Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years with her husband and two kids. Her daily life does not include romantic walks along the Seine, champagne picnics on the Pont des Arts, or five-star gourmet dinners. For a realistic take on life in a fantasy place, visit her blog, An American Mom in Paris.
I’m a Paris metro enthusiast. It’s probably as close to a perfect mode of transportation as it gets; it’s reliable, fast, covers the entire city, and provides me with endless free accordion entertainment. I’ll miss the ease of the metro when I return to Seattle and am either forced back into a car or forced onto light rail, which from what I hear goes to three helpful places and a bunch of useless ones.
For the rest of our time here, I’m going to fully enjoy my cushy European public transportation. But when I get home, I’ve decided to focus on the negative aspects of the Paris metro so I don’t feel so sad about no longer having it. Such as:
1. You get sick, all the time.
After you’ve stepped into a metro car, someone will immediately cough and/or sneeze in your face. By the time you get off, you will have three different kinds of flu, pinkeye, and some complimentary E. coli on your hands because you opted to hold onto the bar instead of being tossed into a group of German tourists when you rounded a curve.
2. In the summer, you bake like a miserable little muffin.
In the hottest days of summer, metro trains and tunnels become ovens where people lose their minds and turn on each other like rabid dogs. I once passed an angry, sweaty American woman in a metro tunnel in the middle of August. She was screaming after her husband, who was twenty steps ahead carrying all their bags, “WHY CAN’T WE JUST TAKE A F@#!!*G CAB AND STOP LIVING THIS GODDAMN F@#$!!*G NIGHTMARE YOU F!@#!!*G MORON!!?” I sure hope they enjoyed their dream vacation to Paris.
3. The smells, my god, the smells.
On their best days, the metro tunnels smell like an underarm peeing on a foot. I don’t want to talk about the other days.
4. If you have small children with you, nervous breakdown is imminent.
It’s not just the danger of falling off the platform; there are other things of which to be fearful. For instance, my four-year-old son once jumped into the trough that runs along the back wall of most metro platforms. No one really knows what the darkish liquid is in the troughs, but everyone would probably agree it isn’t good, and it probably came from human bodies, and it isn’t something in which to frolic with joyful abandon.
Another thing to be apprehensive of is “the kid sandwich.” I’ve seen it often–a parent runs to catch the train, dragging their kid behind by the hand. The parent makes it in the car but BAM, the kid gets stuck between the closing doors. The kid cries, other riders help pry open the doors, and then they yell angry things at the dipshit dad. (Strange, but it’s usually a dipshit dad. Rarely does a dipshit mom make a kid sandwich. Discuss.)
With little kids, there’s also the stroller issue. Sometimes there are doors at metro turnstiles through which you can pass your stroller easily, but sometimes there are not. Once, coming back from a day at my own personal hell on earth, Eurodisney, my husband, Alex, tried to push our stroller through the automatic doors at the metro exit. It didn’t fit. He backed up and, walking a little faster, rammed the stroller unsuccessfully into the door frame again. Then he tried a third time because he’s insane.
A man coming into the station from the other side generously offered to “catch” the stroller if Al wanted to pass it over the turnstile doors. As most people probably know, French men are not the bulkiest. As Al hoisted the stroller up over his head, it looked like he was about to toss a load of bricks onto a toothpick. Thankfully, the stroller didn’t fit over the top, so we didn’t have to see that nice man crumpled on the ground. We eventually folded the damn thing and shoved it through the doors, but after all that we had many bruises and many enemies.
5. If you’re using the metro to get to the train station or airport for a fun vacation, you will second-guess your desire to ever leave your apartment.
See number four above, then add a few suitcases.
Alex once charged through a turnstile with two huge suitcases, one in front of him and one behind. Al sometimes believes something is going to work just because he really wants it to. Unfortunately for him, Paris metro turnstiles don’t give a crap what he wants.
The kids and I stood back a safe distance and watched it unfold. Alex was stuck between the two bags in between the turnstile and the door thingie for a nice long time. He pushed and squirmed and grunted and turned very red in the face. Just as I started explaining to the kids they were going to get a new daddy now, he climbed over a suitcase and hopped back towards us. We wrestled the bags back underneath the turnstile and voila!–none of us had made any progress whatsoever towards our train.
6. You get hit in the face with lots of things.
A side effect of most people not owning cars in Paris is they have to carry home everything they buy, which is occasionally a large or awkwardly shaped item. The biggest thing I’ve been smacked in the face with on the metro is a stepladder. There was also once an ironing board. The most common item to be hit in the face with is a baguette, but that’s OK because if you time it just right, you can grab a bite as it swings past your face.
There are more, of course, but that’s all I’ve got for now. Do you feel better about being stuck in your car on the viaduct now? (You really shouldn’t, get off that horrible thing, get off it now.)
Okay, admittedly I have a very limited sample to draw on – two weeks in December a couple of years ago – but I didn’t see any of this. It was pleasant, clean, and didn’t smell all that funky (no more so than any other massive underground transit system I’ve ever been on). The trip to and from Charles Degaul airport was quick and easy to navigate and wasnt too overcrowded – and I only got lost a couple of times until I figured out the lay of the land.
“…when I return to Seattle and am either forced back into a car or forced onto light rail”
Is Princess too precious to take the bus?
The sense of humor is strong in you, I can tell.
-Princess