Incidents
Monday morning I heard about the Istanbul bombings.
I’m going to Istanbul in September for 4 days.
Ohhh god.
We’re going because my friend really, really wanted to see the city, and I do too, but I was always a little leery of the safety situation, especially for two young women on their own. I checked the US Dept. of State travel warnings before we booked our tickets and it seemed fine. But now 17 people are dead in a neighborhood that we probably would have walked through.
That is pretty creepy.
It doesn’t really change anything; a lot can happen between now and September, and I’m sure we’ll end up going anyway and be totally fine. It’s just not really pleasant news to hear. I’m hoping my parents don’t hear about it but they probably will; they weren’t thrilled about our Istanbul plans in the first place.
I had a considerably more disturbing experience on the bus the very same morning.
I catch the bus every morning from Bloomsbury to Shoreditch, either the 55 that goes along Old Street or the 242 that goes directly through the Square Mile, London’s business and financial hub. I far prefer the buses to the Tube - either of my bus stops is far closer to my workplace than the nearest tube stops and the bus is simply far more pleasant to ride. With the heat wave London is undergoing right now the tube is nearly unbearable, and at peak hours it’s always crammed to the brim.
Monday morning I caught the 242 about 9:20 a.m. The ride was perfectly uneventful until nearly the end, when an older woman got on just past Liverpool Station. She had some problem with her bus pass and kept showing it to the driver and trying to make it work on the reader, so she was talking a lot and wandering back and forth several times. I thought she was kind of annoying, honestly. Then she started to address the rest of the passengers.
“Hey, what are those things? Do they belong to anyone? Are those yours? Yours? Yours? What are they doing there? Does anyone know?”
There were two oily, greasy gas jugs wedged in the luggage compartment. At least I think that’s what they were; it was hard to tell. I hadn’t noticed them until the lady pointed them out, and I don’t think any of the other passengers had noticed them either. Once she had, though - and once it became clear that no one on the first level of the bus was claiming them - it was impossible not to wonder. And start to worry.
“Do you think they could be bombs? Anyone? I don’t want to explode!” the lady was saying. She went up to the driver’s compartment, rapped on the window, and started firing questions at him. He didn’t know what she was talking about, either. He pulled over on the side of the street - on very busy Shoreditch High Street - and came out. He was unsure too, and seemed to be saying something about “two stops” - someone had wanted to leave the jugs on there for two stops?? - but I couldn’t catch much because the lady was still bleating on about us exploding.
So this was my morning commute: the bus is stopped, we’re pulled over in the midst of traffic, I’m late to work because there is some seriously shady cargo on the bus that just might actually blow up.
I think we can all agree this was a Holy shit moment.
Finally the driver gave up, shrugged, and told the lady she could get off on the next stop if she was nervous. Throughout this whole exchange all the rest of the passengers were utterly silent. I think no one knew what to do. We were all so engrossed in our morning routine that no one had thought to look twice at the weird gas containers in the luggage area. And here was this kind of nutty old lady who had noticed what we all had missed, yet causing a lot of unease along the way. We were all just . . . frozen, really; no one would look at anyone else. But we all must have been thinking the same thing: Are those containers really dangerous? Should I get off? It probably won’t, but . . . could this bus really explode?
Luckily my stop was the very next one and I very, very gladly got off that bus. If it hadn’t been . . . I don’t know what I would have done. Would I still have gotten off? I really don’t know. I have a very incredulous view toward freak accidents and terrorist plots, in the sense of Oh yeah right, that’s not going to happen, etc. It’s a kind of . . . refuge in audacity, I suppose. Yes, bombings happen all over the world, but you have such a low chance of actually being involved in one that it’s almost not worth thinking about. Everyone here in London remembers the 7/7 bombings in 2005, but people still pack onto the Tube every day. You have to; you’ve still got to get to work. In my mind there’s always the idea as well that basically anything can happen at anytime - there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it, so why even worry? You can’t let some remote possibility rule your life.
I’m still going to take the bus tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after. At the moment, we’re still going to Istanbul the first weekend of September. Who knows what can happen? You just keep on.
I’m going to Istanbul in September for 4 days.
Ohhh god.
We’re going because my friend really, really wanted to see the city, and I do too, but I was always a little leery of the safety situation, especially for two young women on their own. I checked the US Dept. of State travel warnings before we booked our tickets and it seemed fine. But now 17 people are dead in a neighborhood that we probably would have walked through.
That is pretty creepy.
It doesn’t really change anything; a lot can happen between now and September, and I’m sure we’ll end up going anyway and be totally fine. It’s just not really pleasant news to hear. I’m hoping my parents don’t hear about it but they probably will; they weren’t thrilled about our Istanbul plans in the first place.
I had a considerably more disturbing experience on the bus the very same morning.
I catch the bus every morning from Bloomsbury to Shoreditch, either the 55 that goes along Old Street or the 242 that goes directly through the Square Mile, London’s business and financial hub. I far prefer the buses to the Tube - either of my bus stops is far closer to my workplace than the nearest tube stops and the bus is simply far more pleasant to ride. With the heat wave London is undergoing right now the tube is nearly unbearable, and at peak hours it’s always crammed to the brim.
Monday morning I caught the 242 about 9:20 a.m. The ride was perfectly uneventful until nearly the end, when an older woman got on just past Liverpool Station. She had some problem with her bus pass and kept showing it to the driver and trying to make it work on the reader, so she was talking a lot and wandering back and forth several times. I thought she was kind of annoying, honestly. Then she started to address the rest of the passengers.
“Hey, what are those things? Do they belong to anyone? Are those yours? Yours? Yours? What are they doing there? Does anyone know?”
There were two oily, greasy gas jugs wedged in the luggage compartment. At least I think that’s what they were; it was hard to tell. I hadn’t noticed them until the lady pointed them out, and I don’t think any of the other passengers had noticed them either. Once she had, though - and once it became clear that no one on the first level of the bus was claiming them - it was impossible not to wonder. And start to worry.
“Do you think they could be bombs? Anyone? I don’t want to explode!” the lady was saying. She went up to the driver’s compartment, rapped on the window, and started firing questions at him. He didn’t know what she was talking about, either. He pulled over on the side of the street - on very busy Shoreditch High Street - and came out. He was unsure too, and seemed to be saying something about “two stops” - someone had wanted to leave the jugs on there for two stops?? - but I couldn’t catch much because the lady was still bleating on about us exploding.
So this was my morning commute: the bus is stopped, we’re pulled over in the midst of traffic, I’m late to work because there is some seriously shady cargo on the bus that just might actually blow up.
I think we can all agree this was a Holy shit moment.
Finally the driver gave up, shrugged, and told the lady she could get off on the next stop if she was nervous. Throughout this whole exchange all the rest of the passengers were utterly silent. I think no one knew what to do. We were all so engrossed in our morning routine that no one had thought to look twice at the weird gas containers in the luggage area. And here was this kind of nutty old lady who had noticed what we all had missed, yet causing a lot of unease along the way. We were all just . . . frozen, really; no one would look at anyone else. But we all must have been thinking the same thing: Are those containers really dangerous? Should I get off? It probably won’t, but . . . could this bus really explode?
Luckily my stop was the very next one and I very, very gladly got off that bus. If it hadn’t been . . . I don’t know what I would have done. Would I still have gotten off? I really don’t know. I have a very incredulous view toward freak accidents and terrorist plots, in the sense of Oh yeah right, that’s not going to happen, etc. It’s a kind of . . . refuge in audacity, I suppose. Yes, bombings happen all over the world, but you have such a low chance of actually being involved in one that it’s almost not worth thinking about. Everyone here in London remembers the 7/7 bombings in 2005, but people still pack onto the Tube every day. You have to; you’ve still got to get to work. In my mind there’s always the idea as well that basically anything can happen at anytime - there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it, so why even worry? You can’t let some remote possibility rule your life.
I’m still going to take the bus tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after. At the moment, we’re still going to Istanbul the first weekend of September. Who knows what can happen? You just keep on.