Those Rude French People

Rude Parisians

My Air France flight arrived ten minutes early to Paris yesterday. However, air traffic control made the plane circle so we ended up being forty minutes late.

While waiting for my baggage to arrive on the carousel, I thought it would be best if I made a trip to the restroom before hopping on the Metro into Paris. There were two women’s restrooms, one on each side of the room. I headed for the one on my left, but found an American woman yelling at the thin, French janitoress who had conveyed to the American that she couldn’t go in the restroom because the janitoress was in the process of cleaning it. The woman huffed and puffed and then stomped off.

She didn’t head towards the other restroom, which was nearby and in sight of the closed restroom. I headed to the open restroom and waited in a short line to use the single stall.

Just as I moved up to the head of the line, the janitoress came over and announced that the other restroom was open. So I headed over there and had the luxury of being able to utilize a newly cleaned public restroom at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Ah, the simple pleasures of life.

So another incident of uglyamericanitis played itself out in Paris yesterday.

Since my arrival was late, I was correct to be worried that I wouldn’t catch my train in Paris at the Gare d’Austerlitz. Pulling my two bags behind me I raced to the airport train station. I usually go in the train office and buy my ticket from an agent, but the office was so crowded that I thought that this time I would buy my ticket from a machine, because after all I have my French Carte Bleu, and I’m a cool intercontinental woman, and I can work a French ticket machine.

The station was crowded, and I had to stand in line even to access a machine. When I got up there, I couldn’t remember my secret pass code. I tried it three different times, and then a message came on to tell me that I couldn’t use my carte any more. Luckily, my husband had the foresight to give me some Euros in change because the machine didn’t take bills. The Euros are so heavy, so I hadn’t bothered to bring much change with me on my trip back to the U.S. . . . after all, I rarely use the change except when I’m at the farmer’s market. Usually I use my Carte Bleu.

The machine dispensed a ticket, and with my bags in tow, I hurried down the escalator, boarded the train, settled in my seat, and the train took off immediately. Whew. That was lucky. And, what was even luckier was the fact that it was the EXPRESS RER to downtown Paris.

However, the train went so slow, that I was of the agitated opinion that I could out run it. I kept nervously glancing at my watch. When I finally arrived at the St. Michel Metro stop, I was certain that I would miss my train. I only had fifteen minutes to drag my bags through the St. Michel Metro Maze, endure the stops at four Metro stations, squeeze through four turnstiles with my very heavy and large bag, and climb multiple flights of stairs. There was one veiled woman begging, and as I stumbled down the stairs I thought that a lucrative business for her to start would be to help people carry their luggage down the stairs where she was sitting.

At St. Michel, I almost caused a tragic accident as I stepped on the steep escalator, and not having stabilized my bags, I began to fall backwards, and my bags began to fall backwards. An old woman behind me saved me by pushing me back up on my feet. If she wouldn’t have been able to right me, I would have fallen down the escalator, with my heavy bags, and taken out ten to twenty people.

I was hobbling up the first of three long flights of stairs, thinking that I would have to carry the bags up one at a time, when a good-looking young, Frenchman asked if he could take my large bag up the stairs for me. I sighed a relieved “oui” and he toted them up the three flights for me. If he wouldn’t have done that, I would have missed my train, for I arrived with only twenty seconds to spare.

My husband said, “You must have looked really hot for him to do that for you.” No, I didn’t look hot. I looked like a haggard, forty-six year old woman who had been awake for the past twenty-four hours, and had spent eleven hours shoved in a tiny seat on an airline that had dried out my skin, and because of turbulence I hadn’t been able to brush my teeth before we landed and there was too big a line at the airport bathroom for me to brush there, so I did my best not to breathe on the guy when I thanked him profusely, as the sweat dripped from my forehead and chin. Doesn’t my husband remember that boy scouts used to help little old ladies cross the street?

The conductor told me that I was so late it was imperative for me to hop on the first car, and then make my way back four cars to the one to which I was assigned. It was impossible for me to take both of my bags through the small isles so I took the small one, found my car and compartment, and then went back for the other. The train was chugging down the track, and I was falling from side to side as I tried to balance myself and the large, heavy bag. I knocked into people’s feet and legs, and heads, and kept muttering “desole” with my horrid breath while sweat was pouring off my brow and from my armpits.

I couldn’t fit the large bag into my compartment because there were four of us in there and there wasn’t room for the big bag. So I left it in an adjoining car that had luggage racks each end of the car. When we reached Brive, thank goodness I was awake and that I paid attention to the announcement, and that my French is now good enough to understand mumbled public addresses because they announced that they would be decoupling cars seven through ten at Brive. I was a bit groggy but eventually, I realized that my heavy bag, that had caused me so much trouble in the Metro, was in car ten!

So, I hurriedly put my shoes back on and raced back to car ten to snatch my bag.

My husband is always chastising me because I prefer to take the train to and from Paris when I fly in and out from Charles de Gaulle. Air France pretty much throws in the Toulouse leg for free, so he doesn’t understand why I don’t take it. There are several reasons. The first one being, that often the Toulouse plane is late. So when you combine a late plane with the waiting in the airport, and then the train trip up to Cahors, I really haven’t saved much time. The second reason is that I just don’t want to shoehorn myself into another plane after I’ve just escaped from the coach section of a transatlantic flight. I’d rather jog down to southwestern France. Thirdly, I enjoy spending the night in Paris before I catch my plane out. I don’t understand how anyone can just fly into and out of Paris. I like to see it, smell it, and crawl through the Metro with my white pants.

And if I hadn’t had that ordeal yesterday racing through the Metro, I wouldn’t have learned a very important lesson: that there are some really wonderful strangers, saints among the riff-raff, who are willing to save you from tumbling down escalators, or to selflessly help you make your scheduled train by putting their back out carrying sixty pounds of books up steep flights of stairs.

I’ve been having a hard time having faith in people lately, and yesterday taught me to not give up on mankind.