You’re not supposed to like the New York City subway system. 

It’s one of the world’s oldest public transit systems, and you can tell. 

In summer the platforms are hot, and the scent of urine sits heavy in the air. In winter the platforms are cold, and the scent of urine remains. 

Service schedules are often mere suggestions, and the trains themselves offer little in the way of creature comforts. If you’re lucky, you’ll nab a perch on one of the car’s hard plastic seats. More likely you’ll spend your journey on your feet, packed like a sardine with total strangers, clinging to a germ-coated pole as the train hurtles through rat-infested tunnels, the shrieking of brakes announcing arrival at the next station. Then begins the fun of fighting your way through the throng of people trying to enter the train as you attempt to exit at your stop.  

Despite all of this, I have a confession that you’ve surely seen coming. 

As a New Yorker who has lived in New York City and had to navigate the mess that is the New York City subway system, I hate it. But as an upstate country girl who has the advantage of only using the subway a few times a year, I also secretly love it (well, not so secretly as I’m sharing this love with all of you). 

For all its faults — and the list is long — there’s a magic to one of the world’s largest public transit systems that I’ve found impossible to ignore. Granted, it’s a magic that’s far easier to appreciate as an outsider, particularly one from a place like upstate New York where an ordinary trip to the grocery store becomes a multi-step process in the wintertime. With the subway there’s no warming up the car, no chipping inches of ice from the windshield, no white knuckling it down an icy mountainside. Make your way down a few dozen stairs, hop a train, and 15 or 20 minutes later you’ll emerge from beneath the ground into a brand-new world.

This movement between the real world above ground and another world below creates an air of mystique. It’s heightened by the language particular to the system, marked by the seemingly random string of letters and numbers assigned to the various services. There’s a sense of accomplishment that comes when you finally master the routes, knowing instinctively that the E is a local, the B an express, that you can grab a downtown A or C train at West 4th Street to get to Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s matched only by the sense of satisfaction that comes when your body masters the proper wide-legged, hip out stance required to remain standing perfectly upright as the train careens around corners and comes to a sudden stop. 

Years of studying karate in high school helped me nail my stance (I highly doubt my sensei envisioned his teachings being put to use on the F train). Mastering the language is still a work in process. 

But that's the thing about the subway. It teaches you things.

It teaches you to take the temperature of the crowd in a particular car and how to time your exit so you're already near the doors as the train pulls into the station. It teaches you patience and how to breathe through your mouth for extended periods of time stuck standing beside someone on a deodorant strike. 

It teaches you to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.

Yes, the New York City subway system is a mess. It is also a marvel, a tangled web beneath the ground that shuttles millions of people from one world to another, every day at all hours of the day. 

Maybe that's why it took an upstate country girl to fall for it. We know a thing or two about contradictions here — that the same road that makes for a terrifying trip to the grocery store in January provides a breathtaking view in September, that the neighbor who’s always poking their nose in everyone’s business is the same neighbor who will show up with a chainsaw when a tree falls in your backyard. We know that the same small town that can feel suffocating when you’re young offers the perfect level of comfort once you’ve grown up. 

You're not supposed to like the New York City subway system. Then again, you're not supposed to like a lot of things — until you do.