Horns

More street scenes. I was walking up Roosevelt Rd yesterday evening in the direction of the ASIAA where I had to meet two postdocs to go have dinner and talk about serveral things related to group meetings. It was past six, which is when it seems that there is more traffic, and more chaotic, and I could hear a siren. There was an ambulance trapped on the other side of the street, in the middle of many cars and scooters. While I was walking by I kept looking at it and almost nobody was moving. Probably because they could not do it, or if they did it was very difficult.

What surprised me the most, in the more or less one minute that it took to the traffic wave coming from the downstream light to arrive, was that I could not hear any car horn. I am sure that there would have been a concert in Barcelona, among the people that would have wanted to move aside to let the ambulance pass, the ones who could not do it, the ones who wouldn't do it and the ones who are more righteous than anybody else. Not here. I may have talked about it before, but they only use the horns in extreme, for them, cases. Sometimes in normal situations, too. I am grateful, because the last thing we would need is to have something like I saw in China with the huge amount of traffic here. But, at the same time, I am beginning to think that it may make it more difficult to get used to the way they drive here.