My hometown Münster is, like Peking was until a few years ago, a bicycle city, in Venice people move in gondolas, in Hanoi the fastest (but definitely NOT the safest) way to go from one point to the other is on a scooter and in Cambodia I once had a seven hour trip where I had to sit on the back of a fully loaded pickup. Each place has its own distinguishing means of transport. That is something, which makes travelling in every country something special and maybe even adventurous: Buses are still the more usual means of transport here. They actually exist everywhere and everyone has its very own image of it.
If you think of London for example, you will immidiately imagine red double-decker buses, which dominated the cityscape for many years and even today are still well remembered; buses in desert states are actually always white, or not?! If you imagine buses in tropical countries, you will surely think of overcrowded minibuses, with rice bags or things like that on the roof, and definitely a few chicken, goat or sheep inside the bus.
In Costa Rica is buswise, at least from my point of view, actually not like it is "supposed" to be in a tropical country. It is quite the opposite and at first sight the buses here remind me of the buses, I know from Germany. They are large, as a bus has to be and many of them have advertisement on it, which you might also find familiar; last but not least you enter the bus in the front part of the bus with the driver, exactly you know it from Germany.
BUT as soon as you step into a bus, you will notice immediately that you are definitely not in Germany. Because if you stop on the stairs - between a light barrier, couting the persons getting on and off the bus - the driver will tell you (in a very unfriendly way) that you must not stand there, but to keep going because the paying can still be done later...
Once you have gotten used to this procedure, you will soon learn to stop in front of the barrier in order not to annoy the driver and to pay immidately after crossing it. But also here nothing is the way you think you "know" it: in the place of a ticket machine the driver has a large sponge - the same sponges that you know from school.
There are "cavities" on the upper side, where the bus driver keeps the change. These sponges are yellow and often decorated with palms trees or other beach connected images. Sometimes, as it should be expected in a “catholic” country, they are decorated with Jesus and christian sayings. The fact that the bus drivers ask God for support is unsurprising due to the driving fashion of some people out on the roads and the bus drivers themselves…
Also the interior of the buses themselves differs from each other. Some have leather seats, others are padded or even made of plastic. Personally I am pleased when I see that the seats are leathery. The plastic seats are just too uncomfortable and as far as the padded ones are concerned, you really can't know when they were cleaned the last time...with a steam cleaner.
Well and just as everybody has his preferential seating-accomodation, people also has a favourite side in the bus - I am totally sure about that. I for example prefer to sit on the left, the driver's side, sitting as far in the back as possible; furthermore not at the window, but at the aisle, because the chance is smaller there that someone sits beside me, since I, like actually all people, prefer to sit on my own, in order to at least keep some of my very own proxemics with all the strangers.
If you think of London for example, you will immidiately imagine red double-decker buses, which dominated the cityscape for many years and even today are still well remembered; buses in desert states are actually always white, or not?! If you imagine buses in tropical countries, you will surely think of overcrowded minibuses, with rice bags or things like that on the roof, and definitely a few chicken, goat or sheep inside the bus.
In Costa Rica is buswise, at least from my point of view, actually not like it is "supposed" to be in a tropical country. It is quite the opposite and at first sight the buses here remind me of the buses, I know from Germany. They are large, as a bus has to be and many of them have advertisement on it, which you might also find familiar; last but not least you enter the bus in the front part of the bus with the driver, exactly you know it from Germany.BUT as soon as you step into a bus, you will notice immediately that you are definitely not in Germany. Because if you stop on the stairs - between a light barrier, couting the persons getting on and off the bus - the driver will tell you (in a very unfriendly way) that you must not stand there, but to keep going because the paying can still be done later...
Once you have gotten used to this procedure, you will soon learn to stop in front of the barrier in order not to annoy the driver and to pay immidately after crossing it. But also here nothing is the way you think you "know" it: in the place of a ticket machine the driver has a large sponge - the same sponges that you know from school.
There are "cavities" on the upper side, where the bus driver keeps the change. These sponges are yellow and often decorated with palms trees or other beach connected images. Sometimes, as it should be expected in a “catholic” country, they are decorated with Jesus and christian sayings. The fact that the bus drivers ask God for support is unsurprising due to the driving fashion of some people out on the roads and the bus drivers themselves…
Also the interior of the buses themselves differs from each other. Some have leather seats, others are padded or even made of plastic. Personally I am pleased when I see that the seats are leathery. The plastic seats are just too uncomfortable and as far as the padded ones are concerned, you really can't know when they were cleaned the last time...with a steam cleaner.
Well and just as everybody has his preferential seating-accomodation, people also has a favourite side in the bus - I am totally sure about that. I for example prefer to sit on the left, the driver's side, sitting as far in the back as possible; furthermore not at the window, but at the aisle, because the chance is smaller there that someone sits beside me, since I, like actually all people, prefer to sit on my own, in order to at least keep some of my very own proxemics with all the strangers.
A month has passed, in which I am on the buses for at least two hours every day and there is something, that I noticed immidiately in the beginning; that men of course prefer sitting down with pretty women when there a only a few free seats left. What they expect from that? Probably nothing; but if they have to share their “zone”, why not with someone that at least looks nice.
Well finally even the act of stopping a bus has its nationally variing peculiarities. On the Philippines, one of those “tropical countries”, people simply knock on the bus' ceiling or call "stop", which works pretty unproblematically. However in Germany people press a button, to announce to the driver that they would like to get off at the next stop. Here in Costa Rica it is a mixture of all that. On the one hand there are a lot of buses with those buttons, on the other hand in there is a string at the ceiling of many buses people can pull if they want to get off the bus at the next stop. Mostly the buses then also stop at the assigned bus stop, eventhough you can get off the bus in between stops as well. As well as the getting off the bus the getting on the bus follows a very strange pattern, which really confused me in the beginning.
After all I have learned during my life to get accustomed to new circumstances and to accept things, which are just different - this counts particularly for other countries and their culture. That is probably also one of the reasonst, why it is so difficult to distinguish the differences between Germany and Costa Rica sometimes. That does not mean that I do not analyze those things… but in the end I keep on finding out again and again that often there is no wrong or right, but that we just must accept some differences.
