I found this entry on my computer..I never posted it...brings back fond memories, enjoy!
This post is simply some random thoughts (gripes) that run through my head about the Metro here in Paris. They have peppered my Parisian days and sometimes provided a whole commute’s worth of pondering...
I like how they announce in English at the train station to be aware of Pickpockets. (I guess my awareness is supposed to make up for the police force in the subways that is basically just “good in theory,” since I can’t recall seeing an officer twice in one week.) Yet when the train has stopped working, or will be sitting at the station for an extra and unscheduled 20 min or (my faaaaavorite) that “we just decided right now that this stop is going to be the last stop, your bad” — that’s when they only make the announcement in French. So you sit there wondering where everyone is going and think, “Look at that crowd of people getting off the train together – I hope they know about the Pickpockets!”
I know some French people consider Americans very rude for our mannerisms: we talk too loud and use too many hand gestures, we speak with our whole bodies, and everyone is aware we are there. Yet on the other hand those same people are aware of NO ONE. They will stop in the middle of the stairwell (probably to talk about us Americans), when there are 20 people behind them trying to get up or down the same steps..people who’ve probably just come from a randomly stopped train and are not happy to now be staring at the back of your head...
Why is it that no one else thinks the people on the metro are crazy. Perhaps I am a country girl at heart and will admit that riding these metals tubes daily, hustling through what are best described as tiled sewers is a new experience for me. Crazy people are also a new experience, everyone else is so used to them that when the disheveled 5 ft 2 woman gets on the train and begins to yell at the pole for being in her way, no one else seems to notice. They also don’t notice the “speakers” that come on the car. My French hasn’t gotten that good, but from what I can tell, these professional subway orators announce to a captive audience that they are poor and unfortunate and just want a good meal (to drink), “So if you would please go ahead and reach into your wallets for some change, I will come along with an 8 year old Dixie Cup and shake it in your face, while dripping my stench on you in visible waves of funk.” WTH?!?! Where I come from, they call this a hold up! It’s the laziest form of harassment I have ever seen and it happens every day. Of course it is a tie with the accordion players that come on the train – that’s right accordions. It’s not that I hate the accordion. I do, but that’s not the point. There’s a lot of musical people here – accordions and guitar players, violinists, and even one guy with one of those tiny Casio keyboards from like 1988. Evidently, they all watch to see which car I am getting in (there’s probably a lottery) and they force me to listen to their crappy jam sessions on some instrument they found in a dumpster. After subjecting me and my companions to a subtle form of torture on my hour ride home, they come by with their own little jacked up Dixie Cups! I am a music lover, I especially love live music, but confined in a train car with 40 other tired people, I am probably not in the mood for even the jazziest rendition of Hava Nagilia or something by Enrique Iglesias sung with a French accent—nope, not on the best of days.
At least some of the displays on the train come with talent, some people are your regular, “find them in any Wal-mart kinda koo-koo”. I have seen blue haired people and punk rock kids – no biggie. The Viking the other day was pretty awesome. I mean he would have been awesome with just the outfit alone, but he had props. Not like “I give him mad props for showing up on a train in tights and knee boots” kinda props. This dude was carrying a sword! I can’t say too much more about him than that because, duh, when a big ass French men, imitating a Norse god of war, gets on your train car carrying a sword and wearing doo-doo brown tights – you switch cars.
The station that I swap trains at is called Auber/Opera. I ask myself everyday did someone die here? If not someone than a whole bunch of someones? It is the worst smell, it’s like mold, on top of rust, and bodily decay, smeared with bodily fluids. It hurts to breathe too deep and fogs up my contact lenses. I think if they open the walls at this stop they will find them filled with all the musicians and oraters that commuters got tired of and boarded them up, Dixie Cup in hand, in a wild fit of Metro-tanic mutiny. Sometimes you can tell they are trying to make it bearable and there’s another scent in the air loosely covering the stench. It never works out right though and a weird un-natural “almost stench” is the result. Like the day it smelled like someone had poured something citrus flavored over the dead bodies. You could tell it was there, but just barely, so you breathe deeper to check and then you really uncover the death of millions waiting to crawl up and settle in your nasal cavity (it’s a cruel trick). Another time, I think my brain was really trying to protect me from the horror – the way people don’t remember what they saw at a crime scene or what happens when they lost a limb in a freak tree trimming accident. I am not sure what the smell was but I describe it as Kool-aid (red flavor) and armpit.
My last train thought but one that occurs most often is:
If you suck on someone’s face that hard, shouldn’t you have to be responsible for their dental work? Can a lung actually be collapsed like this? For a culture that is supposed to be known for their romantic nature, I have been privy to some train-side make out sessions that are just plain pitiful. So many of the advances I have seen, I would not describe as suave, more like creepy. I have been tempted more than once to call the rarely sighted police officer and tell him, “there’s a guy in that train car over there eating a woman, and he is starting with her face.” (Of course, he would Frenchly respond, ‘This is just love, you Americans don’t understand such affection.’ To which I would respond, ‘No, we understand hygiene. We understand personal space. I’ll take my 1.5 ft safe zone over your face pillaging anyday.’ Then I go to jail..can’t smell any worse than the metro.)
By the way, licking is inappropriate in public places; not to mention a filthy place like a metro/sewer. I don’t care if it is above the neck and near the ears, unless you’re the mother of a golden retriever puppy, keep your freaking tongue in your mouth, out of sight and off that poor woman’s cheeks. She has her eyes closed not because she enjoys it, but because she’s trying to pretend she’s somewhere else, Pierre!
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