Cape Town Station embodies this apartheid legacy of inequality and segregation:

The first station developments on the site date back to the mid 1800s when rail began playing an important role in the history of the early settlement at the Cape, the Boer War, the Apartheid Era and the Resistance of 1980′s on. The existing station development dates back to the early 1960s when the Victorian structure on Adderley Street was demolished to make way for a modern building that embodied the policy of apartheid, through the introduction of separate concourses and entrances for people of different population groups… The challenge of the present is to re-interpret the station as a profound symbol of the city and to determine how it will influence what happens at its edges, what effect it will have on the city, what potentials it can realise and what it will represent to the people of Cape Town, South Africa and the rest of the World.

(From PRASA’s Xchange Project).

Most passengers today use the First Class entrances and waiting areas, since the station areas are no longer segregated. The station’s design obscures the Third Class areas, its “back doors,” from passengers using the First Class facilities. To get an insight into these “back doors” that non-whites were forced to use during apartheid, I participated in a tour called “First Class Treasures,” part of Cape Town’s Infecting the City public art festival.

Using spoken word, music, and video, the tour was an “unusual and illuminating journey through the old and new parts of the Cape Town City Station.” Jethro Louw, “the godfather of the spoken word in Cape Town,” provided powerful insights into how the evolution of the railroad and the station heightened social tensions, beginning with South Africa’s first steam locomotives and trains. The tour ended in the Third Class suburban concourse, a neglected hallway with more pigeons than passengers.

It was in the Third Class concourse that I saw a billboard for the Xchange Project, promising investment and renovation for the station. In the project’s Basic Information Document, PRASA outlines four goals:

• Reframe the role of Cape Town Station to become a vibrant, operationally efficient and dignified public transport hub at the heart of Cape Town
• Re-organise spatial and functional arrangements that facilitate operational efficiencies,

… Read the rest

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find any direct flights from Panama City to my next destination, Dar es Salaam. Since the cheapest flight to Europe was to Frankfurt, I decided to fly there, take a train down to Italy, and catch a ferry to Africa. My red-eye flight from Panama City was originally scheduled to land in Frankfurt at 7:00 AM, giving me plenty of time to travel by train to Florence, where I would spend the night. I was looking forward to this opportunity to see the Alps by train during the winter. When I arrived at the airport, however, I found out the flight had been “retimed,” departing seven hours late due to winter weather in Europe. When I arrived in Frankfurt, I found out the trains were running late because of weather problems too. There was no way to make it to Munich in time for my train to Florence; luckily, I was able to book a spot on the night train.

After my first train journey of the trip (and my first time on a DeutscheBahn ICE train) from the Frankfurt Flughafen Station to the Munich Hauptbahnhof, I had a couple of hours to pick up some bratwurst and ride around the U-Bahn. I boarded City Night Line Train 485 for the 9:00 PM departure. The ride through Bayern and up into Austria was breathtaking. Though I didn’t get to see the mountains during the day, as I had originally hoped, there was something magical about riding through the night with the snow on the ground and lights sparkling in the distance – this was probably the closest to the Polar Express I’ll ever get. The tracks winding through the mountains south of Innsbruck were especially nice, and I loved watching trucks barreling down the highway that paralleled the tracks into Bressanone. I arrived at Firenze Santa Maria Novella at 6:20 the next morning, exhausted after staying up for most of the night watching the scenery.

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The video below has some Google Earth flyovers of the route.

METRO DE PANAMÁ from 5sentidos on Vimeo.

One of the friends I made through Alianza Pro Ciudad was a fellow transportation engineering student. His perspectives on the country’s history, politics, and development were fascinating especially given his work with a consulting firm on Panama’s planned Metro. The project to alleviate the city’s congestion is a major priority for President Martinelli’s administration. I enjoyed his stories about having to go through security checks to attend project meetings at the Presidential Complex and the unrealistic deadlines the politicians set for the engineers.

A highlight of my time in Corozal was a visit to one of the District’s hand-cranked ferries. I was particularly interested in seeing a school bus make the crossing. After talking with some local residents, I understood that the bus from Corozal Town to Copper Bank would leave at 7:00 AM and travel the 5 km to the ferry, from which I could walk back to town. Matthew, a fellow traveler I met in Belize City, and I made it to the town square a bit before 7:00, but the Lino’s Bus we were looking for was nowhere to be found. So we decided to walk out to the ferry.

After we had walked for about half an hour, around the corner ahead of us turned the Lino’s Bus we had been looking for, going the opposite direction into Corozal. I figured it was running late because of muddy roads, and that we would be able to hop on it when it returned to Copper Bank. By 9:15, having endured much mud and little shade, we made it to the Pueblo Nuevo Ferry.

I asked one of the ferry workers who was leaving his shift what time the bus would be returning, and he replied, “about 10:30.” So we decided to wait and watch vehicles cross the river for an hour, during which time we nourished some mosquitoes and helped push a stalled Volkswagen Jetta up onto the ferry.

At 10:30, David, the other ferry worker (who works a twelve hour shift, from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM), came over to us and asked what we were waiting for. I told him about my project and how I wanted to see the Copper Bank bus crossing back over. “You’re going to be waiting a long time; it doesn’t come back until 7:30 tonight,” he responded. He then explained that the Lino’s Bus driver had indeed come back across on the ferry a couple minutes before; unless there was a large crowd needing to get to Copper Bank in the morning, the driver usually left the bus in town and hitchhiked home for lunch.

We laughed at all of the misunderstandings about times, helped crank the ferry back to the Corozal side, and caught a ride back to town in the bed of a pickup truck.

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