Le Métro

In all honesty, I have grown to like the Paris métro. It tells you when to expect the next train, late at night tells you the time of the last dispatched train so you can decide if you can really make your transfer or not, and generally speaking, it is clean and well-lit. I rarely feel unsafe, except for when it's like 1:30 AM and I'm at Oberkampf or République. Then no one should really feel safe.

The métro is designed so that you never have to transfer more than twice, whereas in New York, more often than not you will just walk to the subway a couple avenues east or west so that you can avoid the idea of transferring, period. The other thing about New York is the fact that the subway runs uptown-downtown, and you don't really need to know more than that. If you can count, you can navigate the New York City Subway System. In Paris, however, you have to know the name of the direction you are going, because it is not necessarily uptown or downtown, or east or West. Admittedly, the subways going into Brooklyn and Queens get a bit confusing, but at least those say Brooklyn-bound or Queens-bound.

But on the subject of transferring twice, I have discovered a métro line that I simply adore and a concept Paris should really jump onto and employ all over the city: the 14. How I love the 14! It cuts out half of my travel time, EVEN IF I have to transfer twice. It skips through have the freaking city and gets me to Châtelet in less than 20 minutes, and getting to Châtelet means I can get to the Marais or the Latin Quarter before I can say "le dernier métro." I think this line, and possibly the 11, are the only lines similar enough to the famous New York express/local system. Paris, get more express trains. Your dépaysés and ex-pats will cry with happiness. In New York, time is money. In Paris, time is spent on the métro or waiting in ridiculous lines, because everyone in this bloody country has to "faire la queue" just to say hello or how are you.

I have also discovered the reason for why the métro is so hot here, and why it reflects the real temperature in New York. The trains here do not go straight. They turn and as a result, the air flow is limited and the heat is not released. It gets trapped. I also don't think there are many street grates (is that what they are called?) in this city. In New York, it's a direct line. Some of the stations, like Times Square, are hot but that is because they are hubs and a bunch of lines are coming together. If only this city didn't try to hard to keep its snail mentality.

Worse comes to worse, I will continue to take the 14 n'importe où, and I encourage all of you to do the same.

But, I don't really encourage anyone to "faire le queue."