The metro in Paris has become a staple in my life. For some it is baguettes, others small
dogs, but for me, the metro. The
Paris Metro, short for Metropolitan is a symbol for the city not only for the
speed and efficiency (usually) for public transportation but also for the Art
Nouveau architecture that dominates the entrances and exits around the
city. Using the metro I can get
from one point to another in just one transfer (if I plan carefully beforehand,
or use the handy “offline” iPhone app I found). While it isn’t as scenic as the buses that are also a large
component of the Paris transport system, the metro has a quality of life that
the bus just can’t match. With
about 4.5 million passengers a day I have seen walks of life that you can’t see
when you walk from place to place or take the bus. The metro truly is a unique situation. Probably the most notable aspect unique
to the metro are the “buskers” that hop from car to car hoping to earn a bit of
money from each stop to stop. Not
all these “buskers” have a talent to share but they all are desperate for
money, whatever their needs or wants might be. During my first week I was on the metro and a man came on
with a guitar, (I had my headphones on as I usually do to avoid the screeches
of the breaks and the people on their cell phones) and he began singing and playing
a song that I knew. I took one of
my ear buds out and listened, subtlety.
It turned out he was playing The Boxer, written by Paul Simon, sung by
Simon and Garfunkel. I had heard
this song many times but hearing it sung by a French man in the subway was not
the same and it was all I could do to keep from grinning at his pronunciation
mistakes and the missed notes.
Despite my critique, his performance was the most practiced and refined
of the Paris metro “buskers.”
Along with the musicians there are also the SDFs, sans domicile fixe homeless people, who hop from car to car
explaining their situation and then cupping their hands hoping for some spare
change as they pass through the car.
The activity within the metro car isn’t what I find the most
interesting however. I love
observing the people that ride the metro.
Most of them act as if they are disinterested in the activity of
everyone else on the metro and so are consumed in their morning newspaper, in
their iPhone, or in sleeping. I
can’t imagine, however, that anyone could be able to ignore the number of
different people, different languages, and different situations that arise on
the metro. I find it extremely
obnoxious when the British or Americans get on the train, usually
middle-aged/elderly couples and they proceed to talk absurdly loud about
whether or not they have to get off at this stop or the next. Or at the station waiting for the metro
in the middle of the night, loud teenagers who assume that yelling across the
tracks is a productive and appropriate use of that space and time. While I may seem like a social
curmudgeon, I actually love it.
These qualities make the Paris metro, the Paris metro. Without random people wondering where
they are going, the doors not opening all the way, the number 4 metro being
inhumanely hot, the metro just wouldn’t be the lovely experience it is whenever
I hop on. And while occasionally
late at night around midnight, just before the metro shuts down it feels a bit
strange as the SDFs get into their sleeping bags on the chairs in the stations,
I feel confident and relatively safe.
Back home in Vermont we don’t have the metro, we don’t have efficient public
transportation. Until you live the
metro you never really know what it means to “take the metro.”
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