What it's like to suddenly be free for the first time

I was asked a question on Quora recently, "What is it like to be blind and take public transportation?" Oh, boy! They did ask though. I can get a little intense on this subject. And since my last post picked on the Czech Republic and trains, two things that have brought much good into my life, I feel like I need to balance the scales.

So, I'm reposting my answer here. Fair warning. They might as well have asked, "What is it like to be free for the first time?"

I grew up in a remote rural area in the US. The nearest "town" was five miles away. Population 250. My best friend lived twelve miles away. Most of those miles were rough gravel roads that make bike riding take a lot of extra energy. Riding to the nearest town on bikes was the first right of passage. My older brother did it first. Then me. 

Yup, I was legally blind. I did it anyway. I can see just enough to tell if there are large shapes right in front of my front tire. If I don't ride too fast I can follow the blurry color of the road and not end up in the ditch. If there aren't very many cars - and there was only one every hour or so - I do okay. When I was eight or nine I decided that I was going to ride to a slightly larger town, where our school was located, about ten miles from home. My brother, who was two years older, hadn't even ridden that far yet. He didn't believe I would. I got up early one spring morning, packed a lunch and set off. He caught up with me a few miles later and beat me over the line of the city limits of the town by about half a second. So, okay, he technically made it to that town first too. 

I always knew I wasn't going to be able to drive. It was like knowing if you're right or left handed. I didn't think it was a big deal. Everyone around knew I couldn't see much. It didn't matter in most things. We used to joke, "Shucks, Arie won't be able to be a truck driver or a pro-basketball player. She'll have to be lawyer instead." We were dirt poor but I was a champion debater. I almost always won arguments with adults. And we all set our sights high. 

Not driving started to become an issue when I was a teenager. I saw my brother drive off to see his friends on the weekends. I had to beg for rides everywhere and distances were large. I often couldn't get a ride and there were many lonely weekends. I wanted to join the teenage life of the nearby towns but when I was fourteen my older brother had to live with another family in order to attend a better school hours away, so I didn't have him to give me rides. I was mostly stuck.

When I was sixteen I won a scholarship to study in Germany as an exchange student. I spent a year with a German family and had my first real experiences riding buses and trains. I rode a bus from my host family's suburb into the city to go to school. But I knew there were buses in the US like that - usually one line that went from point A to point B. I had spent a summer working in Portland, Oregon and that was how the buses went. They went so rarely that you had to plan your whole day around their schedule and if where you wanted to go wasn't on that one special bus line, you were just out of luck or you ended up walking for miles through suburban streets that often don't even have sidewalks anymore. So, at first I didn't get it. 

It wasn't until a few years later that it finally clicked. I had met my first love while in Germany. He was a young man from Czechoslovakia in the old East Bloc. A few years later, I returned to Europe to study in what was then the Czech Republic on another foreign exchange program, this time for my university. I lived and studied in a town a hundred miles from the area where my circle of Czech friends mostly lived. And yet, I got to see them every weekend. I would finish with my last class, skip down the long flight of ancient stone steps from the university and right onto a waiting bus to the train station. Trains ran every hour or even more often at peek times. It was no big deal. My friends mostly lived in small villages, scattered around East Bohemia but there were always buses from the train to their houses. 

By Friday night, I would be sitting at the table with my friends drinking good Moravian wine and playing music 'til all hours. And on Sunday night I'd be back in my dorm, ready for classes. At my American university, I never left campus for months at a time. There was nowhere to go and no way to get there where I studied in Wisconsin. 

The next summer found me in Prague, working as an intern for the English-language newspaper The Prague Post. I had to learn the public transportation network perfectly. I often had to rush out to a story or track down some obscure address in an out of the way part of the suburbs. The first few weeks were disorienting. I would come up from the subway (metro) and feel like the world literally spun around me when what I thought was north turned out to be southeast. But by the end of the summer I was a pro. I could calculate complex transfers in my head and I knew where the various subway, tram, bus and train lines went and where they intersected. I could get from any place to any other place ANY TIME I wanted to. 

When I first realized that I literally started sobbing (in private, thank goodness).

I had never dreamed I would be able to get around on my own. I had buried the sorrow of it, told myself that it didn't matter. My family wanted me to be tough and never let on that being legally blind was an issue. And I had mostly done that. But it had mattered. Being trapped and unable to move in a society where everyone else can move around matters.

I have been asked many times why I moved to a country on the other side of the world when I have such close bonds with my family. I call my mom and my brother multiple times every week and we are ever so grateful for Skype and other changes in technology that have made long distance relationships easier. I miss the wild beauty and clean air of Oregon with a constant ache. I'm not really all that fond of a lot of things about Central Europe. I am a country girl and always will be. I don't like cities that much and I yearn for the comfy atmosphere of country kitchens and old friends. But I left all that. I married a Czech man (not my first love, unfortunately) and bought a house in a little town outside Prague. And I am stuck here now.

I did it primarily for public transportation. If it weren't for trains and buses, I would probably be back in Oregon, which still feels like home. We think about moving back sometimes, my husband and I, but our discussions always get stuck on that issue. The only places we could live, where I could have anything like a reasonable lifestyle or career, are the centers of a few large cities. We don't want to live in a big city and even in the cities it isn't easy in the US. I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan one summer. It was doable but the public transportation was rough and grimy and only in the city. It still entailed a lot of miles of walking. 

Early in the industrial era, the United States was an international leader in rail transportation. But the American rail companies were sold to corporations with big oil interests years ago. Some tracks remain but mostly only for heavy freight. Truly useful (defined as quick and ubiquitous) public transportation has been curtailed in the US through a combination of political, economic and geographical problems over more than half a century. As a result, I am an expat, unable to live a reasonable life in my own country. So, yeah, I can get passionate about public transportation.

The Czech Republic has one of the tightest rail networks in the world. There are stops literally everywhere. Other than a few remote areas, public transportation will take you within a mile or two of any destination, often faster than a private car will. I know some companies where the top executives take the slick, air-conditioned, wifi-enabled trains to conferences in other European countries while the lower managers are required to drive the company cars, because it's just faster, better and more pleasant than driving. 

I can go anywhere virtually any time I choose. I take my daughter to guitar lessons and international choir practice in the city just like other mothers. I visit friends in other cities or I just get outside town a mile or two to walk in a forest on a Sunday afternoon. It may sometimes take a little planning if my destination is remote or distant but it is possible. And it would simply be impossible in places without good, tight and truly functional public transportation.  

I love to hear from readers and I don't bite, even if you don't agree with me. Leave a comment below. What unlikely subjects can stir your passion?