I'm back!

It’s Friday night* and I’ve only got one working day left this week. Yeah! What’s bad about my job: too many hours, too many vegetarian-unfriendly things I have to do. What’s good: very cool people, free English lessons all day long and a tiny little bit of the creative chaos I love to work in. And I get to read the NZ Herald during my breaks, what can be really funny sometimes. 

Today I read about Hop, the new Auckland “smartcard ticketing system” that makes it easier to pay public transport fees: You simply have to swipe your hop card when entering and leaving the vehicle. When I first heard of this, I was quite impressed because even Weltstadt Hamburg hasn’t got anything like that. (Bremen, which by the way is the most beautiful city on earth, has got such a system, too.)

Then today I read an article about the problems there are with launching Hop. The main trouble is that people tend to forget swiping their card when they leave the bus (to guarantee a maximum of confusion, Hop is not yet available on trains and ferries – and not even on every kind of bus). As this neglect costs an extra fee of around 5 dollars, many then try to hop (harhar) on the bus again to swipe their card. And this can be dangerous and lead to serious injuries and even death, when the bus is on its way again.

I am really very, very curious about how all of this is going to go on – and now, I’ll hop to a glass of red wine.  

*Blogger was unavailable yesterday evening