it nowadays as
well since at university I do not have early classes, is that from about 10 a.m. to noon this route is not crowded at
all, with plenty of free seats and suitable level of personal space. However,
pensioners do not choose this time of the day for travelling to their shopping
destination, and prefer the same hours as those who have to keep themselves to
a constructed time schedule, whether because of school or workplace and have no
other time option.
Interestingly,
this habit is not uncommon; I have heard the same complaints from several
people. The problem of this phenomenon was not only the crowdedness but also
the mean remarks and complaints elderly people gave voice to during the route.
It was quite annoying to be crammed into an airless bus, pushed onto the
windows, trying to rescue your feet from under the weight of a shopping bag on
wheels while listening to the condemnation of your generation. Not to mention
the outrage arisen by a seat taken by someone under the age of thirty.
Naturally,
the situation of pensioners could be understood, too, especially if we take
into consideration that they have a different biorhythm and they tend to get up
early in the morning. Moreover, in many countries people commute in incredibly
crowded vehicles compared to Hungarian ones, for example, in Japan.
Nevertheless, I think the problem lies in that
common Hungarian sentiment which neither takes into consideration the situation
of others, nor cares about it too much. In this issue of shopping in the rush
hours, I recognize this ignorant and selfish attitude from pensioners towards
those who have to make their way to work or school. I think if there was an underlying
and unwritten convention concerning the preferences of commuters it would make
public transportation much easier and also comfortable for both the elderly and
the youth or active workers. I think these nuances, which I think are also very
logical, could improve the opinions of both the elderly and the youth about
each other thus reducing the tensions between the two age groups.
No comments:
Post a Comment