ATHENS Chaos is the Greek word for the original state of the universe, and not much seemed to have changed when I first explored Athens in 1975. Back then, the capital was renowned as a city to get away from as quickly as possible, but the traffic jams made even escape a drawn-out trial. If modern Athens is easier on the nerves, it's largely because of the upgraded metro system – surprisingly efficient and remarkably beautiful. A city that boasts the Parthenon already knows something about beauty, but the marble metro stations, adorned with ancient objects uncovered during the subway's construction, increase the aesthetic thrill. And then there's the promise of impulsive subway travel: One Sunday during the 2004 Olympics, I took a ride to the port of Piraeus. Within minutes of leaving the station, I was in a new world of crashing surf and ferries embarking for mythic islands. John Allemang is a feature writer at The Globe.
BEIJING
I've been lucky enough to live in cities with incredible subway systems. For seven years, for instance, I was based in Moscow, where the crumbling socialist murals and heroic statuary of the metro are a stunning evocation of a time when ideology mattered more than oil revenue.
Until recently, Beijing's subway was a more humble affair, covering only a limited portion of the city. But the Olympics sparked a massive expansion, and, like the city itself, the metro is now highly modern and ultra-efficient, with electronic maps of the train's station-to-station progress and tickets that cost just 30 cents.
It is crowded, of course. But the disorderly hordes are slowly yielding to the influence of the government's etiquette campaigns. And the democratic mix of passengers, a cosmopolitan mélange of white-collar yuppies and working-class migrants, is a glimpse into China's new society in all its diversity, energy and ambition.
Of course, if you watch from the corner of your eye, you might see subway riders checking you out, too, even snapping a quick photo. After all, China's booming economy has allowed millions of ordinary people to visit Beijing for the first time. And foreigners are still an exotic sight for a novice tourist from a remote Chinese town. Geoffrey York is The Globe's China correspondent.
BUDAPEST
Inaugurated by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1896, Budapest's first subway line is the oldest in continental Europe. Ride on it and you'll feel like you've stepped back in time. But the city's metro also traffics in the here and now: You'll see old ladies in house dresses next to women in fur and heels, kissing couples, workers in blue overalls and bureaucrats punching messages into their phones. And, yes, there are those ticket inspectors – known for their surliness and universally disliked. A few years ago, Hungarian Nimród Antal even made a movie called Kontroll about their constant conflicts with each other and with passengers, making the metro seem like a wild, lawless place. As the rest of the city modernizes, though, the bureaucratic system of ticket inspectors may soon become as much a relic of the past as the first transit line. There is talk of replacing them with electronic gates. Carolyn Banfalvi is the author of Food Wine Budapest.
PARIS
When I'm in Paris, I go down the steps to the métro and I feel myself entering the city's yin. Here is where Paris dreams of itself under half-lidded eyes. At Bastille, you're standing on the platform beside one of the corners of the destroyed prison wall. At the Louvre station, the benches are made of glass, as if the floors are works of art. Most of the stations are nondescript tubes filled with advertising, but their names advertise the city itself: Saint-Germain-des-Près, Opéra, République. The métro is Paris's cultural and historical mycelium. Above its network are the fruiting bodies of the city itself: its palaces and gardens. When you exit Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, you even find yourself standing under the most beautiful mushroom in the world: the Arc de Triomphe. But the most profound effect the métro has on me? It's that every time I enter it, I know when I exit, I'll still be in Paris.
Michael Redhill is a novelist currently based in France.
TOKYO
I didn't see the famed “push men” – who literally “push” people onto already overcrowded trains – on my visit to Tokyo. But even without that experience, riding the subway in Japan's capital is memorable. Not only is it one of the world's busiest transit systems (Shinjuku Station carries an average of 3,525,520 passengers a day), but it takes you to a world below the city that is often just as exciting as the one at street level. And just as dense. They say that if everyone had to exit all the underground trains and malls and all the above-ground buildings at once, there wouldn't be enough standing room. Which made me feel like I was getting a glimpse into my own city's distant future. One day, Toronto will be much denser and, because of gasoline prices, driving may become a luxury. Perhaps the only difference between Tokyo and Toronto will be those push men. I predict we'll still prefer to wait for the next train.
Dale Duncan is a contributing editor to Spacing magazine.
