Monday, July 7, 2014

Just a few thoughts-rutieras




The rutiera (marshrutka in Russian) is the major vehicle of public transporation.  Its official name is the microbuz.  It is actually a Mecedes made vehicle called the Sprinter.  It is usually made with twenty passenger seats.  Often the number of people riding this vehicle is doubled by the number of standees.  The most I’ve ever counted is 45.   The two rear doors provide some opportunity to place baggage under the rear bank of seats from outside the vehicle.  Otherwise there are some ceiling racks above the seats for smaller items.  The driver is the only one with a seat belt.

The roads in Moldova are very bad.  Some of the major highways are close to smooth service level, but most are not.  The roads are so full of potholes, drivers often cross the center line to go around a bad hole in their part of the road.  It baffled me at first how two way traffic could share the road if the primary goal was to avoid pot holes first, and stay on your side of the road second.  When those two objectives were in competition, I didn’t know how drivers decided when to assert and when to defer to other vehicles.

Given the bad condition of the roads, one is often not surprised to find that the windshield has a crack in it.  I’ve seen so many cracked ones that I assume the use of that super glue sealer used in the States on cracks is also available here.

The space for legs in a rutiera is often less than required by today’s adult.  (I fantasize that the designers were either expecting children or Japanese people as riders.)  I find it best to have an aisle seat where I can let one leg sneak space from the aisle.  There are some seats in the rutiera that are last choice for sure.  The seats that hover the rear wheels definitely have less leg room.  And the rear bank of seats can be murder on the back when bumps and holes are hit hard. 

There’s an etiquette in Moldova about who gets a seat.  The elderly get priority as well as women vs a man.  Women who are pregnant or with smaller children have a higher priority.  Sometimes, if a mother comes on with small children and all seats are filled, people will offer their laps to the younger children.  As there is often a number of standees on the rutiera, seated people will often offer to hold packages or large bags that standees have to juggle so they can have two hands to hold on.
 
The driver often has music on as the vehicle is in operation.  This is often the popular folk music of Moldova, but it can also be Russian or English pop rock.  The payment of fares happens in various patterns.  Some local rutieras on a city route will expect you to pay as you enter the vehicle.  Many rutiera drivers who have a single destination will simply collect the fare as the passengers depart.  What was interesting for me was the process where someone gets on that needs to get change from a larger bill to pay their fare.  The passenger will give the driver the bill and proceed to their seat or place in the rutiera.  The driver will make change as he is able (depending on the driving situation)  and pass the change back by hand to the passenger via the other passengers.
 
The rutiera driver will let you off just about anywhere you want, but you need to start to work your way up to the front in time to verbally make the request to “get off”  (coborit) before he gets to your stop.  If the rutiera is full of standees, this can be more than a little challenging. 

There is a strange human dynamic as the rutiera fills up.  For some reason the people towards the rear of the vehicle never feel obliged to squeeze themselves tightly as more people get on at the front.  The driver will say, “move on back please”; but it’s the people in front who keep on compressing their space so one more, or five more, people can get on after you’d think we had reached the maximum number possible.  The concept of personal space is definitely a luxury not affordable in most situations.  One is often surprised how intimate people have to become in order to get from place to place.

People often are carrying bags of goods when they ride the rutiera.  These would be items they just purchased at the market and were returning home with.  Often I have seen people bring long thin wood quarter round or Styrofoam trim boards on the bus.  They thread them through the front door and try to line them up in the overhead racks or along the window side of the seats.   When someone is bringing fresh fish home from the market, the smell of fresh fish fills the air.  And sometimes people bring live animals on board such as chicks in a box, or a live hen for supper.  Once I saw a man standing in the aisle with a live chicken under his arm.  The head of the chicken was looking direcly at the ear of the person seated on the aisle seat. 

The windows of the rutiera do not open.  There usually are two air outlets in the center ceiling of the vehicle.  The two front doors do have standard roll down windows.  These are rarely lowered.  This limit on ventilation is usually most critical in the summer when the air temperature can be over mid 70’s outside. No, rutieras are not air conditioned.  Given the crowded nature of most rutieras, the heat in the summertime can be challenging.  To top it off, Moldovans have a belief that the “current” or draft of air can bring illness.  So one can be in a hot, crowded rutiera and there will be some life saving air coming in from the ceiling vent and a passenger will complain about the current and ask that the air vent be closed.

Almost everyone in Moldova has a cell phone.  It is always fun to listen as you ride the rutiera to the various ring tones in use.  Occasionally you will come across the high tech user who has ear phones and is listening to their own music.  Or sometimes you find a game player involved with a video game.  But usually, the Moldovan phone call is quick.   A few “da’s” and “hai da vai.”  A favorite trick of people who want to talk to you is to call and quickly hang up.   This gives you their number as a missed call and they can talk to you on your dime when you call them back. 




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