Sunday, March 27, 2016

Dinner and a show: updating a few comments from earlier

In my last post, I mentioned that we had not yet witnessed an accident. That is no longer true.

Late last week we were enjoying a beautiful day with our first visitors. Our balcony windows were opened wide to let in the sun and air and sound. No sooner had we begun dinner than we heard the unmistakable thud of a car accident in the street below. This is the aftermath of what we witnessed (thanks to Bea for the photo):


Minutes after the accident a couple of curious trams swung by to see what was going on.

I love this photo precisely because I do not understand so many things about it:
  1. The damage on the brown car lies exclusively in front. It looks like the impact was on the passenger side of the front bumper, and that bumper has served its duty. That's not much of a stretch, except...
  2. The black car is undamaged in back. As best we could tell, it was only damaged in the front. Why wouldn't the two cars be facing each other? Except...
  3. This is a one way street, and here it crosses the tram line, not another street. Only a significant talent for rule-breaking above and beyond the norm could accomplish a front-to-front impact here.
  4. Now look more closely. How did the black car get there? From its angle, it looks to have threaded the needle of two pedestrian-protection posts and passed through a pedestrian signal light. That's impressive driving or grade A wizardy.
  5. Look even more closely. The black car sits atop the loading platform for the tram, which involved a climb of two large stairs. This affirms the angle proposed in the previous point.
  6. How did this happen, and how did the cars end up like this? I have no idea...no idea that doesn't involve magic.
Some of our new neighbors may be slow to make space when the front of the bus is crowded and the back is wide open, but there was no hesitation to jump in to help the wounded.
The trams approached the intersection aggressively, which motivated the bystanders to push the second car out of the way shortly after this photo was taken.

But I tell you, there was honking. Lots and lots of honking from people who DID NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS.

Yes. The honking.

We woke Sunday morning to the strange sounds of people cheering. I had figured that it was either some kids causing a ruckus or some older kids who had stayed out much too late. It turns out that a 10K was passing beneath us (and the marathon passed by later in the day).

Everything is awesome when you're nearing the end of a 10K.

Police set up shop at the intersections to keep the cars and mopeds at bay. They had plenty of warning, but apparently some of the drivers were very unhappy that they had to wait for the runners to go by.

We're still laughing over the honking (video credit to Bea, who was fascinated by the ambulance following the group at the tail end of the race)

As my good friend Rob would say, "More honking!"

1 comment:

  1. Maybe they think their horns sound beautiful like their language.

    ReplyDelete