How to tell you’ve grown old: When women, some middle-aged, offer a man, like me, a seat on a crowded subway train. It seems to be an Hispanic custom–it has recently happened to me in subways in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, Chile. (It also happened about 5 years ago in (wonder of wonders!) New York City; that time it was a young man who offered me his seat.)

How have I responded to these offers? At first, I gratefully declined. However, after a woman told me that she was getting off at the next station, I accepted. After that, when offered a seat I would inquire if the offeror was getting off soon; if I didn’t get a definite response, I would assume that I was getting an answer in the affirmative, and take the seat.

Getting back to Hispanic custom, a year ago in Madrid’s Barajas airport, which was very crowded at the moment, I was slightly limping on my way to a check-in counter, the limping due to having worn some new shoes that didn’t rub me the right way the day before. Upon seeing me, a middle-aged man offered me his seat. I thanked him, saying that I was not stopping at his location.

So, advanced age does get some respect in certain parts of the world.

The matter of offering seats to others in public places makes me remember that, during my college days in North Carolina, it was the custom for men to offer their seats to women who were standing in public busses. Any man, especially a young one, could expect disapproving stares from other passengers if he failed to abide by this custom. It was quite the contrary in New York City, where I went to live and work at my first job out of college: no one got up and offered a seat on the subway to anyone else; anyone doing so would probably have felt a bit sheepish, feeling that the surrounding passengers would be thinking, "Oh, a newcomer who doesn’t know any better."

More thoughts about riding public conveyances: It has become a hobby of mine to ride subways in cities that I visit (or other public conveyances, if a city has no subway). I have done so in the following cites:

Subways USA:
New York
Chicago
Washington
Baltimore
Philadelphia
Atlanta
Boston

Subways other countries:
Montreal
Mexico City
Paris
London
Madrid
Barcelona
Rome
Budapest
Vienna
Prague
Helsinki
Buenos Aires
Santiago, Chile

Subways in most cities have several different lines: Paris, as far as I am aware, has the most (13); London, Madrid, and New York each has 10. In all but New York the different lines intermingle like spaghetti, so that by paying one fare a rider can easily reach his destination by transferring from one line to another (sometimes by transferring more than once). Not so in New York: there are just a few transfer points between certain lines, so that, unless the transfer points just happen to be along the route that the traveler would take anyway, he would have to travel in a roundabout, time-consuming way to avail himself of them.

I believe that, of the foreign cities, Madrid’s subway is the best that I have ridden. Trains come frequently, are clean, and stations are well-laid out. Paris’s would probably come next; like London’s, a passenger can buy a pass to use the subway as often as he wants during certain time periods, one day, a week, a month, etc. Madrid’s doesn’t offer this arrangement(or didn’t the last time I was there in September 2004), but one can buy a ticket for a specified number of rides (e.g, 10). London’s, like New York’s, is old and many of the stations are grimy.

Washington’s, being modern and clean, is very nice. I also liked Mexico City’s and Montreal’s.

The subways in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest are interesting. You walk in and buy a ticket (from a ticket vending machine or at a ticket window) for a specified time period, like 24 hours; you then walk right to your platform without putting your ticket into a turnstile. It’s the honor system, but, according to all the literature about those cities, plain-clothes inspectors patrol the platforms and trains and may ask for tickets to be shown–a passenger who can’t produce an unexpired ticket will face a heavy fine.

Because Latin American countries’ currencies are currently weak against the U.S. dollar, subway fares in Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile are amazingly inexpensive for travelers from the USA. The fare in Buenos Aires in April 2005 was equivalent to about 23 cents, the fare that I paid to ride busses in Baltimore 50 years ago.