The real life
Monday, January 28th, 2008How do you feel the “real life” of a city? Spending a weekend in a fancy hotel, taking taxis around town and throwing a month’s salary over the counter of high street shops and bars certainly doesn’t paint the picture of everyday life.
I found an answer on my world trip a few years ago. I “feel” a place when I take public transport, preferrably a bus. Not because I prefer the bus over subway trains or trams, but it makes it easier for me to compare the life in cities worldwide. So I go to a new place, I take “enough” time to justify the mode of evaluation that this test undergoes and I buy a ticket. And then I travel uptown and downtown. Every day. At rush hour. To watch. People, of course.
You see how the locals behave, you feel their moods, you see their style. A bus is a microcosmos of an urban place, a small society within. Watching people’s courtesy and the way they observe their opposites is truly a pleasurable and interesting field experience that has taught me incredible things.
Am I what the french call “a voyeur”? Maybe. I guess my love to observe has flourished my obsession to understand what causes people to react in certain ways, what makes them shop and what triggers their demands and stimulates their passions.
I have seen young Italians with their feet on the seat, cool and sexy, aware of their physical beauty. They wear their pink Swarovski stone “Flinserl” (= Austrian expression for facial jewellery) that pierses their eyebrow with pride and while I smile, I think “how do I dare to judge the style of this young Italian God?” I am aware that I’m not Suzy Menkes but dozens of fashion magazines have influenced my understanding of style, so I humbly look at people and try to understand why they choose the pieces they wear - a bit like the way I walk through contemporary art galleries these days. I don’t pretend to understand, but I ask and try to see that there is more meaning behind modern art installations as they evidently display. But this, as an old Austrian supermarkt commercial quotes, is another story.
So, take a bus on a busy route and see what you discover…