"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is public transportation and therefore there is no such thing called personal space", announced the driver of the Muni (municipal transport) during morning commute hours as frowns turned into grins. It was starting to get crowded inside the one-car historic streetcar and the driver's comment was indeed timely. To me, the comment appropriately captured the essence of this city as I have known it for the past three weeks: it is not an easy city to live in but yet people manage to retain a good sense of humor about all things in control and those outside (the 'Muni' is surely a prime example of the latter!).
A month ago, I was excited about the prospect of traveling from Boston to San Francisco. After six months of New England winter, my outdoors-loving tropical soul was craving to break free from the thick winter jackets and limited mobility that winters in general bring to life. So sure was I of the sunny Californian weather that I did not even check the average temperatures and happily left my warmest winter jackets back in Boston. And once I did arrive, it wasn't precisely fun to find that day temperatures in Boston were mathematically twice that of San Francisco (26 to 13 degree celsius). But then, no wise man said that there is ever a bad time to commit stupid mistakes and just smiling at my folly gave me enough warmth through several mornings during the first week.
This is where I will touch upon another key aspect of every San Franciscan's life - travel! I wouldn't be wrong if I said that people here travel for two hours everyday on average. That I stepped into the city to skew the average beyond two is a different matter altogether - only a naive newcomer would dare travel from San Jose to San Francisco daily using public transportation (four transportation systems and three connections in my case!). But the transportation systems work very well overall and the Caltrain still remains my favorite. I have always been a romantic and trains always have a very special place in my heart. Through these trips, I was able to re-establish that life in the big cities across the world is so similar that sometimes it does even not matter whether it is San Francisco, Mumbai, or New York. Case in point: just look at the way people queue up at Starbucks in the morning and you will find it is no longer or shorter than the queue for purchasing a local train ticket in Mumbai, or, just take a look at the way pedestrians cross streets out-of-turn during morning commute hours!
Like all tourists to the city, I did take the opportunity of visiting the Golden Gate - once on bike and again on foot - and am sharing a few pictures here. More coming up soon about other action in the city so stay tuned...
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