Student Bloggers

The Tube is a very quiet place. Everyone sits in their seats and reads their newspapers and no one says anything. The only sound that breaks the eerie quiet is the occasional announcement from the automated (and soothingly British) voice telling you which stop is coming next.

This, beyond anything else, is the most extreme culture shock I have experienced so far here in London. I have been here for less than two weeks and already I have become accustomed to seeing cars drive on opposite sides of the road and hearing the term “cheers” every where I go. However, I still cannot wrap my head around the behavior I have exhibited on the London Underground.

I come from Boston, Massachusetts: the land of aggressive Pats fans and rude pedestrians. A place where no one is shy to voice their opinion in their loud, “r-less”, accent. I have been riding the Boston T system pretty regularly for the last two years and only very rarely have I had the luxury of a completely silent ride. There’s always at least one loud group of college students or someone playing their music too loudly through their headphones and it creates a comfortable bass line of sound. On the London Tube system, the only bass line of sound comes from the occasional rustle of someone turning a page on his or her newspaper. (Fun fact: an astounding amount of people in London read newspapers. It’s a very comforting sight for someone studying journalism.)

The other noticeable difference on the Tube system compared to the Boston T is how well everything works. The London train almost always comes right on time. The doors open and a welcoming voice tells you to “mind the gap” before you get on. The voice then waits an appropriate amount of time before declaring that the door is going to shut. If the train is very crowded an equally calming human voice will come on and tell everyone to be careful of the door and that if they can’t fit on this train another one will be coming shortly. On the Boston T, if the train is crowded and people are standing in the door, the driver will come on the microphone and yell “MOVE IN” before closing the door regardless of who/what is in the way.

The Tube is definitely more complicated than the T. There are almost triple the amount of lines compared to Boston’s subway and they all go in about a million different directions. I’m not as familiar with them and sometimes I miss the simplicity of Boston’s red, orange, blue and green lines. However, I’m sure before I leave London I’ll be able to confidently walk through the all well organized mazes that are the Underground stations and know exactly where I’m going. Like everything about being abroad, it’s a learning process.