"In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called metaphorai. To go to work or come home, one takes a 'metaphor'- a bus or a train. Stories could also take this noble name: every day, they traverse and organize places; they select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories" (Michel de Certeau, trans. Steven Randall, 1984).

Confirmable Knowing: They Did Not Ride This

The metro train in Sofia.

It's blue, chrome, compact, and retro. Hipper than Carla Bruni rejecting the "Wives' Tour" at the G-8 in L'Aquila. Dressed better than Daniel Radcliffe at a movie premier. It's the Niko Case or Christiano Ronaldo or Judith Butler of the subway world. If I stood on its platform, it would ignore me.

In Re: We Didn't Ride These Things

Hello for a final time from the Balkans. It's getting too hot to move here, & so we're coming home.

In response to Mr Brains' inquiries to our use of bulgarous public transit, we traveled most everywhere by bus or foot. It's funny, yesterday, right when you were posting that question about the Ruse train, we were in Ruse attempting to get on a train to Romania, told "there is problem", & so had to go back overto the bus station. (Easier said than done, because the scam-artist taxi drivers are like a nagging combination of vulture & mosquito.) The bus was just a van with only us in it & a hungover chainsmoking driver who looked like Chigurgh from "No Country for Old Men" & kept chewing us out for strange reasons (putting the seat down, bread crumbs, &c.)

The electric buses in Bucharest, pictured in Brains' other posts, are easy to jump on & there seems to be no way to pay for your tickets (in comparison to Bulgaria, where little old ladies on the bus come & collect money.) We had a beer last night in a caffe over one of the temporarily dug-up streets in old town, where creaky boardwalks transport pedestrians over the nasty pits all thru this part of town, a popular neighborhood for stray dog fornication. It's lovely, actually, because there's no cars, just good-looking Bucureşteans promenading & carousing on the boardwalks; every city should be so fortunate to have it's old town all dug up.

Our last week was spent more-or-less around Varna, an old resort on the Black Sea, & various Eastern sites where Mr Quill's friends live. We met the famous Anton. I guess more impressions from our travels will trickle down, & some of the films will appear here. I recommend spending some time with Grainne's travelogue, "Beautiful to Forget, More Beautiful Still to Be Forgotten." (I like if you put those Scribd books into fullscreen & put on the book-flipping option.)

Did They Ride This?

We have yet to hear back from any of our intrepid travelers whether they rode this. For posterity!

Did you ride this?



It's a view of platform two at Rousse Central station. Perhaps you rode this on your way to Sofia? We must know.

Did They Ride This?

Did you ride this in Rousse?

It's the zero-emissions trolleybus in Русе (Rousse), Bulgaricita's fifth largest city. I once had a coworker who was from this city!

Did They Ride This?

Recently the It Was Lost community convened in Bulgaria. Our charter prevents us from gathering all our sexiness in one place. It would put precious resources at risk and overwhelm the locals we encounter. We left our sexiest contributors at home in a show of due diligence.

Yet everyone plays a vital role! In this series, I, the Secretary of the Department of Nonviolent Nondriving, Soccer, & Roshambo, inquire whether the It Was Lost community rode this. The findings will contribute greatly to our Archive of Confirmable Knowings.

Did you ride this?



It's the very functional looking Metroul Bucureşti, which has four lines and added four brand new stations just last Novemeber 2008.





And did you ride this?



It's the RATB in Bucharest, a huge above-ground system that consists of three rapid transit options. Trams, light rail, and zero-emissions buses for you wonks.

Careful what you say in your responses: S. Sandrigon is wanted in the American state of Oregon for fare dodging!