As students finish class at SLU-Madrid, they head towards the closest metro station; Guzman El Bueno is a 5-minute walk from campus and that is where Chloe Meuhlmeier was trying to go after a long, hot day of school.
She follows her friend who takes a different line but soon realizes she’s walking the wrong way. The residential area she found herself in was deserted, and there was no metro station to be seen.
After wandering for about half-an-hour, she spotted Cuatro Caminos, not the original station she was looking for but sufficient to get to her apartment with extra metro stops. She spent an extra 20 minutes getting home that day.
Chloe Meuhlmeier, a junior at SLU-Madrid studying in Spain for the semester, along with many other students, have numerous challenges navigating public transportation in Spain. But they have ultimately learned important life lessons as well as adopted a positive outlook on public transportation.
“Taking public transportation in Spain, I have learned to have more patience since living in a fast-paced world. I always want to get somewhere right away,” Meuhlmeier said. “Taking the metro 35 minutes to and from school every day has forced me to slow down, enjoy the music I’m listening to, and stare into space.”
The Madrid Metro reaches 12 municipalities in Madrid, where over 75% of the residents live less than 600 metres away from a Metro station. It runs over 295 km and has 302 stations throughout the network according to the Metro de Madrid official website.
Students studying at SLU-Madrid live in many different areas from Tirso de Molina, to Sol, to Arapiles, and to many more neighborhoods. Therefore, each student takes different lines of the 13 conventional lines Madrid Metro offers and other forms of public transportation to arrive at school.
Ana Coleman, a junior studying physical therapy at SLU-Madrid for the semester, scans her metro card and pushes through the gates of her closest metro station, Alonso Martinez. She prepares herself for her familiar 30-minute metro ride to school.
She does not take a second glance at the list of metro stops because it’s second nature from the hundreds of trips to school before. She strolls down the steps to the line 10 as the packed metro pulls up right in time.
Stepping onto the metro, she shuffles around people to find a place to stand and holds onto the railing. The metro takes a leaping start and the bright white lights against the black walls zoom past the window.
“Here, the metro is safer and more efficient,” Coleman said. “It’s made my life so much easier and with school being much further and not living on campus it is nice to have something that is always reliable.”
In Chicago, her hometown, Coleman mentions that public transportation is sketchy and hard to navigate therefore she rarely takes it.
Catherine Higgins looks up from her phone as she sits at the Guzman El Bueno San Francisco De Sales stop. The bus halts to a stop in front of her as she gets ready to take her 15-minute bus ride to school in the morning.
It is the first day of class and she has no idea how her first commute to school will go. She gave herself an extra 30 minutes in case there were any issues.
As she keeps an eye on the stops, she notices her stop is up next. The bus approaches her stop but does not start to slow down. As the bus flies by her intended bus stop near Saint Louis University, her face drops.
“The first time I took the bus I did not know I had to press the button to get off,” Higgins said. “I was very confused.”
She mentions that her commute to school is very convenient for her and her roommates since the bus stop is so close to their apartment. Higgins enjoys her commute every day to school because it’s faster than driving.
Of the 2.4 million daily riders of the Madrid Metro, Riya Aradhyula, a junior studying Neuroscience at SLU-Madrid, walks down the Guzman El Bueno Metro station for her commute home from school.
Stepping onto the escalator towards Anden 2 on Line 6, she turns to her friend to start debriefing on the day at school.
As she turns the corner, she looks up to the sign saying the metro will be arriving in five minutes and she sighs. Her and her friend start singing a song that was stuck in their head, from their dance class they had just finished.
“It can be tiring taking the Metro every day, but I like having the distance between school and home because it gives me time to reflect, decompress, and mess around,” Aradhyula said. “I appreciate the metro because it’s better for the environment.”
On the same busy Line 6 but at the Moncloa stop, Melissa Hong, a student studying Health Science, sits patiently in a seat. She has her air pods in and isn’t worried about getting to school on time because she left 10 minutes early.
“The most valuable lesson I learned is to always leave 10 minutes earlier than Google Maps says because of possible metro delays or other technical difficulties,” Hong said.
