If you really pressed me I'd have to admit that I found BART more interesting than Berkeley. Afterall everybody knows about Berkeley, but who knows anything about BART. I suppose, on second thoughts, that most people must have heard of BART but know little about it and since Berkeley is so large we are all ignorant on both counts. Still, I'd read about BART in various magazines and looked forward to having a ride on it, after the subways of New York it would have to be as new and as modern as tomorrow. And that's just how it was. The trip began a little less excitingly with a tram ride -- I know that in San Francisco they don't call them trams but years of education into that name have made it impossible for me to think of them as anything else, even if they do look a little different. Pox someone used to the green and yellow monsters that prowl the streets of Melbourne the San Francisco counterparts look odd, almost like busses on rails, but T. reckon they serve the same purpose. Valma and I got off on the wrong foot right away. By that time we were used to the cars going in the wrong direction but somehow trams seemed different and we kept looking down the road to the left expecting them to appear from that direction. Matthew Tepper kept trying to tell us but instinct took hold and when the vehicle arrived we almost missed. San Francisco is really a beautiful city, it has its bad parts like any other city but either they are hidden away well or they blend in with the rest of the city so well that we didn't notice them. There was also the excitement of seeing the city for the first time in the daylight which made the ride all that more enjoyable. Somewhere along Market Street Matthew made us get off the tram and we descended into the earth on a long escalator. The station was a very new and very nice affair but I doubt we would have figured out all the right things to do to get from one side of the little fence with the gates in it to the other, if Matthew hadn't been there to help us with the various things that have to be done. It's all rather simple when you know what's going on but being confronted by a big panel with a couple of slots in it can be rather confusing, To get a ticket all you have to do is put pnme money in the top slot, a little hole had a machine which tells you how much you've put in and then when you reckon you've spent enough you push a button and your ticket pops out the slot at the bottom with the amount you fed into the machine printed on it. BART tickets have a black stripe down one side, this is a sort of magnetic strip which records how much has been spent and how much money the ticket is still worth. Alongside the strip the same values are written for us humans to read, quite unnecessary for the computer but nice for us. When you want to get on to the platform levels you front up to one of their little gates and stick your ticket into the slot. The machine sucks it in, inspects it, records the station on it end pops it up through another hole for you to retrieve. Then the little barriers slide back and you are in. Stations are stations for all that but BART stations are reasonably nice places to be and waiting for the train to come is not a bad experience but they could use some more seats. All BART operations are controlled by computer and run, most of the time, like clockwork. Suspended from the roof of the stations were big electronic boards on which the destinations of the trains appeared and when the train wasn't due BART made a bit of extra money by flashing up advertising. Occasionally the name Concord would flash up and then it stayed put as an indication that the train was due in a couple of seconds. The silver train glided quietly into the station and polled to a stop, the doors opened and we entered one of the most luxurious suburban trains I could ever hope to travel in. Melbourne trains are two steps beyond primitive by comparison. The doors closed and we moved off, accelerating gently, apart from the quietness and the surroundings it 73