Spain Made Me a Spoiled Kid

Yesterday, I had just finished grocery shopping and was walking home briskly when I noticed a young lady standing by the road, moving her arm up and down.

That’s odd, I thought. A few seconds later though, a bus pulled up in front of her.

Ah! She was hailing the bus.

I chuckled, because that tiny moment dragged me straight back to one of my earliest culture shocks in the UK.

When I first moved here, I took my daughter to her music class one Saturday morning. I had a neat little plan mapped out in my head.

Drop her off.
Take the bus home — 20 minutes.
Code for 90 minutes.
Head back to pick her up.

It was a perfect plan… except the bus driver had other ideas.

After dropping her off, I got to the bus stop and waited. Google Maps had said the bus would arrive in three minutes. Great. All that brisk walking was not in vain.

Then I saw the bus approaching. I stood up, ready.

And… it didn’t stop. The bus drove right past me.

To say I was infuriated would be an understatement. I was livid, freezing, frustrated, confused, and offended. The next bus was in 20 minutes, which meant I had rushed, stood in the cold, and suffered... for nothing.

“This driver is wicked,” I muttered to myself, “and either blind or just bad at his job.” Why else would he do this to me?

I frantically checked Google Maps again.
Wrong stop? No.
Wrong route? No.
Wrong time? Also no.

So I resorted to waiting another twenty long, cold minutes.

About eighteen minutes in, a few other people joined me at the bus stop. I felt oddly relieved. At least if the next driver was also mad, I wouldn’t suffer alone. “Welcome my maybe future companions in suffering” should have been how I greeted them, but I stayed quiet, because I’m not a mad person.

Then we saw the bus approaching. My heart started racing. And suddenly, everyone stood up, stepped forward, and began moving their arms up and down.

The bus stopped. Wait. Wait. What????

You’re telling me the reason I’d been stranded in the cold for twenty extra minutes was because I didn’t do the arm ritual? The ritual no one told me about? No memo, no onboarding, nothing.

Anyways, we got on the bus, and I was saved from the cold briefly, until I had to walk home after alighting.

The Real Culprit

I grew up in Nigeria. Over there, we had to actually do the arm ritual if we wanted to signal a bus or taxi to stop. The buses didn’t have schedules, so it felt normal to have to wave them down. You’d naturally find buses at a stop or just wait for one to show up.

So why was this such a shock to me?

Because before moving to the UK, I lived in Spain.

In Spain, buses stop because they’re meant to stop. Schedule says 10:30? The bus shows up, and stops even if no one’s there. That’s it.

That makes sense, no? If the bus is scheduled to be there, it should be there. If it’s to wait for 30 seconds, it should. Someone might still be running to catch it.

Spain had spoiled me.

I had become a spoiled child used to having everything on a platter and living the soft life. That was the real culprit.

The UK slapped me back to reality. “Girl,” it said, “if you don’t hustle, you go nowhere. I don’t care if you’ve been waiting for an hour. No arm ritual, no bus.”

So when I saw that lady confidently waving her arm yesterday, I smiled. She obviously wasn’t a JJC. She knew the rules. Or maybe like me, she once learned the hard way. Who knows?

I’m not going to say I miss Spain, else my friends over there will laugh at me. They already mock me enough about the UK weather. No need to give them extra ammunition.

I have many fun stories from my time moving countries and maybe I’ll write about them more often.

‘Til next time amigo. Have a great weekend!
Hasta luego 👋🏾