Every time one travels abroad, there is always an experience had regarding transportation at your destination.  Usually, it’s one simple story about a severely intoxicated person singing to you on the light rail, or yelling at the train because it won’t move fast enough, but there’s always one.  Having been here for 23 days, I seem to have far exceeded my allotment of transportation stories.

That being said, I must explain that my time here has resulted in at least two 30 to 45 minute subway rides each day.  The route that I take to school usually requires three separate trains, and, depending on the time of day, can result in me being smashed into a very small space with a lot of sweaty people.  It would stand to reason that I would eventually have something odd happen to me.

Inside a subway car on the Metro 12 line

Well, my first experience was not exactly the result of anything other than my poor timing.  It took place on Bastille Day when I was heading back from Northern Paris to the dorms.  My friend, Carmen, and her roommate, Thomas, had helped me plan out my route so that I would be able to leave their place with enough time to catch the last few trains that would take me home.  For the most part, this worked out beautifully until I came to my last transfer.  I arrived at the platform, and took a seat to wait for what should have been my last train, as well as the last train running that evening, when suddenly I realized that there was absolutely no one anywhere else on the platform.  I sat for a few minutes more contemplating this, and eventually an RAPT official came wandering down to talk to me.  He said a string of sentences at me in French, which elicited a blank stare on my part.  He followed this up with, “English?”  and I responded, “please” (rather embarrassed, I might add).  He thought for a few moments before his face turned from understanding to annoyed.  He looked down at me and shouted, “CLOSED!”

So, I was now stuck in the Chátelet area of Paris, approximately 1.5 hours walking distance north of where I wanted to be at 1:15 am with no form of transportation to assist me, nor any clue as to what direction I actually needed to walk in to get home.  The only thing to do now was to head to street level.  I slowly scaled flight after flight of none-operating escalators when I finally emerged in the middle of a large shopping district in the touristy part of central Paris.  Luckily, because it was the tail end of Bastille Day, there were policemen everywhere!  Ignoring any inhibition I usually have about trying to talk to the French, I went up to a group of policemen and utilized my “Mongolian” to ask if anyone spoke English.  They all quickly glanced at each other, and one responded with, “a little.”  I inquired on which direction south was, and he cheerfully pointed me in the correct direction.  And so, my walk home began.

A few minutes later, I came upon Notre Dame.  Good!  I was headed in the right direction and new approximately where I was.  While crossing the river near the cathedral, a bus zoomed past me on the street completely filled with people.  The buses were still running!  I sprinted to the next stop to catch up with it, and squeezed myself on.  Success!  Almost…  so excited that some form of transportation was still running, I got onto a bus that promptly turned east at the next intersection, taking me further away from where I wanted to go.  So, I got off, walked back to the previous stop, and waited for the next bus that would actually take me to wear I wanted to go.  About two minutes later, a bus filled more so than the previous pulled up.  I basically had to hang onto the door and fold into the bus as it closed.  Now, the problem here was that I didn’t check what stop I needed to get off at, nor could I see the line map, nor was the bus driver announcing the stops.  I decided that I would stay on the bus until either a large group of people got off, or it turned a direction other than south.  This never seemed to happen, so after about eight stops, I decided it was time to get off.

I went to the map on the back of this new bus stop to locate where I now was.  I found where I thought I was, and continued to walk south.  When I came to the first street I quickly realized I was nowhere near where I thought I was, so I marched back to the bus stop and found my REAL location.  I was now about three blocks west of the dorms when I originally thought I was a few blocks northeast…  I walked back to the intersection, located a light rail stop (which was no longer operating), and examined that map.  Because the light rail runs right in front of where I’m staying, I followed it in that direction and quickly came home!  But…  the most mind-blowing part of this arrival was that when I came up to the Cité Universitaire , I came up on the completely opposite side of the campus than where I thought I was!  Who knew that I was that lost?  As Carmen stated, “It takes quite a bit of talent to be completely lost for that amount of time and still manage to make it back  home.”

The tracks of the RER B line at the Port Royal stop

The second experience was not nearly as extravagant as the first, but it pertains to the French randomly shutting down various things for odd amounts of time at strange times of the day.  The day started when I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the building I’m staying in because they randomly decided to lock all of the exits and the front door.  This provided massive entertainment for the security guards as I crawled out of one of the windows in the back of the building, but that’s not the better part of the story.  This story just involves coming home from northern Paris yet again, this time with plenty of time to catch multiple trains if needed.  When I got to my last train, there were still people on the platform, including some gang members that I would run into a few more times that week, who were crawling into the vending machines and raiding the lower levels, as well as playing MIDI drum tracks on their cell phones and dancing stupidly too them.  Just a side note for pretty much everyone:  you don’t look cool when you’re in a gang, nor are you really that intimidating.  You really just look stupid.  Anyway, the train came, and I got on it.  This time, however, the train did not go all the way to my stop, but ended one north of it with no explanation as to why.  Nowhere did it say it was going to stop like it usually does, nor was there an announcement.  The train just stopped, and everyone got off, except one very confused American…  Luckily, this time I did know where I was, and I was only 20 minutes north walking from where I wanted to be.  Basically, the trains at night don’t actually adhere to their schedules.

Finally, I come to an interaction with a strange person on the subway.  This occurs all the time, but this one was especially memorable.  I was sitting on the train on my way home (a rare occurrence), and noticed that a mildly older (maybe 5 to 8 years) woman had just gotten on the train at the other end of the car.  She was rather attractive, so I momentarily examined her before returning to my comatose state of existence for the remainder of the train ride.  Oddly enough, our eyes locked, and my initial reaction was to smile, which apparently is not a common or good thing to do in France.  A stop later, I noticed that she had made her way closer to me, and was staring at me.  This made me rather uncomfortable, but I glanced up and again flashed her another smile, just trying to be friendly.  She came over to me and started to speak to me in French.  I’ve gotten into the habit of ignoring people speaking to me in French, because they are typically asking for money, so I basically continued to look at the floor.  The woman apparently did not appreciate this, so she started grabbing at my inner thigh, causing me to leap out of my seat, turn towards her and shout, “WHAT!?!”  She stared at me momentarily, as if taking in the fact that I was a good ten inches taller than her, and then she spoke in English:  “You?  Inside?”  This was accompanied with a gesture between her legs, and I quickly realized that I was dealing with a Parisian hooker.  I made my way to the end of the car, and luckily was able to step off right then and there at the correct stop.  The weird people always decide to talk to me…

"Mind the gap between the platform and the train"

Since then, my experiences have been mildly boring, and I intend on keeping it that way.  No more missing my trains, getting on trains that don’t go to the correct place, or being hit on by hookers for me!