written by Maria Pileidou
In my town, I don’t think many people have been bird watching, for sure I haven’t. Although throughout the years, I have created my own kind of bird watching to dedicate my alone time to. My bird watching isn’t about beautiful lakes, nor is it quiet and peaceful. And my birds aren’t colorful with feathers, but big people with weird clothes, making all kinds of faces. One can say I am committed to my kind of bird watching, I do it every day, somedays with enthusiasm and others with closed eyes trying to get away from the birds of the bus, from the people of the bus.
Commuting with public transport in the city of Thessaloniki and doing it every day is not easy. Having grown up in a suburb of the city, everything was close by. I went to school on foot and walked through my teenage years, only using the bus on the weekends to go out in the city center. When I became adult and got accepted into the University of Macedonia things changed. I wasn’t living too far from the campus to qualify for student housing, nor could I afford to rent my own place in the center. So, I started using the bus. And now I owe two hours of each day to the buses of Thessaloniki.
I have been a daily user of Thessaloniki’s public transportation for one and a half year now. One and a half year of missing the bus and waiting and people watching. When you commute to the same route every day, there isn’t much point in looking out of the window after the first few rides. And the only thing that changes, when the route and the scenery stay the same, are the people, the people that get on and off the bus. I haven’t made any friends on the bus, people usually aren’t talkative, but sometimes when I meet the same person twice, I get a feeling of togetherness.
Togetherness is not the reality of commuting, commuting is a highly lonely activity. Staying in one place, doing nothing, just sitting and waiting, isn’t easy. Thoughts running through your head, inner voices talking nonstop while you just stay captive in this really long vehicle. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I read literature, sometimes I write poems. When everything is not too much, I look around. And on this look around I find my inspiration. Sometimes, I write poetry on the bus. Then I owe also my greatest poems to the buses of Thessaloniki, apart from the two hours of my day.
In Thessaloniki many people will complain about its buses, I definitely have. Buses arriving late, itineraries cancelled and slow movement in traffic jammed roads, make the micro-climate of the bus filled with anger. But our buses have always been this way, they never suggested anything different, they never promised anything more. Only our imagination did.
In this relationship I have with the buses of Thessaloniki, I always lose. To them everyone is the same and no one really matters. This stability of behavior, in an environment filled with unexpected actions, feels unfamiliar in my world of constant movement. So as long, as I fear change, I will keep moving through my changes in this bus, that never changes, no matter how much we try.
