Cape Town Trains

Commuting by train in Cape Town is a hoot.

From the archaic ticketing system that means everyone has to buy their weekly ticket - from a person behind a little window - before their train on a Monday… resulting in Monday ticket queues that are train-missingly insane… (I haven’t tried for the Month-start-Monday combo bet of weekly and monthly ticket purchasers yet)…

To the jostling queueing and doors-opening-mad-rush for a seat as folks wait at their train a full 20 minutes before it’s due to depart.

From the crazy cheapness of the tickets - a mere R59 (A$5) per week to commute 35km each way…

To the unintelligible platform announcements that are the only way to know which train you’re getting onto (I nearly went to Belleville today!).

From  the automatic ticket barriers installed in 2012 (per the instagram post from then commenting on them) that still don’t work in 2024, and the PRASA tannies doing manual ticket inspections as we all queue, again to enter, and leave the station…

To the laughing, smiling, diverse, friendly mix of every-hue’d faces.

From the amazing picturesque trip along the edge of False Bay…

To the memories stirred by the view of my old university flat as I fly past Rondebosch and the house I lived in where my daughter was born in Muizenberg.

It is a slow, happy, cheap, infuriating, real, nostalgic, grounded, levelling and generally fulfilling experience.

Whether I can justify the time, when I have parking in town and the relative speed and comfort of a car, is yet to be seen. Will I succumb to privilege and comfort? Perhaps.

But for now, it is the most connected I have felt to this place since coming back three years ago.