Metros, that’s a proper science…

I just took the metro from university, where I just handed in my bachelor thesis (finally, one might say), to work. I had to transfer once, as you do, not thinking much, and was then standing in a packed train of the U3 line, which is Vienna’s line from east to west. Then I saw a kid, maybe 8, entering and, following him a bit more nervously what appeared to be his grandparents.

They stood in the isle, the metro had emptied a little more at that time, when the lady asked her husband where they were heading. He said, somewhat confidently “Westbahnhof”. Then she asked him what line they were on and he replied “the orange one”. She looked at the metro maps above the doors and mumbled: “Metros, that’s a proper science. A proper science …”. Then, just when the man was about to point out to the lady where the metro was at that point, she discovered it and then they both happily pointed at the spot on the map where they just had arrived. “How did you know?”, she asked him and the kid chipped in “Because you read the name of the line before, didn’t you Grandpa!? It’s the 3 line, isn’t it?” Grandpa smiled and nodded. When I left the metro, two people standing around them were smiling, grandma thought it was a bit embarrassing how they behaved in the big city and said, with a bit of a humor in her voice “No, no … we go back to the countryside. We have the 1 and the 3 and that’s it. Metros … that’s a proper science.”

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