Wednesday, 03 March 2010 20:23
"Biz Kolyoc" means "without wheels," and that's what I've been since my driver's license expired--for the first time in 20 years--in January. When I last was in Maine, the friendly folks at the DMV informed me that renewing my license before my 40th birthday would be a cinch: I could simply fill in the electronic form, pay online and all would be well. However, it seems that since those days, thanks to a new Maine State law, I now have to physcially present the DMV with my original birth certificate as well as a tax bill, or similar piece of mail with my name and Maine address on it. Not so simple, when you live overseas. For now, it's a matter of finding out how to most safely Fed-Ex or UPS all that information to the States. The whole process will probably take a couple of months. Fortunately, the Maine DMV has been more than cooperative, so for now there's nothing to do but to set the wheels in motion and wait for them to turn. Meanwhile, I'm back on public transportation.
Actually, this is fun for me. The down side is that it takes a lot of time. If I travel by trolleybus to church, which is 12 km (7.2 miles) away, it takes me an hour. Part of that time includes waiting in cold, windy, muddy bus stops, but it's easy enough to just think of all of that as part of the adventure. What I really like about public transportation is the anonymity of it. Also, watching the people. I pick up a lot of language there, as I shamelessly eavesdrop on cell phone conversations or listen to people chat with friends. In the parts of Europe west of the former USSR, we've often noticed that strangers talk to each other on public transport. Not so in Russia: if you don't know anyone else on the bus, you might as well be invisible.
It's this very feeling of invisibility that I love. Tonight, for example, instead of taking the hour-long trolleybus route to church for worship band practice, I opted for the quicker marshrutka: only 35 minutes to travel the same 12 km. "Marshrutka" is translated into English as "route taxi." There: it's all clear what a marshrutka is, right? Of course not. "Route taxi" isn't a word we use any more than "marshrutka" because such a thing doesn't exist (as far as I know) in America.
A marshrutka is usually a 15-passenger van that costs 15 rubles (50 cents) to ride, although the other day when I rode in one, I was passenger #21, and I was so squashed amongst the other standing passengers that all I could see of the road was a bare 1' x 1' patch of asphalt through the driver's window. How to tell where my stop was? Or even when I was on the right road? A marshrutka only stops when someone flags it down, or when a passenger calls out, "Next stop, please!" Clearly, I was in trouble. Finally, I bent forward at a 90-degree angle, with my head squashed against another passenger's shoulder, and my posterior wedged against a seat somewhere behind me, and managed to catch a glimpse of a landmark I knew. A cry of, "Next stop, please!" tipped me out onto the sidewalk at the right place. No problem, right?
But back to the feeling of anonymity: Mostly, public transportation is, for me, a good time to kind of melt into the background. Nobody needs me, or even wants me. It is for me, what the bathroom is for many mothers of preschoolers: a place to be alone, undiscovered, quiet. I'm not responsible for getting myself anywhere: I'm just along for the ride. I don't have to worry about police or accidents, or losing my way. For 50 cents, I have an hour all to myself to do nothing but read, or think about life.
Is it any wonder the Maine DMV license-renewal form is still sitting on my desk, unmarked, unstamped, unsent?
