Wheels on the Bus

I had a couple of truly Israeli bus experiences today.

It started with a simple observation in the central bus station of Jerusalem. At 8 o'clock on Monday morning there were a surprising number of soldiers waiting around for transportation. They use the buses to get to their bases, but it seems strange to me that they don't all sleep where they work. Also, the sight of teen soldiers everywhere just makes it feel more like Israel.

Once I had boarded the bus I had an Israeli bus driver experience. A car in the middle lane was too close to the median, blocking our bus drivers ability to enter the left hand turn lane. After repeated honking (which of course couldn't fix a thing) the light turned green and everyone moved forward. Lucky for our bus driver that we didn't make the light, because this allowed him to pull up next to the little car, open up the door and starting yelling across to the incompetent driver. Just for good measure, he edged up a few feet and started to yell at the incompetent driver in front of our offending automobile operator.

On my way home from Ramat Gan (a suburb of Tel Aviv) I hopped up the stairs of an empty bus, chose a seat a few rows back, and settled down with my book. We soon entered the religious neighborhood of B'nai Barak and as we progressed in our route, we picked up more and more Haredim. These are the Jews with the black hats and curly peot, fyi. Eventually someone asked me to move to the back of the crowded bus because the front was for men, and it wasn't modest for me to be sitting among them. Having read an article about a woman who was assaulted for trying to keep her place at the front of a Jerusalem bus, I made only a feeble attempt to keep my place. Someone assured me there were still seats at the back of the bus, so I headed back while mumbling something about motion sickness. It turned out that there were no seats at the back of the bus and several people, including myself had to sit on the floor of the bus for the remainder of the trip back to Jerusalem. Needless to say, I wasn't too happy. Two parts of this situation confounded me. 1. A Haredi couple was sitting in front of me on the bus, and when I was asked to move, the wife was also asked to move and she complied. 2. There is a bus from B'nai Barak to Jerusalem every 20 minutes, why in the world does the bus driver allow more passengers than seats?