Paris is my city; it is where I was born and I love the fact that 'I can get lost' in Paris without any worry. I can walk without thinking were I am going for a while, and I will always find a familiar metro station when the time comes to reconnect to my reality, and get back home easily.
Yet, as my French friends point out, it can be a stressing place to live.
I am going to illustrate the ambivalent feeling by a personal experience when I went to visit my friend Gilles, one evening by metro. I was travelling alone, it was 7pm, and when we reached the metro station called Chateau Rouge, the train stopped, the lights went out in the wagon and the engine turned off. This was unusual. I thought someone had pulled the alarm in a wagon to stop the train. All passengers were silent.
Then, I understood what was going on. Some policemen were chasing two men on the opposite platform and I suppose they stopped the train so that they could not escape. The station was full of rough looking guys, and the woman sitting next to me said to me: it is always like that at Chateau Rouge station, it is a Mali Ghetto full of desperate guys who make cash on drug dealing.
I thought I may have underestimated how safe it was to travel in the Metro, which in my mind, had always been an very safe way to travel in Paris.
Then I stopped at Marcadet-Poissonniere, and as I was walking in the corridor, I heard the most beautiful voice raising from the corridors, a middle-aged black guy singing 'My Way'. As I passed him, I looked at him, giving him a respectful smile of appreciation. He returned it happily, and I felt full of hapiness.
Then, I pondered : only 5 mns had passed by between Chateau Rouge and Marcadet Poissonière, between the worse and the best, and I thought: this is Paris, take it or leave it !
I take it.
Pyramide du Louvre, Venus de Milo et La Joconde (Monalisa).
