Whenever I saw subway trains pass in front of apartment windows in old American movies, I thought, well, thankfully that does not happen here.
You know, we’re kind of socialist, have always been, we regulate, we don’t let capitalists build cheap houses that make their inhabitants sick, we care. Or so I thought.
In Paris - and the French like regulations as we do - I encountered similar arrangements, rattling trains passing in front of apartment windows, but I thought, hey, Paris is big.
Today I see it more and more often: new apartment buildings so near to the trains that you almost think you could jump from the train to someone’s balcony. We still regulate, only we don’t seem to care any more.
This is one of those buildings, right at the Underground station that I use once a week on my way to the train to Carinthia. The street front has windows, but they don’t seem to belong to apartments. I guess those are on the other side. The side facing the busy street and the Underground line (here in the suburbs high above ground), is nothing but a dead facade. In a way it is even interesting, only I wouldn’t want to live there.
The Song of the Day is “I’m Waiting at the Station” by a young Aaron Neville. Hear it on YouTube.