“Oh, bah, zis iz a typically French thing.” Prowling up and down the platform in the Pigalle metro station for 40 minutes trying to figure out the best way to hurtle myself into the next train is just not comparable to a flakey croissant or a café au lait.
Let me explain something. France is wonderful; the language beautiful, the food divine…the Hemingway-ian Paris- however, the one foul thing that I will never comprehend is the administration. Anything in regard to mass organization or paperwork is met with a Gallic shoulder shrug and a simultaneous puff of air through the lips…meaning… “Bah, zat iz ‘ow it iz… hein…”
Before I moved to Paris the first time I was besieged with warnings about the violence of French strikes. I lived nine months in the City of Lights without encountering any sort of inconvenience. Well-those nine months of bliss have caught up with me.
After finishing my nanny-ing for the day I was off to a soirée, I dawdled over choosing a bottle of wine because after all I had over an hour to get to the party. As I descended into the metro I missed a train. It was a literal sardine can of passengers, people throwing themselves on to the train forgetting the essential politesse that so defines the French.
It was no biggie…I had time, the next train was only in…WHAT?! 13 MINUTES? For the next thirteen minutes I walked up and down the platform knowing which passengers were going to get on, the pissed looking guy standing on the very edge of the platform ready to dive into the next passing train, the teeny-Asian girl, and big-boobs McGee with her shopping bags. I sidled up to the pissed-off looking guy, and when finally a train came up, I pushed with all my might, but in vain. Thirty seconds later I found myself on the platform muttering explosive profanities under my breath watching as Mr. Pissed-Off guy waved from the train window.
13 minutes turned into 18 minutes, into 45 minutes. As the fourth train approached the quai (after having weighed all other possibilities, bus, other metro route, walking, switching directions on the train…) I looked like an angry cat. There was no one in my vicinity due to the thunderous look on my face. And so, in my most robust American manner, the instant the train opened its doors, I shoved, pushed, pulled, growled and catapulted myself on the train.
SUCCESS! I was on that train! I felt very smug even though I was sandwiched between two gigantic men in a very intimate matter and had to endure the sweet-racist-ravings of an angry man slapping the door every 14 seconds.
8 metro stops, approximately 6 different racial slurs on repeat, inappropriate groping and a 10-minute walk through Belleville I had arrived without being crushed to death. Stepping inside the sanctuary of the party, I was welcomed with a glass of French wine, directed toward a cheese-plate, and enveloped in clouds of blue cigarette smoke and the throaty sound of the French language. Now, that is my type of French experience.
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