People of Stockholm, Your Attention Please (Part 2)

This is an escalator:

It doesn't look too difficult to deal with, does it? It looks quite safe and well, innocent, sitting there with its movable staircase. Well you are WRONG. Because we are in Stockholm now and NOTHING is ever that easy.

Actually going up the escalator is quite a trouble-free experience. The general population accepts that you should stand on the right and allow others to pass on the left. Basic manners and inter-person reactionary skills are evident. However it is when entering or exiting the escalators that the real treat starts.

You see, to get on or off an escalator you need to move. Physically alternate leg usage until you are away from the area at the top or bottom of the escalator. Here in Sweden this does cause a problem as, inexplicably, it would appear that the top and bottom of escalators are also meeting places. People happily walk to the bottom of the escalator and stop, look mistifyingly into the distance as if communicating with a higher version of themselves, whilst a conga of commuters is developing behind said person.

Even worse is at the top of the escalator. The dreaded people that get off the escalator and then believes thatall previously experienced modes of transport, especially working, seem to no longer apply to the universe. They stand there, looking into the distance, chatting to their mates, talking a long, drawn-out drag on their fag, solving numerous unsolved mathematicaly problems and God knows what else. Unfortunately they are onblivious to the fact that the escalator doesn't actually stop when he (or she, we're all sexual here - or something) gets off it. An army of shoppers is now trying to get past your unusually lacking in your droopy H&M slacks butt. People have to be pushed, words are said and people all end up in a bad mood. Which all clould have been avoided if the tit up front had managed to move his arse when he got to the top of the escalator.

Doors are the same. People just stand in the middle of them as if somehow this doesn't block the door from performing its one and only duty, to allow people to enter and exit the building. Or then it gets creepy, the people who manage to exit the door (congratulations) but then stop about one metre away from it directly in the flight path of anybody who could possibly be walking past the shop. Yes, you! You who is walking past! CLEARLY IT IS YOUR FAULT! GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Well, actually, I wish they would shout that, but instead they give you the silent treatment, like you'd just shagged their best friend's Mum whom they have had their eye on since that barbeque last spring. They just stand there, motionless. So you've got a choice, either play chicken in a way which will innevitably end with the soft sound of righteous shopper on annoying git or you can get out of the way EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE THE ONE WHO HAD RIGHT OF WAY. Christ, you can fail you driving test on this sort of basic stuff.

So, Stockholmers and their relationships with escalators and doors. Is it any wonder that the prime meeting place on a Saturday Afternoon is at the top of the escalators to T-Centralen , right beside the main exit to Åhléns City on Drottninggatan, the top shopping street in town? It is like they checked the map and found the most annoying place with the maximum potential for being a git.

Now, inexplicable as it may seem, I wasn't able to find an image of where I am talking about EVEN THOUGH YOU ALL KNOW WHERE IT IS. And I'm buggered if I am going to make an effort and actually get of my arse, go down town and take a photo. So here is the next best thing, a Project Gotham Racing 2 Screenshot. The car is pointing towards the exit out from Centralen to Åhléns. The large building on the left is Åhléns and will continue further down to the left. The sun is setting (or perhaps I forgot to turn my flash off) down the far end of Drottninggatan. To the right of the picture, the road continues around Sergels Torg and that weird sticky uppy thing.

M Panda