Metro of Paris from A to Z

As you might have already heard, Paris has the best public transport in Europe, if not in the world. It is excellent, it covers the whole city and is wonderfully frequent but it has more than efficiency. The metro of Paris is a world as itself; it has its own crew of humble laborers who are on strike once a month and who dwell in the shadows of the underground never seeing the daylight.

I suppose the ill-lighted and gloomy atmosphere is contagious since metro if anything is a place of collective depression. If you’re having a good day, do NOT descend into the metro. Instead take a bus, because the dreary faces of co-passengers will definitely put you down and remind you how there’s nothing sublime about living and that life is only toil and misery. But there’s other reasons too why prefer a walk instead of a metro ride.

The most amazing thing about the metro is that after having it over hundred years now, Parisians still don’t know how to behave in it! Most metro commuters have no clue of so called exit-entry etiquette. Logically, when the train stops you should first let the people inside the train get out and the proceed entering it. But no, here impatient and hungry people returning home will start packing up in the train when the doors are only half open. So if you’re not quick enough the mass will squash you against the opposite wall and there’ll be no way to get out until the next stop.

Another argument against Parisians’ non-existent skills in metro is the fact that everyone always crams in the doorways of the train instead of scattering themselves evenly into every corner of the wagon. No, stubbornly they would stay next to the doors where everyone else is. I don’t know whether it is easier to travel with you nose pressed to someone’s jacket or with someone’s ponytail sweeping your face. Or is it is part of human nature to prefer to endure as much as possible in order to avoid the change (scattering evenly in the train) and only when much becomes unsupportable (ponytail sweeping your face way too many times) people are willing to do something about the situation.

There’s also interesting things about metro and they are the hidden talents of it; in the dense net of trains and stations there’s plenty of room for people trying to earn their living. And when it comes to money human being is capable to metamorphose from an idle and unchanging creature to an inventive performing wonder. You would see all sorts of musicians from one-man guitar ensembles to big orchestras, music for all tastes such as jazz, flamenco, folk, classical and chanson.

There aren’t only musicians: the ones who cannot play an instrument use their dancing skills, for instance on the line 2 you would see a 14-year-old boy getting on a train, playing some groovy hip-hop music, dancing and doing somersaults. Later traveling the same line I noticed another boy just as young with the same music and same dancing, I bet their cooperating..

Sometimes people can’t be bothered and just frankly ask for money. They would get on a train and start with utmost courtesy (no one is ever as polite in Paris) explain how they are facing difficult times and how they have three grandchildren to feed and how they would be most pleased to receive a centime or two from the fellow passengers. I don’t know how lucrative this kind of activity is, maybe they just don’t have a choice.

All in all, despite the smell, the dirt and depressive travelers metro can be quite amusing. If there’s no any artists around you can always entertain yourself by staring at the passengers in front of you, next to you on the right, next to you on the left and when the person you have set your eyes upon gets very conscious of your persistent glare you just continue over to the next passenger. The one thing the metro in Paris is certainly not lacking is the people.

Minding my CM's and TD's

I’m still alive, didn’t get food poisoning from the cat food. :) Well, I have just been very busy with the student strike and having no courses. Indeed, in the end we did start it and it went on for about three weeks. [grunt!] As much as I’m for political activity I do mind tearing myself out of bed at 6.30 to arrive for my eight o’clock course and discover that it was all in vain. Though, I’m sure I brought it all upon us with my pessimistic speculations.
Anyway, we have fortunately passed that, the anti-Sarko movement has more or less died out (not that we have become his ardent devotees in Sorbonne but we’ve understood we can’t do anything about him).

However, I’m not that thrilled to get back to all the courses. In Sorbonne for every course you have an hour of a cours magistral which is a lecture with a professor and two hours of a travail dirigé which is a course in smaller groups. The idea of the latter is to have more time to go into details and be more interactive, since you don’t get to ask questions during the main lectures.

Well, it would be too good to be true. What we really do in TD, le travail dirigé, is that all students pick up a subject and do a presentation, un exposé, on it. So eventually it is two more hours per week per course listening to lectures. Imagine having six courses which would make all in all about twelve exposés per week. So after two months I’ve heard – struggled through to be honest – quite a few of them.

The quality has been varying. Once one student was so into his subject that instead of lecturing for half an hour he kept on going for one and a half! Luckily it was interesting. Most of the times the exposés are very dull because students just run through their dozens of pages of notes and only after finishing them stop and ask if we have any questions.

Sometimes the performer would give you an impression that there’s something rather stimulating coming, he or she would start with an introduction still proceeding in a humane pace. And just as you lull yourself into the illusion of an interesting presentation, the student would stretch his hands, grab his pile of notes and start lecturing with the speed of light. That is when you have what some people call a near-death experience; names, images, dates flash past you and turn into letters and numbers without logic. And if you after half an hour are still conscious enough to find your way out of the class, you can survive anything.

To be fair and honest, sometimes presentations are very good, you actually enjoy yourself and you are delighted to observe that our generation is not totally lost and is competent enough to step in our fathers' shoes. So if you now miss something it’s either you’re having a bad day with your French or you’re having a face-à-face moment with your desk because the night before you just couldn’t stop after the first dose… but then it’s your problem. Just hope you have a nice friend with some proper notes to copy.

Paris gourmand

So there wasn’t any student strike at Sorbonne after all, my image of Sorbonne as the headquarters of the student resistance has shattered completely. Well, we do have a strike but in the remote area of Porte de Clignancourt in the north of Paris where you have most of the first and second year students studying. I suppose here in Sorbonne where the students of the third year and masters study we are starting to get a bit pessimistic about our influence on governmental politics. We will see who will prove to be wrong…

I am about to have my lunch. It’s from a can and smells and looks like cat food, but then don’t we human beings eat all?

My lunch probably isn’t the best example of French cuisine because in Paris if anywhere you can really dive into the world of haute cuisine and culinary art. Though, all the guidebooks would tell you otherwise since there is no such thing as Parisian cuisine because it is all imported goods from the province, the rest of France outside Paris. To addition there’re imported goods from all around the world what makes the outcome even more colourful.

For me it is all I need. You can have a taste of everything in one city and it’s great. I have already been to one really nice Vietnamese restaurant, I’ve tasted all sorts of Maghreb sweets in one Tunisian pastry shop in Quartier Latin, and I’ve had some crêpes, amazingly delicious kebabs and falafels. Not to forget the French traditional boulangerie products like the croissants and baguettes.

The baguette is definitely something that deserves its own paragraph. The best baguettes I’ve ever had are here in Paris. The paradoxical combination of crunchy crust and spongy soft content keeps overwhelming you every time you eat it. And it’s so cheap and so amazing when dipped into crème fraîche!

Oh and I completely forgot the wine! Well, first of all you can buy wine in any supermarket at any time, not like in Finland where most of alcohol is sold in state owned shops at very high prices (well, here people can actually control their drinking). Secondly, it is mostly French and really good. I still have my lesson to learn in wines but since I’m staying here for the whole year I have time find out which cheese goes with what wine. I also forgot to mention the cheese but that a whole other story, some other time then.

By the way, the lunch I just had also tasted like cat food…

Sorbonne the Rebellious

We’re manifesting here! Sorbonne, the cradle of student (and revolutionary!) movement, is up and about again, well we haven’t had a student strike this autumn yet. So, what we did was we invaded one of the biggest amphitheatres at university, someone literally broke in since the door was closed, but then we needed a place to meet.

Next step was opening a general assembly which followed at times very heated discussion with students going up on the stage and giving speeches. Basically, what it is all about is Sarko and his new law proposals which include some commercial nuances which are so repugnant to left wing students of Sorbonne. To be honest, I haven’t quite figured out what we’re striking against, obviously it is all about autonomy of universities and keeping them public, not private. Discussion has been going on for some time already, apparently now is time for action.

Some of the speakers in the assembly were really good and got loud applause, some got people really agitated, they were really heating up the lot. Well, no wonder people got really noisy at times, after sitting two hours in stuffy amphi with the student’s empty stomach you do get a little grumpy and ready to hop on the barricades. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, apparently there won’t be any courses, though I might have my eight o’clock lecture since the uni’s rebellious individuals will be still fast asleep. There’s also some talk that the strike might last four or five weeks – a lot of holiday for us! Last time during a big strike two years ago there were no courses for eight weeks.

Well, I’ll be a good girl and try my luck with my lecture tomorrow… it’s not like revolutions were ever made in the first flushes of the morning. ; )

For the peepers ; )

Finally I have internet at my place and I can do this: äöäöäöäö!

Well, I'll also share couple of pics since it so much easier now. The one at the top is me and the Eiffel tower, thought I should mention it, since you probably wouldn't recognise it with it's dazzling night topping. ;)

This one is from Montmartre, we had an excursion in the quarter with couple of art history students showing us around.

This is me and Anne in Montmartre, La Butte.

Tracking the eccentricities

It's been a while since the last entry, I'm sorry for neglecting my blog. It's just time passes so fast here, I've been here for a month now and it seems like it went by in a second.

I've been out a lot lately, yeah, just as the studies really started. ;) It's just I've met a lot of people lately and they all keep inviting you somewhere. It's like a vicious circle, you get to know one person who invites you to a party where you get to know a lot more who will invite you once again somewhere. Well, I'm not complaining, it's better to be inside than outside the circle. ;)

So, once we went to this hospital party, it was someone's birthday, I never really talked to this someone. The party was in one of the hospital buildings of hopital Saint-Louis, there was nothing special about the building itself but the interiors were quite particular. The walls were covered with something what one might describe as reproductions of famous French painters or more likely as Paolo Pasolini's films in form of frescoes. All in all, you would feel as being in the centre of some Greek orgy in full motion illustrated in a detailed manner of a medical man. According to one guy who actually works in that very hospital it's their canteen and it's a tradition of all hospitals in Paris. Well, I won't believe till I've seen them!

Apart from the hospital party I've been to all sorts of bars and clubs from jazz to electro, and especially the latter one was interesting experience. Me and Anne, my ally in exploration of Paris, we went to this cast off electro club in the middle of nowhere. It ended up being lots of fun, we saw three show, each more bizarre than the previous one. During the second show some group of queer/metro sexual/a-bit-of-everything jumped up on the stage to manifest against fascism, then someone stepped on something and we spent half an hour in black out wondering what had happened. Of course the performing band wasn't too thrilled but everything got fixed up and the show went on. The same notorious group of people was asked to the stage for the last song, so in the end, they got to swing their hips for world peace and everyone was happy.

The third group was as I said even weirder, in short it contained sausages and toiled brushes and really flashy costumes of red, green and purple. In the centre of everything there was this guy dressed in panties wearing some sort of a chicken mask with big puppy ears. I was so astonished I just kept on staring at them with my mouth open wondering what they're going to next.

So that was a weird one but we'll definitely go there again to have a look. One day we, me and Anne again, were passing through the 7th arrondissement craving for food. We bumped into a some sort of fête, Parisians seem to love and use every occasion to celebrate and praise their beloved quartier's. But it was great, we spent half and hour listening really good jazz music, eating Italian aperitifs and drinking wine, and everything for free for you to discover. Paris really has it all.

Bonjour from the gourgles

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate that. I’m going to post some more photos as soon as I take some but they surely wont be as good as Owen’s, but then he is a professional photographer, so.

Actually my landlady is a photographer, too. The corridor of the flat I’m living in is covered with pictures, really good ones. And at her place where I’m babysitting you’d have framed photos on the walls. It’s great, I like photography a lot and would like to learn to do it properly too. I was thinking of buying a camera here or something.
As I said, I’m babysitting for my landlady. She has about 1,5 year-old daughter, so it’s easy for me because most of the time the girl just sleeps. The girl is adorable, très jolie as they would say here.

The French is getting better and better. Now that the courses have started I should pick up the language faster, not that I’m not talking French all the time. I actually know more French students than Erasmus students, so I’m communicating mostly in French.
Besides, getting to know people around here is really not that difficult as one would imagine. Do as I do, be really stupid Erasmus student who has no clue about anything and tell that to everyone, and just like that you’ll have plenty of people helping you out. And of course you have to be a bit intruding; in order to meet people you have to start the conversation yourself since there’s so many students and exchange students around here that you aren’t an exotic exception and few would come and talk to you.
On Monday I met some French guys at the university in salle informatique (the only classroom with 9 computers with internet connection for the whole Sorbonne, unbelievable!). I started chatting with them and we ended up into some student bar in Quartier Latin talking about French politics. After six hours I was quite enlightened. ;)

I did hook up with an Erasmus student as well, her name is Anne and she’s from Germany and studies marketing but not in Sorbonne (I can never remember the name of the place). We share the same interests so we have fun together, both prefer bars and pubs instead of clubs so there’s no contradictions in picking up a place to out to.
She’s also interested in photography and joined one photo club at her university. The photo club is actually very famous around here and they’ve won many competitions in photography. They’re also doing trips around Paris and Ile-de-France and to Bretagne for instance. And I’ll be able to come along which sounds great!
On Tuesday we went with Anne to a jazz club and it was so good! The club was in Montemartre, near the legendary Moulin Rouge, it was a small club and the band played downstairs in a cave which means a wine cellar. The atmosphere was really warm and relaxed and the band was excellent.
I’m definitely going to have another round of that jazz club sometime. Not that there wouldn’t be loads to browse through, jazz is one of the essential music phenomena in Paris, there’s lots jazz clubs that have bands playing through the week. It’s great, I love jazz and it doesn’t even cost that much here, there’s free entrance to many bars and the music is good.

Well, I’m going to close up for now, still want to pop into the Musée d’Orsay today. I bought a year ticket to both Musée d’Orsay and Louvre so I have possibility to have proper look at both of them. Happy. :)

Un p'tit verre du rouge

Here's couple of pics one American photographer Owen Franken took in a bar. That was actually a social meeting of AEGEE-Paris which I visited on my first week here. I've been there twice already and it's been fun, people from A-paris are really nice.

Yesterday I watched a film, twice actual, not the same film of course. ;) I bought a year ticket which means I can watch as many films I like whenever I want. It costs me about 20e per month but it's definitely worth it: Paris is one the places for a film freak, dozens of new films coming out every week, replay of old classics, anything you'd ever wish for. Well, I'm just very excited. :)

On my third week

This is the blog where I’m writing about my exchange year in Paris, I’m doing it in English since so many of my friends don’t speak Finnish.

This is the third week now and I’ve managed to survive so far. ;) It’s not very difficult if you speak French, I’ve managed well and everyone has been patient enough to explain me things over and over again when I don’t understand something. I find people really helpful here, I would be quite lost without all the thorough instructions I’ve been getting about how to change bills into coins and how to get a metro ticket.

The thing is here you don’t just go and get a library card or a metro ticket. You honestly need about half a dozen of different kinds of certificates about your logging, your identity, your student status etc. Then you fill out a form and then you post it to some excluded office where they might give you what you are asking in a month or so.

I suppose it is quite difficult to manage a city like this, Paris is actually divided into 20 areas, arrondissements and each of them has its own administration. This means for instance that I cannot borrow book from any other library than the one that is in my own arrondissement. So every arrondissement exists on its own and obviously they have no cooperation what so ever.

Well, so much for the red tape, the only thing that would really get excellent scores here is the metro and public transportation all in all. The metro covers the whole city, plus there’re so called RER trains which are really fast and go all the way to the suburbia of Paris.

By the way, the French seem to love abbreviations, it’s all about RER, RATP, TF, Tlj, Vac scol, RDV and RIB around here. It really is not easy thing to handle for an exchange student who has just arrived. Now I’m getting hang of it and honestly I’m not surprised people prefer speaking about DAB than distributeurs automatiques de billets or about RIB than Relevé d’Identité Bancaire. It takes you so much time to say all the names of things that you’d grow old before you’d finish a sentence.

It’s not been just fighting with bureaucracy for me, I’ve had my walks around the city. I still haven’t seen even the 5 per cent of it all and I’ve been in the city every day. I’ve been to churches and cathedrals, there’s plenty of them to look at. My favourite so far is a small Gothic church L’Eglise de Saint-Séverin in the very heart of Quartier Latin, the Latin Quarter where students dwell.

I’ve also been doing a bit shopping and going out, of course. Possibilities for partying and dining out are inextinguishable, there are so many restaurants and bars around that it would honestly take you a lifetime to visit them all. Tonight I’m going to jazz club, there are plenty of them to look around.

Got to go now, have a RDV, that would be a rendez-vous translated in understandable language. That’s another characteristic phenomenon here, everywhere you go you have to have an appointment, in a bank, at the university etc. So, still have loads to learn, I’ll keep this blog updated. Oh, and please, do add some comments, otherwise I’ll feel a bit lonely.. :(