Orientation by Tube

A discussion in my hostel's bar one night turned to the difficulty of orienting oneself in a new city -- if the place has a smoggy foggy scene going on, like Brussels in the photo at right, you can't see the sun and sometimes the landmarks you need, like tall buildings, are invisible as well, or can't be found from a city canyon. I carry a little compass as part of a pocket flashlight/mini knife combo (Swiss Army rules); a compass serves one best if one can read it right (I have moments), and a surefire place-finding GPS of any kind can be expensive...

One interesting orienting technique discussed is to grab a tube pass and hop on and off at four compass points bordering the areas of town in which you'll be traveling. Shoot digital pix if you think it'll help, but certainly memorize those four tube east, west, north and south stop names and even if you can't tell east from north with or without a compass, you'll know which general direction is up by the tube stop names you can usually find on passing buses or at bus stops while you're walking around. Keeps you from having to whip out the map every three minutes, too.

• Compass use manuals
• Cool GPS / PDA combo