Where's Waldo? And Laura? And Ronaldo? And Oscar? And Fred? And Paula? And Marcia? And João? And Olga? and Regina? And Clara, Fabio, Cleusa, Rodrigo, Gisela, André, Diego, Mariana...

Whenever I think about cities in the world I would like to see, the first one that comes to mind is Moscow.  There are many reasons but the main one is not Lenin's mausoleum, not the Red Square, not even its many beautiful, unusual churches; the single biggest attraction Moscow has to offer me is its Metro/Underground/Subway.  Whatever you want to call it.

I like public transportation. I especially like it when I don't have to get anywhere in a hurry, depending on where I am.  While in São Paulo, when I was alone I chose to take the metro.  It's clean, cheap, and safe.  Yes, safe. Believe it or not, one of the safest places one can be in this city is the metro.  Maybe it's because everyone's in such a hurry to get somewhere no one thinks about committing a crime; and plus which, why would a thief want to steal anything from someone who takes the metro in SP?  Rich ppl take helicopters these days, making it the city with the most heliports in the world. 

So as I was going from the West part of town to the South, to visit my mother, I took the metro, which got me there in exactly 1 hr 35mins, including walking time. With luggage.  Even a helicopter wouldn't have been this fast, if we count how long it'd have taken me to get to the heliport and wait till the pilot faffled about with the million little buttons on the control panel and got permission from whatever tower to take off blahblah etc.  And the price!! No comparison.  The metro is far more efficient than any other means of transportation.  And, according to me, more fun, too.  

One gets to observe so many unusual things, so many ppl, distracted by their mobile phones, or confused about how to get where, adapting to new stations and new lines, reading, listening to music... or, like me, taking photos.

Actually, just this one.  I hadn't been to this station yet or, if I had, it didn't have this "look".  I found it both interesting and perturbing.  It is v odd because there were no ppl in the carriage-- only these... specters, ppl who look like they belong in one of the video games I have seen ... Resident Evil or some such...  floating heads on Plexiglass; not a single human in sight.  How can this be?  It's SP, population 17million.  

Of course it got more and more full as it approached the center of the city.

We joke, us Paulistanos, about what one must do when one's feeling lonely, forgotten, feeling the vastness of the Universe and how disconnected and alone we all are in this world... how there is so little human warmth anymore.

We'll tell you, when you're feeling this way, you must head to Sé station at 6PM.