Tourist Tips for the Metro
Have you ever heard about how unfriendly Parisians can get?
Do you fear inciting a deathly Parisian baleful glare?
Here are some tips on how to survive the Métro during your much-coveted trip to the City of Light:
1. The City of Light is NOT the City of Daylight or Sunshine. Most of the year, a Parisian sky is grey. Light grey or menacing grey, it's still grey. It's good for artists but not so good for things that aren't getting painted. People who spend a good part of everyday in the bowels of the earth would like some sunshine to look forward to when they come up for air. But they can't have it and that makes people cranky. It makes us feel like we're all zombies leaving a tomb. Which is why we all have that look.
2. Parisians, generally, leave their houses/apartments because they want to go somewhere specifically. The quicker the better. If you have a habit of dottering around like a senile old fool, weaving across the sidewalk or the metro platform, pointing your finger in the air and muttering, you will merit a kick. Or get tripped.
3. Backpackers who haven't a care in the world would be well-advised to avoid the Métro during rush hour (8 am - 10 am and 5 pm - 7 pm on weekdays). If you must travel on the Métro at all, do not loiter in the middle of the car by the doors. Your backpacks and dreadlocks are blocking the doors and making it hard to get on or off the fricking train. Make your way to the back of the train and don't move. Don't even breathe. Some of us remember when backpacking around Europe was our reality; the best months ever. We kind of hate you now.
4. Parisians dislike anyone (of any and all nationalities equally) who even dares to block the stairs in the Métro (at the top or at the bottom). Make a decision and get out of the way.
5. When you are standing in the metro and you lean back to get a look at the panel indicating the Métro stations on that line, try to just tip back your head and not your whole fricking body. The guy that was standing in front of me on Metro 1 this morning can go to hell for the way he woke me up by headbunting me with the back of his head.
6. Since when did making out in front of a bunch of people you don't even know constitute an attitude that says "I-care-about-your-comfort". Get a freaking room! Some of us are so over how romantic Paris is.
7. If you don't stop yacking into that portable phone RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I'm totally going to grab it and toss it out the doors at the next station. I don't care about what "he said she said". I'm trying to read my stupid book you perverse chatterbox.
8. Stop goofing off in front of the only turnstile that will take my carte orange. Yes. I'm sighing with discontent. If, so help me, I miss my suburban train and have to wait 30 minutes for the next one, thereby totally screwing up my evening drill, because you didn't know how to stick your little ticket into the little hole to make the turnstile turn, I will curse you and yours till the end of time. Your great-grandchildren won't know what hit them.
9. You there! ALL FIFTEEN OF YOU! Stick together and on ONE side of the corridor you chattering eejits. When you walk more than two abreast it is very hard for me to get around you. When I kick the back of your legs to make you move aside, please don't take it personally.
10. Different culture, different strokes. Find out how to tart your attitude up like a Parisian. Why should every culture be the same as yours? Deal.
Technorati tags: tourist tips / Paris / France / metro
12 Elucidation(s):
Is it really tourists who make out in the metro? I've always gotten the impression that worst offenders of this particular crime are the French.
I feel bad being the prudish American, but *ugh*. Not everyone is as charmed by your saliva as your girlfried seems to me.
*seems to *be*, not me.
Some of this is universal. I cannot stand people loitering in doorways or at the top/bottom of stairwells/escalators. But we don't really have backpackers to worry about. Not many backpackers in the States, and usually they stay in remote areas.
Here from Caught in the Draft.
I'm with you on the cell phone thing. I hate them--except when I need them in an emergency. Otherwise I never turn mine on.
11. A single post can provide necessary stability and security for many passengers, unless you're leaning on it. Especially irritating if I'm holding the post before you decide to drape your weary body all over it.
Tin foiled:
How could I have missed this very obvious annoyance ??!
Oh how I hate when people do this!
This list may be almost complete...
Oh boy...Me and my two teenaged daughters will be visiting the Latin Quarter in April. I only know a smattering of the language but I'm still hoping to avoid being a pain-in-the-butt tourist! :)
Oh me oh my... How I could go on about the list of annoyances myself. What about when the ill-advised passengers with the horrid-quality headphones blast their pathetic music all the way around the train so the rest of the world can *share* in their musical enjoyment?
But to be honest, I don't think I will EVER be able to master the withering, disgusted, who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are-stepping-in-my-path-or-even-existing look that most Parisians shoot at you when you step onto a crowded RER train. Even when you RESPECT the unwritten code of Parisian transportation, they STILL throw those horrible daggers at you with their eyes! I've tried to do the same myself, but most of my daggers turn into pathetic pins and fall to the ground. So I've simply resorted to shoving my way about myself and ignoring the looks. Survival of the fittest, so they say...
as a parisian i would had another tip for our friend the tourist. I hate it when someone speaks directly to me in english to ask me for something. It would definitely be nicier with a "bonjour" or a "parlez-vous anglais" with a very bad french accent. I try to apply this in every foreign country that I go. I find people much incline to give you answers and tips if they see that you are not that kind of tourist only interested in monuments and feeling a superior beeing.
sorry for my english, hope you see what I mean.
Another occurred to me over the weekend regarding those silly "strapotins". The foldy seats! Arrgghh!
Stand up when the Métro is full unless you want my 1000 pound "attitude"... ahem... bag left swinging in your face.
LOL, I wish there was a better way to say how funny I found this post.
I lived in Paris for 3 years, took the RER every day from Corbeil-Essonnes and then Lozere. (Carte orange or Hebdo, just typing these words make s me smile.) Coming from Edmonton to France was shock enough and I will admit for a short while I was an offender until I became one of the offended.
What I hated was when people would try and take luggage through the "sliding space door" turnstiles and hold up the line by getting stuck, especially if I only had a single ticket and missed my "window" to get through the door.
How about when a short train comes and you are waiting at the wrong end of the platform?
I miss it.
Just seen this in the archives of Parisist.
Bloody love it. Never (yet!) been to Paris (well, I've been around the Periphérique in a coach, but that can't count), but even from my daily experience on London's Tube so much of this rings so true.
Love it.
Post a Comment