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.