Subway Adventures

- Above is a picture of the lightly used far side of the platform -

Riding on the Metro Subway in Mexico City feels something like WWF, an amusement park, and the Redneck Olympics combined. For example, you get your tickets from a tiny office labeled Taquilla. That was the first thing that caught my attention.

After Kurt bought the tickets and gave us his scary speech we marched toward the subway platform. Whoever designed the system here in Mexico made one small but crucial mistake. Rather than entering the train on one side and exiting on the other as one does in Washington DC and other cities, these trains force you to enter and exit from the same doors. That means at each platform dozens of Mexicans try to force their way onto the train through the same small doors that dozens of Mexicans are trying to force their way out of.

The resulting chaos is both mortally dangerous and incredibly funny.

Our morning commute provided few challenges other than my backpack being stuck in the door and three helpful Mexican men helping me pry it out. The evening trip, however, proved painfully interesting.

Bethany and Kurt bought our tickets, and we followed them to the platform. Unlike the scant group of individuals riding in the morning, now the platform was packed five or six people deep down the entire two hundred foot long opening. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the train came empty. The train didn’t come empty though. When the first train pulled to a stop our jaws fell open to see people pressed into every open space in the vehicle. Faces pressed against the windows. Bodies bulged at the closed doors. How would we ever get on?

With a rush the doors whipped open, and a dozen Mexicans began to spill out. Those of us jostling for room on the platform gave those exiting approximately half a second to clear out of the way before a human wave pushed toward the door’s opening. The surge caught us up and moved us. People pressed from behind, from the side, from all quarters our bodies were crushed in the mass. I saw Kurt, our fearless leader, hit a human wall at the subway’s door. If he couldn’t fit, how would the five of us?

The fear now was of being separated. If two made this train, but three of us missed would we ever see one another again. I could only imagine myself exiting somewhere at the end of the line in Mexico City. There would wait for me five guys with surgical instruments and “Eureka” smiles. They’d be heard saying something like, “Let the harvesting begin,” in Spanish.

None of us made it on the first train. Between trains the crowd of people who missed the first were joined by dozens and dozens more all hoping to squeeze through those ever important four foot wide subway doors. Kurt peered down the tunnel and saw the second train closing in.

“Everyone stick together!” he called to us above the roar and rush of the six car train.

The moment the doors whirred open our group was thrown forward by the press of two hundred Mexicans behind us surging for the opening. Kurt led and pressed his way onto the train followed closely by Debbi and Bethany.

Words cannot describe the press. Everyone jostled so closely together with no care or feeling toward the pain one caused to the person next to them. You had to make the train.

Aaron shouldered a little elderly Mexican woman out of the way. No, not really. He shouldered two little elderly Mexican women out of the way. Thankfully they were getting off the train and his move did them a great service. At first I thought I’d have to grab Aaron’s backpack to stay with him, but the press shoved right up against him. With a punch and a kick, a shove and a shoulder we made our way onto the train. We had done it!

Lest you think once we made it on the train that we had room to move, not so my friends. I do not exaggerate at all when I say this. My body was pressed up against the door when two more men threw themselves in. Neither one completely made it. The doors of the train closed pressing the two men face to face. One side of their bodies was inside the train, the other hung outside. Again, I’m not exaggerating. Four or five men still standing on the platform rushed to their aid and began pushing them into the train. From inside the train came a collective groan as the few spare millimeters of free space were lost. With a cry that sounded quite similar to “One! Two! Three!” the extra two men squeezed into the train.

Debbi, Aaron, and I couldn’t believe it. In fact, we were pressed so tight that as soon as Aaron began laughing, each of the other team members could feel his body shake.

Needless to say, we survived. We survived, but just barely.